All posts in keyword research

We’ve had a great couple of days at SMX London – here’s what we learnt from the Paid Search track from day 1 and the SMX Advanced track from day 2!

Day 1 – Paid Search Track

Amazing Paid Search Tactics & Tools

Ann Stanley, Co-Founder and MD of Anicca Digital (@annstanley)

Ecommerce advertising has changed quite a bit recently: Google Shopping transitioned from free to paid last month in the UK, and Google have just announced that they’re getting rid of product extensions. That means having product listing ads is more important for ecommerce.

Having a PLA ad group set for ‘all products’ with a really low bid has got them good results – it can be a good way to turn up in searches no one else is appearing on.

There doesn’t seem to be a true quality score for PLAs, but CTR is a factor to whether they get seen or not. Improve CTR with negative keywords. Also check your feed – you may be using low quality information.

I was in the process of performing an overall account-level audit on a client AdWords account; keyword research – or keyword auditing – was an integral part of this process. I am aware that there are a number of posts covering this very topic in a number of different perspectives. But I thought I’d share with you my method when performing keyword research on a fairly mature account. Also, please note that my client operates within a niche B2B market and to a certain extent, within an oligopoly. If the business operates within a fairly specialised sector like my client, then it would be a good idea to get your client involved in the keyword research process as well. This is so that you could tap into their expertise about what they sell, and what keywords matter to them. This is a two way process, so at times, the client may propose keywords that may require your critical analysis and recommendations. For example, what does “asset management” mean? Are you referring to the process of protecting your assets? Or are you referring to “asset management” within the financial industry? If your client’s core competence is in asset protection and security, is it still worth competing for this keyword even though competition will be extremely fierce? Discuss this with your client and decide on next course of action.

Often, people running websites have a unique interpretation of who their online competitors are.  Depending where you do your SEO, you will have seen this manifested in a variety of ways:

  • In house – Director asking “Why don’t we rank number one for BMW instead of BMW.com?  We sell models of BMW cars”
  • Agency – Chances are you’ve held back giggles as a new business prospect suggests they are competing with a major site like Amazon/YouTube/eBay.  I find brick and mortar clients struggle the most to detach themselves from the material world to look exclusively at online competitors.
  • Independent – Joe Snow sells his own e-book “How to Build a Shed” and considers B&Q a competitor.

Here are three free tools to help get a better sense of accurate competitors in the digital space.  Assessing online competitors requires a detailed look at a number of SEO factors like backlinks and targeted keywords, so consider these tools as a great way to get the gist of competitor websites instead of a thorough analysis.  By working out competitors, instead of biting far more off than can be chewed, a more realistic SEO campaign can be managed from the outset.

If you have worked in SEO for any period of time, I’m sure you will be familiar with a number of the better known tools around, tools such as SEOmoz Pro Tools, Majestic SEO and the Google Keyword Tool. For a lot of SEOs and situations these tools can provide all the help you need, but there are a number of awesome low profile tools that can take SEO campaigns and agencies to the next level.

Tool: Linkdex
Use it for: Competitor analysis, back link analysis, on-page keyword analysis, rank checking…
Price: from $49

Linkdex is probably one of our favourite new tools in the SEOptimise office as it offers visual analysis of back link profiles as well as anchor text reports, rank checking and on-page keyword analysis (among a host of other things).

By far its most useful feature is the ability to analyse the type of links in your profile as well of those in your competitors’ profiles (powered by a quality filtered version of the Majestic SEO index), and it even has the capability to add a time dimension to the analysis. Basically, if you want to know why you’re being outranked and what type of links to build to beat the competition, it’s all laid out in bar chart form. That’s a pretty epic tool to start with, right? Well in addition to this, if you click on any of the bars to see a list of the links (which you can sort by “influence”), you can then explore them and add them to your “to build” list. And finally, you can hit a tick box and see what links have been built recently, effectively giving you a sneaky peek at your competitors’ SEO efforts.

linkdex screenshot

It’s still pretty new and there is some stuff that needs work, but it’s still a great tool that gives you loads of actionable stuff and they are constantly updating it.

If you want a more detailed write up check out this Linkdex review from Sam Stratton at Koozai.

Google have just rolled out a new tool called Google Correlate. It’s similar to Google Trends and Google Insights, but it takes the raw data and analyses it. As the name suggests, it’s looking for correlations – that is, whether the demand for a given keyword matches the popularity of any other keywords.

Sometimes the results are completely random, to the point of being ridiculous and far from useful for SEO. However, after a bit of testing, I’ve found out how you can use Google Correlate for keyword research.

Note that the tool is still a Google Labs project and US only, thus not really ready for prime time. On the other hand, it can already give you valuable information for your next US campaign.

Very quick post – but here’s my presentation from SMX Advanced London 2011 earlier today:
Long Tail Keyword Research – SMX Advanced London 2011

If you have any questions just let me know in the comments.

In  recent weeks we have witnessed two overwhelming waves of news I’d like to call ‘news tsunamis‘. Like real tsunamis you have no choice, you can’t escape the news when you are in the nearby area. For this kind of news the whole planet is nearby.

Maybe some tribes in the Amazon jungle or a few monks in the Himalayas haven’t noticed the death of Osama Bin Laden and the royal wedding, but apart from those lucky few, we have all been drowned in these news waves.

While I was unable to escape the news, no matter how much I tried, I at least tried to reroute the hype induced into something useful: SEO.

My first urge was to catch up quickly and take advantage of the huge waves of traffic.

Instead, I decided to watch the waves of news and to follow the steps of others who have tried to use the energy of these waves to power their websites. Why? It doesn’t make much sense to get huge news traffic without planning what to do with it.

I have been working as a full time SEO Exec for just about a year now and a few things have become apparent in that time, most notably that SEOs love tools and are always on the lookout for that elusive competitive advantage to give them a ranking edge. So it strikes me as odd that every agency already has access to a free tool that will (amongst other things) get them high quality links, improve their keyword research, increase their PPC CTRs and conversion rates and keep their clients happy and informed. But they very rarely use it to its full potential.

*

Do you measure keyword temperature to improve your SEO? You don’t? Well what about keyword density? Also there are other exotic metrics​ to fool you into believing you do something for your site’s SEO. Sounds weird? Then read on. The story starts like this:

In recent days I’ve been haunted by the ghastly specters of the past.

In several cases I’ve had to do with metrics long gone or which weren’t ever meaningful in the first place. There seems to be a need for simplistic metrics that can make complex issues appear straightforward and clear.

Happy waiter by howard N2GOT

Today someone was searching for a “client’s guide to SEO” over at my SEO 2.0 blog. I think this topic is more fitting here on SEOptimise so I will explain the best approach to SEO companies and Internet marketing agencies for potential clients.

In 2010 most people in business already know at least something about how Google works.

Business people know about keywords and often pay for Google Ads already. That’s why it’s easier nowadays to deal with clients. You don’t have to explain anymore that SEO is needed or how it works. They already know and thus they contact you.

There also some drawbacks as many SEO clients already have had a bad experience with SEO practicioners, are convinced they know themselves what’s best for them and last but not least have too high expectations for a too low price.

A client can gain a competitive advantage by approaching SEO agencies in the right way.

Basically finding a fitting SEO agency is like finding a good restaurant and eating out. Thus I will use this allegory to make my explanation easier to grasp. You need to know a few more things to approach an SEO agency correctly.

← Older Entries