Tag Archives: keyword

Keyword Research: Using Google Adwords

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This is a guest post by Mariana Ashley

In any search engine optimization (SEO) guide, they will tell you to do keyword research, using Google Adwords. Most guides won’t give you any more detail than that. “Just type in your keywords and Adwords will give you keywords,” or something to that extent, is the general gist. In actuality, keyword research is much more complicated and requires a complete understanding of the function of your site as well as your potential readership. There are a variety of steps that go into keyword research.

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Google Search Suggest May Be Win/Win/Lose/Lose

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Google Search Suggest is a new assist that many keyword searchers are now seeing when they do Google searches.  If you have questions, then there is even a FAQ page that will answer most of them.  Here is how Google Suggest is described:

What is Google Suggest?
As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you’re typing and offers suggestions in real time. This is similar to Google’s "Did you mean?" feature that offers alternative spellings for your query after you search, except that it works in real time. For example, if you type "bass," Google Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include "bass fishing" or "bass guitar." Similarly, if you type in only part of a word, like "prog," Google Suggest might offer you refinements like "programming," "programming languages," "progesterone," or "progressive." You can choose one by scrolling up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse.

One interesting feature of Google Suggest is that items appear with a green number next to them representing the approximate number of results that would return for the suggested query.  So if you like what the rest of the crowd was looking for when they typed your phrase, then you can select one of these popular choices.

The selection shown is clearly determined by some algorithm.  Sometimes the choices shown are not at all obvious.  For example in searching for my user name, bwelford, after typing ‘bwel’ I got the following results:

google search suggest

In this case, the algorithm seems to be assuming that this is a typo.  The choices offered are reasonable, but the order they are presented seems to have no logic.  It is not in order of the number of searches done with that expression.  Does the algorithm throw in a random ordering to spread keyword choices among the possible contenders?  That is a mystery for the moment.

As with any change, there are winners and losers.  One clear winner would seem to be the searcher.  If and only if they choose to do so, they can more quickly get to the item they had in mind provided it is on the list. 

An even bigger winner is probably Google itself.  This mechanism is likely to funnel visitors towards a more restricted set of choices of keyword search pages.  Given that such search pages have Adword ads on them, this funneling could well mean that AdWords advertisers are automatically competing on more restricted options.  This could therefore mean higher Pay Per Click revenues to Google.  If this theory is correct, this could have a significant improvement for Google’s bottom line.

… and who are the losers?  If Google is making more money on AdWords, then this means that AdWords advertisers are losers here.  They must pay out more for each click on these more visited web pages, given that they are now competing with more AdWords advertisers wishing to appear for these more attractive keyword phrases.

The other losers may well be owners of web pages that have always ranked well for long tail searches. As others have suggested, Google Suggest may well influence the traffic coming to any given web page.  This funneling of searchers’ choices might sound like a small change but it can have a big effect on traffic.  If most of that traffic was coming through a long-tail search, where someone typed in a fairly long phrase, they may now cease to do that.  Such a searcher may choose the closest concept among the items presented.  Unless the searcher is persistent and insists on typing out their long-tail search query, they will now never come to that particular web page.

Since the winners for this move vastly outnumber the losers, and Google is among the winners, it seems unlikely that this added feature will disappear. We must all learn to live with it.  Search Engine Optimization was already proving to be a challenge with other Google changes and Google Suggest now raises the stakes considerably.

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Ideal Google Snippets To Target Your Prospects

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The NUB Of Getting More Internet Sales, as described in a recent SMM newsletter, is to make sure that you provide the very best solution for those prospects in your niche who are feeling pain, in other words who are extremely dissatisfied with their current condition. Of course if that Google I’m Feeling Lucky button worked properly, then prospects could Google what they were looking for, and click on the I’m Feeling Lucky button. Few do, since presumably they are not convinced that Google will get it right.

In consequence, Google presents a list of possible website link titles and adds a snippet of information on each. Google describes the snippet process as follows:

Google’s creation of sites’ titles and descriptions (or “snippets”) is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page as well as references to it that appear on the web.

We use a number of different sources for this information, including descriptive information in the META tag for each page. Where this information isn’t available, we may use publicly available information from DMOZ. While accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won’t impact your ranking within search results. We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL’s content. This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics.

If your website is the one that prospect really should be finding, then both you and Google are hoping the snippet will encourage them to click on your link. The only information Google has on the prospect’s needs are what was put into the keyword query. If different prospects describe their identical need with different keywords, then the Google automatic snippet mechanism may create different snippets. To maximize your chances of getting those clicks (and thus the visitor website traffic), you must try to identify the most likely keyword query your prospects might use.

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool has recently had search data added to it and is particularly useful here. By checking the search data for possible keyword queries, one of the more popular can be selected. Writing the snippet is then an exercise in getting the essence into as short a body of text as can be used by Google. If the web page is a regular website page, then 155 characters and spaces are available. It is now Google practice for blog posts to use the date at the start of the snippet, so this reduces the available space to 138 characters and spaces for a blog post description.

Whatever text is used does not need to be in sentence format as the earlier Google reference mentions:

Include clearly tagged facts in the description.
The meta description doesn’t just have to be in sentence format; it’s also a great place to include structured data about the page. For example, news or blog postings can list the author, date of publication, or byline information. This can give potential visitors very relevant information that might not be displayed in the snippet otherwise. Similarly, product pages might have the key bits of information – price, age, manufacturer – scattered throughout a page. A good meta description can bring all this data together.

Although it has often been the practice to write sentences for descriptions, Google seems to be recommending putting in only the meat. That could certainly include Calls To Action or telephone numbers. Whether Google’s automatic snippet mechanism will use such information can only be confirmed by trial and error.

Related:
SEO Those Meta Descriptions For More Google Visitors 23 Mar 2008

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Business Strategy Reality Check With Google Adwords Keyword Tool

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Some might find the title somewhat oxymoronic, given that the words Business Strategy are coupled with the notion of a Keyword Tool. However the linkage will become clear later.

Recently Trevor Claiborne of the Inside AdWords crew at Google informed us all that the Keyword Tool is now Updated With Search Volume Data. He illustrated this with the image shown below:

Adwords Keyword Tool

If you are not familiar with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, it would be worth your while to check out. This latest change provides for free what many expensive keyword tracking services had been providing. It’s no surprise that AdWords professionals, such as Xurxo Vidal, Bloom Search Services, are enamored by this new Search Volume Data service.

As Tamar Weinberg of Search Engine Roundtable pointed out, some other experts are questioning its usefulness. Michael VanDeMar believes that the tool is useless for SEO, even though it shows exact numbers. Certainly the source of the numbers needs to be considered carefully. It may not provide an exact indication of the clicks your own particular AdWords campaign might produce. However for comparative purposes the figures would seem to be useful and clearly Google itself is the best source for Google click data.

The other advantage of the data is that you can download the figures into an Excel spreadsheet. Previously for all results, an indication of the search volume was presented as small histogram bars and only a rough visual comparison was possible. These quantitative results allow more intensive analysis, which is why it can provide a reality check for your business strategy. To explain this requires a short background review of Internet marketing.

Challenging Business Realities

An increasing number of businesses are realizing that the Internet is the primary way many prospects and clients will be communicating with them. Of course the Internet has a major weakness. That is because the Internet is a really, really crowded scene. It’s hardly surprising to hear that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Internet, is working on tags to help find online information.

At the same time the Internet has a major strength. That is because the Internet is a really, really crowded scene. That means that for any product or service, however specialized, there will be a very large number of prospects who are active on the Internet. Since the Internet is a superb way of communicating, which is independent of geography, this gives great opportunities in Internet marketing.

Given that the Internet has changed the way the business world functions, clearly a business strategy must make sense in this modern reality. As Michael Porter has said,”Of course strategy is hard – it’s about making tough choices.” In other words you must decide what you will do and what you will not do.

The best reality check for your business strategy would really be provided by the views of those prospects you are aiming to persuade to become customers. One indicator of the prospects needs is how they go looking for solutions. What keywords might they use in searching for solutions? The Adwords Keyword Tool provides such data. Of course it is mixed in with keyword data for non-prospects who happened to be looking for somewhat related products or information. Nevertheless the Tool can help in confirming or rejecting a particular strategy.

Doing The Reality Check

The following is very much a Big Picture approach and cannot be pushed to the nth degree. It only confirms that a particular strategy has the necessary characteristics to allow success. It does not go beyond that to check that it has sufficient characteristics to actually be successful. However by applying the check, it may give insights into how a strategy can be tuned to improve the chances of success.

Step 1 – Determine the characteristics of your most typical preferred prospect and their needs.

Step 2 – Determine the most likely keyword phrase that would be included in a Google search for a solution

Step 3 – Use the Keyword Tool on that phrase in the following way. Insert the words of the phrase on a single line without quotes and allow synonyms to be included. What the Tool does is to explore the concept that is behind that keyword phrase and show you what closely related keyword searches are being done.

Step 4 – Download CSV files of the two lists of keywords developed by the Tool into Excel spreadsheets. The data should be combined into one spreadsheet of adjacent rows. Sort the rows based on the values in the 4th column in descending order. The fourth column contains the annual monthly average searches for the particular keyword or keyword phrase. Sometimes you will find a large number of closely similar keyword phrases that have high search rates measured in the tens of thousands. This may either mean trouble or opportunity. In other cases, very many fewer keyword phrases are listed. Provided the search rates are measured in the thousands, then you likely are looking at a potentially interesting strategic niche.

Step 5 – After comparing a number of different businesses and the key words that might be appropriate, one can develop a sense of what this analysis suggests for the corresponding strategy.

Step 6 – (optional in some cases) Repeat the analysis with the keyword phrase in quotes to produce a tighter comparison of what may be competition.

Possible Outcomes From The Reality Check

This approach is very much a work in progress. Accordingly it is not yet possible to produce a taxonomy of all the different patterns and what they may imply for a given strategy. The following represent examples of what we have seen in practice. Repeating the cycle and refining the ideas is often beneficial. Readers who try out this approach are encouraged to add their own experiences in the comments.

Case A – A Strategy Lost In The General Noise
Findings – The words with high search numbers clearly represented much more than just searches by the prospect niche. Clearly there would be many other online properties that such searches were accessing. A website focused on the keyword phrase would probably never stand out in this very crowded space.

Case B – Too Much Competition
Findings - There is only minimal information on the advertising competition for certain phrases (a scale from 0 to 100%). Nevertheless, if many of the keyword phrases have 100% competition, then clearly this is a market with a large number of competitors who are willing to spend money on PPC advertising. This undoubtedly translates into equal competition in organic search as well. Using that keyword phrase to define your target prospect may well be very weak strategy.

Case C – Prospects Don’t Use That Keyword Phrase
Findings – One analysis showed that surprisingly there were no searches at all for the assumed best keyword phrase. Prospects were likely using some synonyms that did have high search results. The strategy was refined using one of these alternate phrases.

Case D – Several Keyword Phrases All Somewhat Strong
Findings – In this case, a number of alternate keyword phrases had somewhat comparable search rates. The advertising competition for some of these was strong whereas for others there was little competition. One of the alternates with little competition was selected to define the ideal prospect and therefore the best approach.

A Robust Strategy – Focus, Focus, Focus

The common thread that often runs through these strategy check cases is that to focus on a tightly defined niche is often the best policy. The overall measure that counts is the size of the niche multiplied by the small percentage who will convert into purchasers. The advantage here is that by targeting a tighter niche, it is more likely that the prospect will be aware of the company and more likely that they will find that what the company offers is attractive. Given the crowded Internet, even what might be thought of as a micro-niche can be preferred. This will be more fully explored in an upcoming SMM Newsletter.

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Someone is wrong on the Internet

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Someone is wrong on the Internet

Matt Cutts of Google has an intriguing slip in his post, Something is wrong on the internet!. He is referring to this cartoon by xkcd.

Matt Cutts said something rather than someone. He went on to say:

That comic sums up the internet in one sentence: the scrum of jostling opinions on the web and the optimism that truth can still win out. I was reminded of that comic when someone asked me about a particular way that someone recently tried to get links.

His spam group is perhaps one key way human intervention comes into the Google search process. So his comments later in the post are particularly interesting.

If a website claims to have high-quality information and then deceives the user and serves up malware or off-topic porn, Google considers that spam and takes action on it. Likewise, if a site says that they completely made up a story to get links, Google doesn’t have to trust the links to that site as much.

I really don’t view Google’s role as judging the truthiness of the web. … But if someone is sloppy enough to get caught (or to admit!) making up a fake story, I don’t think Google has to blindly trust those links, either.

It sounds very much as though Google will be acting as the judge. This prompted me to add the following comment to his blog post.

This all seems to be shaking out as it should, Matt. It raised one question in my mind. You did say I don’t think Google has to blindly trust those links, either. I believe Google’s policy is to try to do everything in its search process by computer algorithms since this is scalable. Human intervention should therefore be very limited. Your spam group does that human intervention with an on/off button, I presume, as it applies to clear spam content.

I’m sure many would be interested to know how you treat websites you are no longer blindly trusting. Do you apply the off button for these with a reminder to check again in say six months? Or is it more like a volume control where you apply a down weighting factor? Or again, is it one of those minus X penalties in the SERPs that some talk about?

Since Google is now suggesting it will be more open than it has been in the past, I hope we will get some clarification on this.

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Keyword Selection Strategy

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Christine Churchill has an excellent article today listing costly keyword research mistakes. They are

  1. Targeting keywords that people never use
  2. Confusing keyword popularity with keyword appropriateness
  3. Not considering user intent in keyword selection
  4. Selecting single word keywords
  5. Keyword misalignment
  6. Not considering the competition
  7. Failing to periodically review keywords
  8. Not allocating enough resources and time to perform good keyword research

Detailed explanations are given in her article and there is a lot to consider there. It would almost appear that they are presented in increasing order of importance. Certainly her summary paragraph points to this:

A better strategy would be to take the time it takes to do the project right. A sound keyword process is one of the best investments a company can make. Take a few minutes today and review your keyword lists. Chances are you can save yourself and your company a lot of money and improve your return on your search campaigns by simply improving the keyword pool.

As it happens, her paper could well be an introduction to a post on SEO at the Cre8asite Forums by Ammon Johns, a top UK SEM consultant.

You enter a market where the top 30 sites on many terms are all using SEO. The top 20 sites are all spending around 100k per year, either on salaries of their in-house SEOs, on agency services, or commonly a mixture of the two. If you as a newcomer to the market can only afford 20k investment in SEO this year, then your only possible chance to make that work is to put all that resource into a focal point (the 100k budgets are spread across the market, so by picking one flank or one specific point and spending all your effort there you can plan to break through – the niche market).

You can’t bank a business on hoping to ‘get lucky’ and miraculously hire a better SEO for 20k than they hired for 100k. That kind of optimism is not business, that’s roulette. If a market leader has a three year head start, and is also spending twice as much resource and effort as the newcomer can afford, then it is quite reasonable to predict that you will never overtake the market leader.

If these are figures that surprise you, bear in mind that they are in UK sterling pounds so you double them to give an approximate US dollar figure.

The bottom line on all this is that there are no quick fixes on becoming visible in the search engines keyword reports. The Internet is a very crowded place. It requires good knowledge and thorough and persistent effort to outperform your competition.

Related:
Your Keyword Selection Strategy – Mark Beck
Keyword Strategy to Avoid Bidding War – Shimon Sandler
[Video] Keyword Research 101: Basic Keyword Strategy & Tips – Aaron Wall

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Google Snippet Rules Change For Blogs

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A previous post discussed the importance of Google snippets in bringing visitors to your Web pages. It is of course important to rank towards the top or even #1 on a Google keyword Search Engine Report Page (SERP). However if the Google snippets for the items at #2 or #3 are much more engaging then perhaps the searcher will click there instead.

The creation of those Google snippets is an entirely automatic process. In other words it’s a computer-generated snippet. Google does try to help you to get better snippets. Matt Cutts has even made a short video about snippets (just over 8 minutes) – tip of the hat to Kathryn Katz. A key element in getting good snippets is the description meta tag. There is an interesting discussion currently going on in the Cre8asite Forums about that. One most useful piece of advice from Ron Carnell is to have a sentence of not more than 155 characters and spaces in that meta tag. Since this is the length of a typical Google snippet, then it is highly likely that your engaging sentence will be used as the snippet.

That was true until about four days ago. Suddenly there has been a switch in the automatic snippet creation process, at least for blog posts. It is not yet universal for all blog posts but seems to occur for ones that frequently come up in keyword searches. Here is an example:

Google blog snippet

The snippet for such blog posts now starts with the date of the post displayed in the language of the searcher. In English this uses up about 17 characters of the snippet including the ellipsis (…). Since the total length is still 155 characters and spaces, this leaves only 138 characters and spaces for you to write that engaging sentence.

It’s still early days so whether this change will be applied to all blog posts or will remain a permanent feature for Google is still in question. Yahoo! and MSN/Live still seem to be working with the longer 155 characters snippets. Anyone with a WordPress blog who uses the All-in-one-SEOpack plugin is faced with a dilemma. It suggests that descriptions should not be longer than 160 characters, but that number should now perhaps be reduced.

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