evolution search marketing - how to choose the right keywords

Keyword research / Choosing your keywords:

A vital part of optimising a website is determining what words to target in the first place. How are users searching for the type of content that you have? What terms do they tend to enter when researching? Do they tend to enter particular synonyms or spellings?

As a result, when developing a site's content, it is always important to keep content relevant and keep keyword research close to mind. The following tools can help you get a better idea of which variations and key terms are being used more than others.

Google - https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox - gives an estimated daily total of clicks for a highly positioned PPC ad. While Google does not release exact figures for natural search, calculating the ratio via Paid Search impressions and clicks gives you some idea of how much traffic is available in Google. Make sure you enter commands like "exact match" and "phrase match" when on that page, to get a fuller idea on queries too.

In addition to the tool above, https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal can give you an idea of what similar terms might get entered and how competitive they are.

Yahoo - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ - gives you Yahoo's US data on various keywords. there are also variations for other countries such as - http://inventory.uk.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ - for UK market data on keywords. It's also a good way to do a quick check at any point. However, the totals in it are not always accurate, and some keywords are prone to inflated totals due to spam or overload attempts.

UPDATE - Overture search (a fixture for many years) is no longer available. To get Yahoo keyword estimates, one must need a Sponsored Search Account, in which you can get an estimate of clicks and impressions, just like one does in Google Adwords.

MSN - Microsoft AdCenter provides past month totals for keywords at https://adcenter.microsoft.com/default.aspx - however one needs an AdCenter account to use this feature.

Ask - Does not currently disclose keyword query data.

Other options for keyword research -

Keyword Discovery - (http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/) is another subscriber based tool that provides aggregate information from several sources of data and third party search engines. It also includes Yahoo in its interface, and covers keyword data in various countries too. It can also check the keyword density of your content too.

Miva UK - https://account.uk.miva.com/advertiser/Account/Popups/KeywordGenBox.asp - while a paid search provider, this also has some useful data.

WordZe - A relative newcomer, it not only gives you a decent base of keyword data (usually more queries per term than Wordtracker) it also tells you where the top markets for each term is, and does a lot of deep analysis which you can export to spreadsheets.

Wordtracker - Quite popular in the US, they have recently released a version for the UK market. The UK data is very limited at this point and the tool is subscription based - available at http://www.wordtracker.com/

Hitwise - Does not provide actual figures, but takes percentages from a "sample audience." More geared for larger businesses due to their requirements.

Types of key phrases -

You want to be able to get a good cross section of key phrases, so it is important to target all levels of various key terms. Various levels for the term "Cell Phone" could potentially include some of the following, based on what type of action you want the content to purvey.

Generic - cell phone
Brand - motorola cell phone
Variation - motorola m60 cell phone
Location - cell phones in ny
Adjective - Cheap cell phones
Intent - Get cell phone

Keyword activity can be quite seasonal, and so it is always worth revisiting this data and comparing it with other information such as your site logs and any PPC activity.

Spreading keywords out across the content -

Some sites will make the mistake of targeting too many top tier terms on a single page. Ideally, you want the content to be reflected across a good portion of the site, as algorithms take into account the relativity of the page within the rest of the site. A good strategy is to have a set of top tier terms (high query totals, very competitive) as well as some long tail (niche) terms that are less competitive, to give you a better understanding of how visible your content is overall.

This is just a basic overview for ways on doing keyword research. If you already have a site, you have the advantage of potentially looking at your own historic data, You can look at how people are coming to your site (via your analytics program if you have one), to see what works once they land on your site, and use this to make your keyword research work better.

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