DIY Internet Marketing/ pt 17 Keyword Tools

                       

 Addendum to last month's article "The Theory Behind Keyword Research"
 Competitive Analysis
Your competitors will probably have invested time and effort into learning how their own customers think, 
and how to best approach them. So should you.
Your analysis should include:
1. Reviewing competitors' websites, looking for keywords/phrases they use, that compete with yours
2. Record the non-brand terms they use
3.Examine articles they have been published on websites, other than their own
4. Read what the media says about them

KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOLS  

(Keyword Search Data via Search Engines)

I'm outlining the overall description of the methods used to research keywords. 
 I suggest working with the actual tools to learn how learn how to get the most out of them. 
Keep in mind that all keyword search tools are based on limited data. Because each tool will 
give you different results for the  same search term, you should regard each tool as a good way 
to get a general comparison of search terms.


Blog Search Counts
Blog search data is valuable for finding hot topics and keywords in the blogosphere & social media. 
Most data is temporary, so if it's more than 3-4 months old, it's probably out of the blog index. 
For example, 1,130,000 results returned for the blog search for jingles, versus 12,100,00 when 
a web search was used for the same term.

 Blog Search

 Internet Search
 


Related Terms
Most search engines also give you "related" terms
eg. "whales" could produce a list like: whale watching, Pictures, Blue Whales, Songs etc.
Using " * "  in front of the search term gives you common terms/phrases that precede or 
follow a given search term.

Frequency of Recent Usage
With Google's date range operator, you can narrow search 
down to past day, week month, year etc. using the "Advanced Search" mode or do regular 
search and add these operators at end of URL:

8as_qdr=d   past 24 hours

8as_qdr=d4 past 4 days

8as_qdr=w  past week

8as_qdr=w5 past 5 weeks

8as_qdr=m6  past 6 months

8as_qdr=y2  past 2 years

 Google News & Yahoo are good for finding people who are putting out press releases/getting 
news coverage on specific search terms. 

Google's Adwords Keyword Tool & Traffic Estimator
( https://adwords.google.com/select/keywordtoolexternal)

Provides related terms, search volumes estimates, search trends, & ad costs estimates a for 
both URLs  & keywords you enter.


Traffic Estimator
You must have an Adwords account  to use Traffic Estimator
Located in the Google Adwords, it gives you the potential click-throughs you may see on your 
site as a results of using  a particular keyword, including search volume,cost per click,ad positions, 
clicks/day, cost per day.
The cost info tells you how competitive a keyword is.
Types of Searches in Traffic Estimator
Broad Match: your ad will appear in search results when any of the words in your keyword phrase 
that are used in a search query
Exact  match: brackets around the (keyword)
Phrase  match: put keywords in "quotes " your ad shows only phrases that contain anything that 
contain your keyword.
Negative match: Put negative sign/dash in front of keyword, means your term does not apply to your 
services & your ad won't show for the corresponding search


Yahoo Search Marketing  
You need to be a Yahoo Search Marketing customer to use it. It only gives keyword relative 
popularity, not actual search numbers.
Also very good for brainstorming keywords. Gets its' info from Yahoo queries.

Microsoft's adCenter keyword Generation Tool ( free)
Generates keyword suggestions based on your keyword/URL.
The  CPC (cost per click) the is an indication of the competition for the word is.
Gets its' info from Bing.
Good for generating keywords for your target subject or for any URL,
including your competitors.
Gives demographic data as well.


Wordtracker   (http://www.wordtracker.com)
Cost between 10-300/year besides a limited free tool.

 FEATURES

 1.Keyword Researcher displays :
i) The most popular search terms that include the keywords that you entered
ii) Number of searches/day
iii) Predicts how many searches are performed in a day
The Evaluate tab lets you analyze competing search engine listings such as Google,Microsoft, Yahoo etc.

2. Keyword Universe
Gives keywords that are related/synonymous  to/with your search.
Eg. SEO = internet marketing

3. Full Search
Gives a list of similar keywords, plus the number of times those keywords appeared in the meta tags of 200 
related web pages.

4. Keyword Projects
Stores up to 5 of your  keyword research projects


5. Reports
i) Provides  the top 1000 search terms for past 48 hours
ii) & Top 1000 terms over last 90 days


6. Free keyword Suggestion Tool  ( http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com)
Gives you total number of searches done in last 90 days on any word, but because it's data 
sources are very limited don't rely on it for precise measurements, onlyas an indication as to 
which are more popular than others


Because Wordtracker has a limited data source( Dogpile & Metacrawler, accounting for 
1% of all web searches) it's good for getting a general idea of popularity of terms.
There's a paid & free version.


Keyword Discovery.com  (Keyworddiscovery.com)
FEATURES:
1.Keyword Search
i) Gives most popular search terms along with your term
ii) A search count on those words in last 12 months


2.Query
Shows terms related to your search word


3.Searches
Number of times each term searched over past 12 months


4.Occurrences
Estimates number of pages where each search term appears


5.Key Effectiveness Indicator  KEI
Measures the value of search term.
It factors the number of times a term has been searched compared to the number of 
web pages that contain same term.
Be aware that experts don't recommend using KEI because the results do not correlate to
 the competition level for a term


6.Predicted Daily
Number of searches across the web


7.Industry Keywords
Tracks popular terms used in various industries


8.Spelling Mistake Research
i) gives spelling variations of term
ii) number of searches for your keyword
iii) keyword results for your term


9.Seasonal Search Terms
i) market share of which search engines were used for search query
ii) shows search trends for each month


10.Related Keywords
Type in "related:[keyword] " or "crawl:[keyword]"  gives you words that are related to this term

11.Keyword Density Analysis
Tells you the density percentage of keywords for each URL you provide.
Good for spying on competitors.
Don't rely on it to judge a page's keyword targeting as it can be misleading, because search
engines use a far more sophisticated analysis of keywords.


12.Domain Researcher Tool
Search available domains that are based on popular keyword searches
as they have high traffic potential
Shows how many users have searched for that URL


13. COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE REPORTS (requires a subscription)

Reports include:
a. Link Intelligence ...identifies which links are sending traffic to your competitors
b. Search Term  Intelligence ...identifies which search terms are sending traffic to your competitors
c. Search Engine  Intelligence ...identifies which search engines are sending traffic to your competitors
d. PPC campaign  Intelligence ...identifies which search terms your competitors are bidding on
e. Referrer  Intelligence ..provides info about specific sites that  are referring traffic to your competitors
f.Popularity Index..tells you how many unique sessions  your competitors' . gets
g.Ranking Report...tells you which terms competitors are ranking for & the rank of these terms
h. Meta keywords,analyzes competitors' meta keywords
i.Competitive Intelligence Executive Report, give every Competitive Intelligence  Report available


14. Keyword Suggestion Tool   free & subscription
Its' data source is limited, but it's still useful


Google Trends  - free (google.com/trends)
You can see Google's estimate of which cites,regions,languages performed largest  number 
of searches for a keyword

Hitwise (hitwise.com)
Gives information on search terms of your competitors.
as well as market specific results of how people search locally.
Very expensive 20K plus.

Enquisite Optimizer.com   (enquisite.com) fee involved
Tells you which  long tail terms are bringing in traffic & which ones are leading to conversion.

DIY Internet Marketing/ Mapping SEO Progress

 

  

Mapping  SEO Progress

Keep a log in order to gage  effects  of your SEO efforts.
To find out how many of your site's pages are indexed by search engines use site:yourdomain.com . Related to this is the crawl rate of spiders, which can be found at Google Webmaster Central

Benchmarking Current Rankings
Because of all of the inconsistencies related to ranking, which means any given result is not necessarily correct, it's more practical to look at your traffic and conversion stats, as the truest indicator as to where you should spend your resources.

Google analytics & Yahoo analytics, are 2 good tools for bench marking.
Focus on the data that is relevant to your goals.

SWOT Analysis of SEO
1.strengths
2.weaknesses
3.opportunities(which areas are doing o.k.but have room for improvement
4. threats (compare your weaknesses with competitors' strengths

Good SWOT analysis is the most valuable 1'st step you can take re: web marketing & SEO.

Do-it-Yourself Marketing /Pt 11 HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK pt [ii]

How search engines work [pt ii ]

Semantic Connectivity 

This is an added advanced,advantage to help with:
i- figuring out keyword phrases
ii- figuring out relationships of text on high ranking pages
iii- finding pages with relevant themed links
iv- finding which keywords to include on a page

The source for this information is highly technical,but the principles used 

are basic. Search engines try to recognize connections between words, 

phrases & ideas on the web using the following types of searches.
1. proximity searches eg. terms that may have different order from
   original query
2. fuzzy logic  eg.. misspellings, close enough for jazz
3.boolean searches  eg. Yes,Or,Not
4. weight shifting  eg. the importance of each search term

Search engines are getting better at recognizing the connections between 

words, phrases,& ideas. Therefore this semantic connectivity will eventually 

put greater emphasis on theme of pages,sites & links.
eg. zebra & lion would be connected. because they are both animals.

   
TOP 11 BASIC RANKING FACTORS
1.keyword-rich title page
2. keyword-rich of inbound anchor text
3.global link authority of site
4. age of site
5.popularity of link within site's internal link structure
  - all pages should be on the site's global navigation to increase it's own importance
6. relevance of in bound links
 - all links are good, related ones are best
7.link popularity of  of site, in it's topical community
8. keyword-rich content
- include semantics
9. global link popularity of sites that link in
  - number of inbound links use https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
  - quality of links use www.seomoz.org/linkscape
10. number of ranks per day increases/decreases
11.  user Data ...personalization like geolocation, language preference




AMBIGUOUS QUERIES
When search queries that are too general, search engines offer diverse results.

Do-it-Yourself Marketing/ Pt. 10 HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK[pt i ]

How do Search Engines Work ?

A Preview 

Software programs called spiders/crawlers visit all the web pages on the internet, 

to read/interpret their stored data. The pages that show up with the engines 

search results are termed  search engine results pages(SERP).The SERP is divided  
into sections,  see fig. 2-1 below.

1. Vertical Navigation, includes images,news, videos,maps etc.
2. Search Query Box shows your query
3. Results information provides a little meta info about your query results
4. Paid search advertising
5. Natural results
6. Query refinement suggestions

Crawling and Indexing
Picture the World Wide Web is a a series of stops on the subway. Each stop is

a unique document of some sort (usually a web page). Spiders need to crawl 

the entire subway line,so they use the best path available, which is the "links" 

between the web pages. This link structure binds together, all the pages that 

were made public, by someone who had linked to them.

Where do crawls begin ? At the most trusted websites.
The click distance of your website from the most trusted, is an indication of how 

trustworthy your site is.

Rankings
After retrieving the results most suited to any particular query, engines  rank 

them in order of importance/popularity, after taking the trust & authority factors 

into account, by using algorithms.

Relevance of a document increases if the search terms occur several times, 

showing up in the title,headlines,subheads, or links from other relevant pages, 

that use relevant anchor text.
Importance is gained by the number of references from other documents.

Evaluating Wed Page Content
Engines place high value on content. They analyze all of the words on the page 

& builds a semantic map, that it uses to match web pages to queries.
Because navigational elements are not generally unique to each page, they are 

not considered by engines, as they look for the unique content of each page.

What Content is Seen By Search Engines?
The spiders see the HTML code for your website, & ignore anything not related to 

the "real" content.

The page title is one of the most important factors determining ranking, however 

it is not always used, as with Yahoo or DMOZ directory listings, that may choose to

use the title that was used in your listings in these 2 directories. This problem can 

be solved using meta tags such as NOODP tag or DOYDIR tag.

 Meta keywords are ignored by Google, because of spammers, however Bing & 

Yahoo do seem to reference it in some way.

The meta description tag does not influence ranking, rather the engines use it as 

the description in the SERP, thusly your description should be well written.

The 4th element seen is the "ALT" attribute for images.
It tells engines what the image is about, which gives more info about the page 

content. ALT serves vision impaired people.

An image tag example:(img src+"http://www.websitename.com/img/nameofimage.jpg" alt="description of picture"border="0"/)
The src tells where the image is located. The section starting with ALT is the alt 

attribute. The attribute is what the engines read.

The Anatomy of a Search /Do it Yourself Online Marketing Pt 9

The Anatomy of a Search 

The continuation of  my SEO research, based mostly on "The Art of SEO, 

Mastering Search Engine Optimization"by Eric Enge et al
This information is valuable for anyone who owns a website, from musicians
& artists, to accountants & retailers...any type of businesses.

There are about a trillion pages on the internet that Google knows of. 

A company named Jupiter released a report stating that, paid search 

advertising should continue to be the largest category of online spending, 

growing from 9 billion in 2007, to 21 billion in 2009, even though it's a 

proven fact that  if your websites  dwells among the top 3 rankings in a 

natural search, your link has 2-3 times the valuable of paid advertising.

You have to ask yourself, " Why does business continue to spend their 

advertising this way? It's because the Pay Per Click  model is easiest for 

business to understand, as it is more similar to traditional marketing 

methods, than SEO, in that the ROI can be tracked more readily.

Based on this value ratio of SEO  to paid ads, SEO path will become the 

way of the future for advertising budgets.

There are 2 arms of SEO

1.Offline: This is things done on your actual site such as keywords, content, 

meta tags, etc.

2. Online: Getting link backs to your site, from other sites on the internet

      

A search engines' main goal is to generate revenue via advertising, mostly 

through pay-per-click ads, which means advertisers pay only when people 

click on their ads.

People use the  search engines that are perceived as delivering the most 

relevant, & accurate answers, in the least amount of time. Resultingly, 

search engines are forced to invest a lot of their resources on achieving these 

goals in order to be successful, and people who try and manipulate their 

search engine rankings, that result in non-relavent results, (spam) are

seriously penalized by the search engines.

The 3 Steps of the Search Process areas follows

1) The need of an answer to one of the following queries

i) navigational, where the intent is to arrive at a specific website, eg. acme plumbing

ii) transactional, where the intent is to buy something eg.digital camera

iii) informational,looking for knowledge with no particular source in mind. eg.hockey score

2) Expressing that query in a string of keywords or a phrase ComScore shows 

the average query is 3 words in length

3) Executing the query

Who Searches

Almost equal between male & females

Determining Intent of the Searcher

Most searchers don't understand how search engines work. Searchers often 

provide a query that is too general and doesn't provide the search engine or 

marketer with the info needed to determine the intent of the searcher.

Because of this, general queries are important because searchers at least find 

out about you, & thus begins the start of the sales process...building trust.

Be aware that many of your website visitors arrive looking for something 

else, & are not likely to help your business goals.

For the purposes of marketing, it's crucial you understand how your 

target market searches for your service/product, therefore, we use queries 

to help us determine keywords

Queries are ranked in value as follows.

Transactional: very high...the potential for some kind of transaction, be

                        it financial,or subscription etc.

Informational: middling...the potential attract inbound links, followed by the potential

                         to convert to a transaction

Navigational: low...except with searches on the publisher's own brand

                         he potential  to pull searcher away from intended destination

Using this info you can build your own keyword chart, to help determine the intent of each one of your primary words, as seen in table 1-4  below.

Do it Yourself Online Marketing Pt 8/ 12 Interesting Facts about Internet Searches

12 Interesting Facts about Internet Searches

Taken from  " The Art of SEO, Mastering Search Engine Optimization"  by Enge et al

1.    4500...is the number of searches performed every second, of every day

2.    2900 ( 65%)...is Google's search market share

3.    1 second...is the normal time it takes for search engine to respond to an inquiry

4.    50-50 almost... the percentage of searches done by males & females

5.    6-1 ..is the ratio of dollars earned offline for every dollar spent on advertising online

6.    74% of subjects of a 2007  Nielsen survey, used search engines to find local business

      -  44 %  used traditional newspapers

      -  86%  used the internet  to find local business compared to 70% in   

           2006

7.      20% more clicks come your way if you have a natural ranking of #1 and you

        have paid advertising that same search page

8.      62% of searchers click on search results on the first page

     

9.      90% of searchers click on results within 1'st 3 pages

10.    90% of searchers concentrate on the 1'st 10 results

11.    72% of searchers click on the 1'st link of interest

12.    46% of searchers who made a purchase did so within the 1'st hour

        -26%  who made a purchase, did so after 3 or more days, which

          suggests that marketers should have complex interactions with searchers