Keyword Research Archives

A HighRankings Forum thread has discussion around an old patent from IBM named Prediction of query difficulty for a generic search engine. In short, the patent describes ways to determine how difficult a specific keyword is. Now, the patent was filed back on October 19, 2004 and issued on July 29, 2008 - so it is old.

What tools can SEMs and SEOs use today to figure out the competitive landscape of a keyword phrase?

1. One of may favorites is to look at the search results page. If there are many organic results with matching title tags then you got a competitive landscape.
2. If there are many paid search results on the page, then it is competitive.
3. If your competitors have tons of links, then it is competitive.
4. If your keyword phrase is at the top of Google Suggest, as you type, then it is competitive.

But is it often nice to catch the wave of a spiking competitive term. Seasonal terms, news oriented terms, and so on. You can catch many of these at Google Hot Trends.

Do you have more ways of predicting the competitive nature of a search word?

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forums.

This article was pre-written and scheduled to go live today.

Google has added a new feature to the external keyword tool, they have added approximate search volume numbers. For example, I conducted a search for SEO and the results returned showed columns for "Approx Search Volume: June" and "Approx Avg Search Volume." Here is a screen capture:

By definition, the "Previous Month's Search Volume" column "shows the previous month's search volume on Google for each keyword, specific to your targeted country and language. The shaded bar represents a general low-to-high quantitative guide to help you determine how competitive ad placement is for a particular keyword." The "Avg. Search Volume" column "shows the average monthly search volume on Google for each keyword over a recent 12-month period, specific to your targeted country and language. The shaded bar represents a general low-to-high quantitative guide to help you determine how competitive ad placement is for a particular keyword."

There is a Google help page on these numbers that adds:

• Search volume fluctuation: Web traffic is influenced by seasonality, current events, and a number of other factors. The level of search volume on your keywords, therefore, is constantly fluctuating.
• Location and language targeting: If you access the Keyword Tool from within an ad group, the search traffic statistics will factor in your campaign's country and language targeting (if you target a region or city, only the country will be reflected). If you use the standalone or external Keyword Tools, your country and language selections will influence these statistics. Learn about the different variations of the Keyword Tool.
• Match type: The Keyword Tool's statistics vary depending on your selection from the Match Type drop-down menu. If you select Broad or Phrase, the tool will factor in certain variations of your keywords that could potentially trigger your ads. Learn about keyword match types.

These figures come to no one's surprise because Google did release Google Trends with numbers and Google Ad Planner, which hides nothing.

I guess this is pretty good timing, being that Yahoo just killed the Overture keyword suggestion tool.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Update: Jeremy actually posted about this several hours ago.

Update 2: This is now official, the Inside AdWords blog has posted the official announcement.

It seems like the day has come, the day that Yahoo has killed the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool. Now, if you visit inventory.overture.com, you are redirected to http://sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/searchenginemarketing/. In fact, it is a permanent redirect, not just a temporary redirect, as you can see by using the URI Valet tool.

We knew this was coming, we have story after story reporting outages and downtime for this tool. Here is a run down of some of the stories we wrote covering the tool:

• Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool Offline? on January 29, 2007
• Overture Keyword Selection Tool Back Online on February 2, 2007
• New Free Yahoo! Keyword Tool Coming; Overture Keyword Tool Suffering; & Other Tools on January 31, 2007
• Yahoo! Removes UK Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool on May 2, 2007
• Yahoo To Stop Updating Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool on May 8, 2007
• Is Yahoo Working on New Keyword Tool with Search Volume Data? on May 10, 2007
• Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool Seems Dead on September 17, 2007
• Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool has Returned on September 24, 2007
• More Server Problems With Overture's Keyword Tool on December 6, 2007

So does this end the saga with the Overture Keyword Suggestion tool or as it moved elsewhere?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There is an outstanding subscriber (paid access required) WebmasterWorld thread that discusses the topic of short term versus long term phrases. These are the types of threads that make me feel, hey - that $150 subscription pays for itself. Without giving up all the details, let me explain the premise of the thread.

We all know that searchers are getting smarter at searching. Searchers are now much less likely to search for [cars] when looking to lease or buy a new car. Searchers are now much more likely to search for a more specific search, such as [lexus es 350]. The same applies to electronics, instead of [digital cameras], searchers are now being more specific with [canon powershot camera] and so on. Searchers are searching less often on the short phrases, such as one or two work keywords and more often on longer phrases (long tail), such as three, four or five word keywords. The WebmasterWorld thread gives examples of this happening via Google Trends, log files and experience.

If you agree that searchers are searching less often on short tail keywords, then you might agree that SEO, today, is less about those short tail keywords and more about the longer tail keywords.

The thread discusses how many SEOs are noticing less traffic on those short term keyword phrases, then they have in the past. The debate then gets into the niche or industry of your keywords. For some industries where the searcher is less experienced, the short tail keywords still are very high. But for other industries, those short term keywords are experiencing less and less searches. Yes, this has an impact for SEOs and how they optimize sites.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld (paid access required).

WebmasterWorld member Receptional Andy suggests the unconventional way to perform keyword research: offline with two books.

The first book is the useful dictionary. If you do a search for "widget," for example, you may get an origin phrase, and in this case, it's "gadget."

The second book is the related reading guide: the thesaurus. You can get plenty of comparable words by using the thesaurus.

Then, you just need to write down everything on paper. No need for a computer at all.

Now I'm not sure how many people will do this, but the idea is an interesting one. :)

In fact, as one more modern member suggests, the idea of keyword research is to get information of what people are actually searching for. That said, the oldschool traditional killed-trees version just doesn't cut it.

Still, as Andy responds, some keyword research tools aren't helpful, and using a dictionary and thesaurus may add some words that you may otherwise not have thought of.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Want to do some keyword research? Check out this cool tool that Cre8asite Forums member eKstreme found: Search Radar and take a look at it in action:

The tool looks like it pulls a variety of resources, so there may not be good results, for, say, search engine optimization. As iamlost points out, of the 4 main results there, only two (Bruce Clay and SEOBook) actually knew how to define SEO. But you can't count that as a real fault for Search Radar; it's what they're querying from the internet and the error of other firms that define SEO as "cultivating professional relationships especially with small to medium businesses." (Say what?!)

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums

When you do your keyword research, my bet is that you may have tens or hundreds of keywords to choose from. How do you keep track of it and monitor your rankings? A High Rankings Forum thread asks this question.

One member still uses the old-fashioned pen and paper tool. I've seen most people use an Excel spreadsheet, and one member at the forum suggests that.

Do you know of any current programs that monitor your rankings for keywords? I know there are some that used to take the Google Search API key, but unfortunately it's been over a year since that has been discontinued by Google. (Can you bring it back, please, Google?) :)

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forums.

Google seems to have updated the look of the AdWords Keyword Tool.

Here is a before shot:

And here are after shots:

Notice the new tab for "Website Content":

I believe the UK keyword tool has this design for a bit longer - not sure exactly how much longer.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

I have been spotting threads over the course of the week that Yahoo's Overture Keyword Selection Tool is not loading for people. I tested it myself, and yes, it is not loading for me either.

This is nothing new with the tool. Yahoo has not been eager to support this tool since they have other tools in place within their Yahoo Search Marketing console that does similar tasks. In addition, the tool is a huge scraper graveyard, which requires huge server resources - something Yahoo probably doesn't want to invest in with this tool.

Here is a historical look at some of the problems we covered with this tool over the past year:

• Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool Offline? on January 29, 2007
• Overture Keyword Selection Tool Back Online on February 2, 2007
• New Free Yahoo! Keyword Tool Coming; Overture Keyword Tool Suffering; & Other Tools on January 31, 2007
• Yahoo! Removes UK Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool on May 2, 2007
• Yahoo To Stop Updating Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool on May 8, 2007
• Is Yahoo Working on New Keyword Tool with Search Volume Data? on May 10, 2007
• Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool Seems Dead on September 17, 2007
• Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool has Returned on September 24, 2007

So now it is back offline, for the time being. Do we have alternatives? Of course!

A Cre8asite Forums thread lists a bunch of alternative solutions, including:

• http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
• http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
• http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
• https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox
• http://adlab.msn.com/ForecastV2
• http://adlab.msn.com/contextSim/Default.aspx
• http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/
• http://www.seosleuth.com/site/www.seochat.com
• http://www.seodigger.com
• http://www.spyfu.com/
• http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

It appears that the Google Keyword Suggestion Tool has gone offline from yesterday evening to this morning.

Several reports from DigitalPoint Forums have confirmed the issue with the keyword tool.

If you have not used the tool, you should give it a try. It has come a long way since Google first released the tool.

The short 8 hours of the tool being offline really seemed to worry many advertisers and Webmasters.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Fear not, my friends. It appears that our report last Monday about Yahoo! Overture being dead was a bit premature. According to WebmasterWorld members, the Yahoo! Overture Keyword Tool is back. The optimistic hopefuls have revived the useful tool from the dead.

Here's a search I performed just a few minutes ago.

Contrast that with the screenshot I created last week:

It definitely looks like it's working, and it's using data from January 2007. Other forum members report that it's showing May data. I suppose it may vary per search term but I'm unable to get May data.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums member reports that the Yahoo! Overture Keyword Tool is no longer providing results.

I reproduced this as illustrated below.

It looks like the Overture tool is finally gone unless this is a bug. YahooSarah said in January that Overture would be offline until an updated product was released. Does this mean the product is ready? After all, in May, Yahoo stopped updating the Overture tool. It has been four months so hopefully a new tool will be announced shortly.

Since so many tools use the Overture API, I certainly hope that this is the case. DigitalPoint Forums members agree.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

A High Rankings Forums member asks if the order of keywords matters in site copy. Of course, the answer to this is yes. After all, if you create content that doesn't read well for your visitors, they won't stay on the site long enough to purchase, or let alone understand, what you're trying to sell.

At the end of the day, when it comes down to copy, if you're unsure, do some keyword research to validate what people are searching for.

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forums.

This post was written on September 10th and scheduled for publication on September 14th.

Say you were doing some keyword research on a term you felt was widely used and that pertained to a densely populated demographic. You may be surprised to find that all your search terms are coming up empty. A Cre8asite Forums member has run into this problem and is baffled by why it's occurring.

There are a few reasons this happens. One of the possibilities is that the search phrase isn't used. But the other reason is due to the nature of these keyword tools; these tools don't gather every single search query entered by Internet users. Instead, these tools are gathering information from ISPs from a certain time period and that the data the tools contain is only a subset of the entire searcher base.

A.N.Onym goes further to elaborate on the tools:

- WordTrack only has data of latest 90 days and only tracks metacrawlers (Dogpile and some other metacrawler)
- KeywordDiscovery hasn't disclosed its sources, though it shouldn't be everything
- Google External Tool does have Google data, but without exact figures (unless you use Google Traffic Estimator)

Therefore, your keyword research strategy should encompass more than one keyword research tool and you should vary your search terms.

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

The 5 to 6 percent figure is not scientific, it is based on several members sharing their log file statistics in a Cre8asite Forums thread.

Those that did the leg work to figure out how many people they see come to them via a "did you mean" from Google is on average between five and six-percent. Typically, people are noticing a lower percentage, between one and two-percent, using spell checking features on Yahoo.

Here are some quotes from the thread:

I noticed that an average of 5 to 6% of all visitors from Google used the spell-correction to make it to my site.

Google: 6.7% misspelled, 0.4% I'm feeling lucky

Yahoo: 5.6% From related (rs=0), 1.0% Misspelled (SpellState)

The related does not mean spelled wrong but the misspelled does, in Yahoo's case.

Misspellings in Googe: 5.3%

Misspellings in Yahoo: 1.7%

Misspelled Google: 4.3%

Misspelled Yahoo: 0.8%

It is fairly interesting look at search referrers. Maybe one day, I'll dig deeper and take a look in our statistics for these metrics.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

When you have a website and are looking to market it, which keywords should you target for your SEO campaign? How can you tell which keywords convert? In a Search Engine Watch Forums thread, a member is advised to use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

Google AdWords is a very useful tool for SEO. You can use it to test which keywords convert best for your site. Once you determine the best converting keywords, then you can invest the time and money into your long term search engine optimization strategy. Why use AdWords? Simply because you can see results immediately, while SEO can take months before seeing any results.

Also, say you've chosen your keywords, but you notice that some of your search terms are more competitive than others. Searching for some terms yield 300 results, while others yield 30,000 results, all the way to 30 million results. Where do you draw the line for a viable marketing campaign?

In the same Search Engine Watch Forums thread, moderator Marcia says that the answer really depends on the term and if those terms are already being targeted:

...it isn't only the numbers, but what type of sites are being competed against and whether their numbers are deliberate. Numbers can look for high for some non-commercial, non-revenue search terms, for example, and yet nobody is actually trying for them.

You really do need to do competitive analysis and see who you are up against, because each term varies.

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch Forums

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has hearsay on Yahoo working on a new keyword tool that will show search volume data.

This has been sorely missed since Yahoo stopped updating the Overture Keyword Suggestion tool with search volume data.

I was talking to a rep at Yahoo! and voicing my concern about the removal of the Keyword Selector Tool removal and reinstatement. She told me that they are currently working on a new version of the tool that will retain the keyword search volume and introduce some more robust functionality as well.

But at the same time, a "platinum rep" told someone else that "thinking" about it, but have nothing started yet.

I personally have not heard more outside of what I posted here the other day. So I doubt they are currently working on a new keyword tool at this moment.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that Yahoo! has removed the UK version of the Overture Keyword Suggestion tool.

The tool used to load over at http://inventory.uk.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ but now it appears to just time out for me and those trying to access it.

It may be just a server issue or it may be a sign that Yahoo will also be replacing this UK version with a new one. Which they promised us after taking the Overture US tool offline.

We know they will begin expanding the Panama solution to the UK soon.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: A reader commented explaining that Yahoo changed the URL of the tool to http://inventory.uk.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ the other day.

Continue reading "Yahoo! Removes UK Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool"

A WebmasterWorld thread reports a member seeing a new tab within the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

The new tab is for "Negative Keywords" and reportedly "will come up with potential negative keywords for your campaign."

I hope to obtain a screen capture from the member who reported it and post it here, I will update this post if I get it.

The first feedback is:

What I really had hoped it would allow me to do is to use negative keywords right in the Keyword Variations tab, i.e., tell it I was targeting, say, [card games] and then add [-pokemon].

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Here is the screen capture from "Winooski", a longtime WebmasterWorld user, thank you:

Full size screen capture here.

A Search Engine Watch Forums member asks about the tremendous discrepancy between results on three Keyword Research tools: Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, and Overture. He is concerned that these tools provide no accurate information.

One of the members provides some excellent feedback. The reason for such discrepancies is related to the source of the information, the time the information was gathered, and the keywords are processed differently as well. He suggests that you should use all of the information and get averages to resolve any inconsistencies.

The main challenge is that all three, WT - OV - KD, are very different beasts and so there can be no direct correlation between them.

For example:-
1) all three draw their data from very different sources,
2) their data is drawn over different time periods, OV one month, WT three and KD twelve months, and so the count figures would need some rationalisation
3) all three have different data cleansing systems, eg., OV de-pluralises, de-punctuates and sometimes alphbetises the words in the search phrase, so again that muddies the correlation waters,

and so on.

So you have to figure out what parameters and algorithms you are going to apply when combining the data.

I would suggest the first step would be to generate monthly equivelants (WT/3 & KD/12) and then perhaps do some averaging. Even then, the eyeball is perhaps the best filter.

Kinda like comparing Oranges, Lemons and Grapefruit in that they are all from the Citrus family but are very different and individual fruits. Combine their juices though and you have a rather interesting Citrus tasting drink with some attributes of all three.

Another observation came from a keen member who acknowledged that the discrepancies may be intentional, but that there are other factors as well. All of the tools should be used together.

I'd add that WT draws from a very small sample of web searches, so that its data isn't very useful for infrequently-searched phrases. I've seen WT skewed dramatically in certain keyword areas, probably by search marketers in those areas who wanted to muddy the waters.

OV data, on the other hand, suffers from lots of automatic rank checking, which tends to happen in more competitive and frequently searched terms, so it's exponentially skewed at the top end. OV has recently forced stemming on certain searches, I've observed, which makes it useless for assessing many phrases.

The Google External AdWords tool, another tool you should put into the mix, is skewed by the algorithms that Google is applying for AdWords buyers. It has the largest sample size, is the least likely to be skewed by test searches, and of course has demographics that come from Google.

This is some very good information. You can read more at Search Engine Watch.

Adamap posted a screen capture of Google showing actual search volume numbers in the Google AdWords keyword tool. I honestly was not sure if this was a doctor'ed up screen shot, but I reported it anyway at Search Engine Land. I am glad I did, it appears that this is in fact being tested.

Here are some of the comments from the blog posts and forum discussions backing this finding.

I believe it's been in limited trial since January 23rd. Very cool.

I saw that the other day I could have had a scoop???

It only came up this morning and I have not seen it since.

So if this is true and if this is going to happen, this can be huge for keyword researchers.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A Cre8asite Forums thread asks what should one use as the format for their keyword lists. Let me compile the answers for you into this post.

• Number of searches (overture, word tracker, keyword discovery)
• Number of results for google search
• Number of results for yahoo search
• Number of results for allintitle search
• Number of results for intitle search
• Number of results for inanchor search
• Top 10 pages in the search result
• Pagerank of top 10 pages

Bill Slawski adds that you should make these reports as easy to understand for the client, structure your keyword reports around the web site structure, show an estimate on how competitive a keyword is, and compare related keywords. Li Evans adds that you should also utilize graphs from different keyword tools.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has links to several free and useful keyword suggestion tools that are still available to us. Remember last week, we discussed Yahoo!'s plans for a new keyword tool, Wordtracker opening a new free version of their tool and Overture keyword tool having issues. Here are some keyword research tools still available to you today, some from the thread and some I added.

• Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool
• Google Keyword Tool
• Wordtracker Free Keyword Tool
• Keyword Discovery Free Tool
• Google Trends
• DigitalPoint Keyword Suggestion Tool
• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

At least for now, the Overture Keyword Selection Tool is now back online, I think as of yesterday some time.

Monday we reported some sporadic reports of the tool going offline for a bit. Then on Wednesday we reported Yahoo!'s statement saying that the tool is basically dying and that Yahoo! is building a new one.

I suspect they fixed some of the issues now.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Monday we reported that Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool Offline? YahooSarah replied to that at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums explaining that the Overture tool is having issues but they are not taking it down.

I wanted to confirm that YSM's public keyword research tool (formerly known as the Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool- KST) continues to exist today and will continue to exist until we replace it with an improved product. Unfortunately, the responsiveness of this free tool is diminished due to the volume of hits it receives each day, therefore browsers may time out and error pages may appear but it doesn’t mean that this tool has been removed.

We do have plans to offer a new public keyword research tool, which would be hosted through Yahoo! and available to our API partners. We plan on making this new tool available later this year.

If you are an advertiser, I'd suggest using the keyword research tool within our platform (the old or new one).

In her message, it is clear that Yahoo! will be focusing their efforts on a new keyword tool, as opposed to getting the Overture tool working consistently.

The new Yahoo! tool will have an API, that will enable developers to integrate right into their campaigns, so I look forward to it. But it appears that Yahoo! will not continue to fully support the old, Overture tool.

Aaron Wall reports that Wordtracker is now offering a new free version of their keyword tool at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/. Defintely worth bookmarking, in my opinion.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

The first step in the process of most practitioners of search engine optimization is keyword research. This is often an iterative process in which the site owner and presumably industry expert works together with an SEO in order to determine which keywords and phrases to target for high rankings. Although to many this would seem like a very introductory level topic, the fact is that keyword research can make or break a campaign when it comes to determining actual success. Choosing the right keywords will lead to rankings that produce legitimate traffic, as opposed to rankings for terms that may have lots of "competition," but little "action."

A few threads going on at various forums currently are discussing keyword research. At High Rankings Forums, a member complains of - yes I know - high rankings in Google and Yahoo!, but no traffic. A couple of good recommendations follow.

At Search Engine Watch Forums, an interesting discussion about measuring keyword competition is happening, with the conversation seemingly helping to dispel some myths about degree of difficulty estimation. One of the classic discussions on keyword competitiveness can be found at the HighRankings Forum's Keyword Research category. A recent thread at Cre8asite Forums discusses the concept/alleged importance of keyword density.

Not sure if you are targeting the right keywords for your SEO initiative? Check out any of the above threads. If you know of more good ones, feel free to post them in the comments.

Cre8asite Forums has an excellent new thread named Keyword Research and Related Tools, What do you use? The thread contains many ideas for tools and common sense ideas. Here are some tools:

• http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/
• http://www.wordtracker.com/
• http://www.keywordsanalyzer.com/

Ammon Johns goes about it a different way. He takes out the old clipboard and pen and talks to people, actual people.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

So I have taken the liberty of confusing you with the title, which should be "Is Keyword Phrase Word Order Important?" When conducting keyword research for search engine optimization or a sponsored listings campaign, people often use a variety of phrases. When dealing with geographical terms, for example, how do you know if you should put the location before the keyword phrase or after it? Is this important?

A thread recently started at Search Engine Watch Forums has a member asking why Google returns different number of searches estimations based on the word order, while Yahoo/Overture seems not to. Does it matter, he asks? SEW Moderator Orion (Dr. E. Garcia) has offered his opinion, which is a "no." As usual, Orion provides a thorough technical explanation as to his opinion, and he states:

most keyword discovery toys and keyword research services out there fail to provide to customers.

He also goes on to recommend:

To identify the importance of word order I recommend an on-topic analysis for the document.

The original poster is wondering if he needs to place the words in different order in order to rank for searches conducted in those particular unique orders. Aaron Wall (Seobook) recommends that it isn't needed and:

you can mix anchor text to hit different variations and permutations.

I agree with this idea, since during the SEO process of link building, people are most likely going to try and mix their inlink anchor text to focus on the more relevant association. For example, at a site about Dallas, he might use "Dallas car rental" as the anchor text to his site, and a site about car rentals may use "Car rentals in Dallas" as the anchor text.

Join the conversation and offer your opinions./experience at Search Engine Watch Forums.

This week Google introduced Google Finance, which has been getting a lot of attention. They also added a feature named global trends to AdWords keyword tool. I have not seen anyone discuss the fact that Google Finance has added the ability to search and filter news volume over time, just like keyword data over time with global trends.

I was doing some playing with a client of mine, Jennifer Convertibles, Inc. (Public, AMEX:JEN) at Google Finance. I then clicked over to the more news items and found news items put into folders by month. So then I tried the same thing for a company that is more in the news, Yahoo and notice the graph on the top left of the page. It says, "News Volume (90 days)," plus links to articles by month. You can click on the graph columns to sort news by that time period.

This, I would imagine, can be used for search term research, much like the global trends tool can be used for financial research - if you get what I mean. Anyway, I thought this was a nice little feature of Google Finance and I wanted to bring it to light.

I added this detail to our thread on the topic at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Continuing catching up here on some good threads from the Highrankings Forum, a recent post by Risa asks “what columns are in other people's keyword analysis spreadsheets?”

This thread has the potential to be of great value to those trying to learn what really is important when researching keyword phrases. Risa very clearly states one of the many “gut feeling” decisions that must be made when researching the popularity of keywords and deciding which to go with.

I was excited to see that a keyword phrase I looked up had 42,470 searches in Keyword Discovery and the allintitle search had 99 results. In another search, KD showed that the phrase had 19,200 searches and allintitle had 0 results (could that be?

The thread moves forward with some discussion about allintitle vs. intitle, and a nice clarification about the relative value of the intitle command from Dan. I personally have started to use more and more competitive analysis when identifying keywords, but would probably err towards caution and include the example above with so many reported searches and zero allintitles.

See the thread at High Rankings Forum.

Dan’s original keyword research thread mentioned by Risa is here.

Google has now re-branded Urchin to Google Analytics presenting users with better ways to “understand and influence visitor behavior and generate a higher ROI on marketing initiatives”. Yes folks! It’s offering a free hosted web analytics service, in hopes that advertisers, publishers and website owners will spend time understanding how people find their websites, navigate through them and convert on the goals of the site. With the free service, Google hopes it helps people spend money on their search marketing campaigns rather than on measurement. This is going to have a huge impact on both the search marketing and the web analytics industries. Draw your own conclusions.

But how much is really free? Google Analytics will allow you to track up to 5 million pageviews per month, no questions asked, no fees charged. So you have a BIG MONSTER website, then all they request is that you have at least one active Adwords account with an active campaign and spend $1 if you want, that’s all it takes. No more pageview caps. I’m sure they hope you spend much more than that when you see all the tracking benefits.

What’s more in this move, Google Analytics now allows integration with AdWords to better monitor “ROI metrics automatically without having to import cost data or tag keywords”, as well as tracking all of your other internet marketing initiatives as well. When you subscribe to it, you will see it as a new tab under your AdWords account. It now has executive, marketer, and webmaster dashboards for view quick summaries of “traffic, e-commerce, and conversion trends without hunting through reports.” Here is what else it offers:

• Reporting interface accessible directly from the google.com/analytics website if you don’t have an Adwords account


• Advanced visitor segmentation with over 80 web analytics reports


• Ability to track up to 50 websites within your account


• Site overlay


• Funnel visualization


• GeoTargeting with a cool map that shows where your traffic comes from
  
• It’s available in 16 languages: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and English.


• And much more…

For those worried on privacy concerns, this is what they say, “Google takes the trust people place in us very seriously, and we are committed to safeguarding the privacy of your data. We understand that web analytics data is sensitive, so we accord it the ironclad protection it deserves. Google Analytics is subject to the same industry leading privacy policy as all Google services: http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html”

On a personal note, I’m also very excited with the steps Google is making because my consulting firm, iHispanic Marketing Group, is proud to announce that Google Analytics has chosen us as one among other Client Service and Support Consultants to service the global Hispanic market. With this strategic alliance we are committed to delivering professional services for training, advanced support, and expert web analytics consulting to executives, marketing managers and webmasters in both Spanish and English. Our loyalty we’ve had to Urchin and to our clients have demonstrated great rewards. Google Analytics will be a fun ride moving forward to continue building leadership with the Hispanic market for search engine marketing and internet strategy.

For discussion on this topic, you’re welcome to share your thoughts in the SearchEngineWatch Forum’s thread: Urchin Now Google Analytics, Now Free.

A Cre8asite Forums thread named #8 with appostraphe, not listed without discusses one members dilemma with using an apostrophe. He says, "I'm number 8 when I use "men's [plus my phrase]" on yahoo.com search" but when someone searches without the apostrophe, he is no where to be found.

What does he do?

(1) Keyword research; see which phrase is searches on more. I am not 100% sure if there are tools that differentiate between an apostrophe or not. If not...
(2) Look at your statistics. Do a PPC campaign and try out both (um do PPC campaigns differentiate between an apostrophe or not, even with exact match?).
(3) If not, do it the slow way and try to change it and target it without the apostrophe. Then wait and pump links to the page.

Overall you need to test to see if conversions and sales increase. If they do, then you know which way to go.

Discuss over at Cre8asite Forums.

Many big brands and small brands do it, even if they rank in the first organic spot for their name. I did a search on Crate and Barrel (which my finance is obsessed with) and you see the PPC ad, I am not sure if it is an affiliate ad or an ad by Crate & Barrel themselves, but I believe it is an ad paid for by Crate & Barrel. Heck, I even bid on my own brand name on both Google AdWords and on Yahoo! Search Marketing. Why do I do this?

(1) Other companies were bidding on my name, and I wanted to be the first, not only on organic side but also on the PPC side.
(2) It builds up brand recognition, even for a small brand.
(3) Its targeted traffic and conversion is likely.
(4) It cost next to nothing for my brand.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A HighRanking Forum thread named 8/10 - Need Advice, keyword research - getting 10/10 shows how quickly SEOs like, keyword research expert Dan Thies, agrees with well known SEO woman, Jill Whalen that when optimizing pages, one should not worry about keyword density figures.

I'll quote Dan's reply here:

As Jill says, keyword density means nothing. You're going to spend a bunch of time chasing your tail with tools like that.

If you want to play around and test/tweak stuff, test your TITLE tags and the first heading (H1) on the page. You can make changes, and see how your rankings change. A few rounds of testing on each should give you 90% of what you're going to get by fiddling with the HTML code on a given web page.

For the rest of the copy, just work on using keywords naturally, and make it work as copy. Do that well, and you're at about 95% if not higher. Now forget about the other 5% and use your internal links to help searchers find the right page for the right search terms.

Ron Carnell offers good advice as well; "The key to any scientific testing is repeatability."

Last night I received a demo of a new product that Hitwise released this morning. The product is now available at http://www.keywordintelligence.com/.

Normally, I would not blog product promotions but this keyword research tool is (1) incredibly powerful and (2) very affordable. The press release is available and pdf with the features.

The three major components of the product at:
(1) Search Term Suggestions - provides the most popular search term variations for any word
(2) Industry Search Terms - provides the most popular search terms for over 160 industries
(3) Search Term Portfolios - an easy to use tool to manage keyword lists

Basically, this is a lower end version of Hitwise's master products. It is an affordable, but rich data set of information which you can use for your clients. The data is superior to other keyword research tools because they can tell you two more important things than other products (might be more then two):

(1) The "Success Rate" which is basically the click through rate from the SERPs to the page. You can use this data to not only see which search terms are most popular, but which drive a larger number of clicks.

(2) "Industry Search Tool" provides a method for you to search for the most popular search terms within an industry. An excellent started for brainstorming.

The Portfolio is a great way to organize all this data and build personalized reports with "Volume" and "Success Rate" marks. Not only this, but you can compare different markets (US, UK, Australia, and so on). Very powerful and worth taking a look at.

The resident PhD, Orion, over at the Search Engine Watch Forums, provides an insight into search engine optimization that many SEOs do not think about. In his latest thread named What is Keyword Competitiveness?, Orion says that two popular keyword analysis techniques used by SEOs are "based on speculations" and is an "exercise in futility."

The two methods he dislikes include:
(1) Combining Google and Overture keyword volumes and
(2) Building a composite metric from keyword tools that have data from "dissimilar meta engines". Well most of the tools we have use "dissimilar meta engines".

I'll quote his explanation and then you can battle it out at the thread.

Combining two different or more metrics, some representing document counts and others representing query volume from dissimilar databases (Google with Overture or several meta engines), seem to be an exercise in futility: e.g., two dissimilar analytics from two different stores are combined and taken for a fair metric. Surprisingly, many SEOs/SEMs use and defend this approach, even when the arguments are based on formulas made out of thin air. Purely and simply: based on speculations.

PrioritySubmit announced last night the launch of a new forum for its customer base. The reasons behind the new forum include:

• better respond and address feedback and suggestions left in the forum.
  
• quickly and easily reply to any support questions that you may have in regards any of our services.
  

There are 3 main forum sections covering:
- Prioritysubmit.com
- Keyworddiscovery.com
- Overture Site Match

The forum can be found at http://www.prioritysubmit.com/forum/.

When conducting your keyword research, some of the criteria one looks at is WordTracker data (or overture keyword suggestion tool) to determine the number of people searching on a specific keyword term. Often when looking at a very specific keyword, such as Big Blue Pineapple Chair, you will find that both WordTracker and Overture report that no one searches on that. But that does not mean you should not target that keyword phrase. If I sell Big Blue Pineapple Chairs and there is a person looking to buy a Big Blue Pineapple Chair, then that having a page on Big Blue Pineapple Chairs is a great way to easily find a new customer.

One thing the Keyword Research experts have taught me (Dan Thies & Andy Beal to name a few), is that you should not be afraid to think outside the box. Be specific, be creative, and think like your potential buyer would.

Forum discussion at SEO Chat.

There's an interesting thread brewing at SEW on the competitiveness of search terms. Member randfish has posted some information on a tool he's developing to provide competition metrics, and of course I can't resist a good conversation on keyword metrics!

References:

SEW thread - Competitiveness of a Search Term
Randfish's keyword difficulty tool.
My take on keyword and search term competition metrics.

Continue reading "Determining the Competitiveness Value of a Keyword Phrase"

Last summer, during the San Jose SES conference, Trellian announced a keyword research tool at Priority Submit, it now goes under the name of Keyword Discover.com. Many keyword research specialists, including Dan Thies.

Recently, Trellian announced a Keyword Discovery API. I am sure you crazy coders and search enthusiasts will love this flexibility. Personally, I am thinking up ideas on how I can use this to provide fun and useful tools for the community. Forum discussion on this topic at High Rankings.

I get to do a little bragging about my outstanding SEO abilities, right? I know when I show this to you, you will jump out of your seats and proclaim me as your SEO god. You ready?

Back in early September, I created a page at this blog to target the keyword phrase big blue pineapple chair. Yea, I know what your thinking, the AdSense bucks alone on a keyword phrase like that must generate enough income to help me retire in two months. As you might have expected, Google ranks that page as #1 in the SERPs. Yea, so I proved I am an SEO legend. :)

The purpose for this entry is not to mock fun at myself, but really to point fingers at Yahoo! Search. Do a search on the same keyword phrase as you did at Google, but this time at Yahoo! Search. Yes, you see the result brought back is an entry at this blog named Google is Proactive on Picasa, which happens to have a link to the big blue pineapple chair entry. It just doesn't make sense to me why Yahoo! would return that page over the other. Especially since, the big blue pineapple chair page is linked to with the keywords in the Google is Proactive on Picasa page and the big blue pineapple chair page is pretty much well optimized for that keyword phrase. I submitted this directly to Yahoo! and they will look into it.

Not to leave Yahoo! out in the dark, searches at Ask Jeeves and MSN Beta. Maybe I am not such a great SEO. :)

Disclaimer: My earlier comments about my SEO talents were in humor and should not be perceived as anything more then a joke.

We reported last September on a fasinating experiment underway named the "Online Discovery of Secondary Terms Associated to a Theme Experiment". The study was being conducted by Orion, a member at SEW forums, who released the details of the experiment today on the SEW forums. There is a nice discussion going on relating to details from the study and questions resulting from it. About the experiment:

His study is a most recent study on competitive queries submitted by professional SEOs. It introduces a methodology and procedure called on-topic analysis, which allows users to discover top, broader, narrower, and optimum terms.

The experiment introduces methodology that Orion explains "is a valuable tool for enabling users to enhance the semantics of theme sites and concept-focused documents". In a nutshell this means the information is very useful for people and professionals wanting to discriminate between on and off topic terms by identifying top, broader, narrower and optimum terms. Which can be very useful in search engine marketing campaigns, and for developing theme sites and documents on the web. Excellent read.

For a link directly to the article, please continue reading the study by E. Garcia, On-Topic Analysis - Online Discovery of On-Topic Terms

So if I bid on your name, will you bid on mine? What if I promote myself by biding on the name of a popular expert, is that ok? How about targeting Donald Trump to sell spray on hair? Cartoon characters to sell vitamins? ;-) Some of the questions addressed in this thread, relating to creative ways to spread your own name and befriend or (anger) an expert. Fun thread this early afternoon to read. I am glad someone brought up the subject up, becauses its relevant to the industry, and its a polarized issue for some people. Ultimately I am to the opinion that if someone is not spreading ill repute for my name - Ben Pfeiffer, then its not going to be an issue, I would applaud them for being smart. However, in a sign of respect I think it comes down its just best to ask them before you go bidding on their name.
Check our the ongoing discussion at SEW - Targeting Personal Names in Adwords

Could be a tough question depending on how you look at it. For the most part if you are doing keyword and phrase research in languages different than English, you might find it a tad bit difficult to get some good data about specific terms. How they are used, who searches for them, what is there popularity, are all information you might want to know. So when the Overture Suggestion Tool doesn't live up to its name, what do you do? Get creative and search deeper! This question was asked at Highrankings today, and thought it would be helpful if I pointed out some resources and possibly ways for people conducting these searches to find the best keywords.

Here are some of the following tools that will enable you to search for country specific or foreign language terms (organized by country or language):

1. Talk to someone using the specific language you are looking for. Ask them about how the words or phrases are used in everyday conversation. Get them to compare two phrases, and ask them which is more relevant in the local market. Get the lowdown on recent trends in that specific language or country.

2. Research terms in Google. Find other websites using specific phrases and how often. Look for offical sources of information, such as university websites or newspapers.

3. Research your Competitors. See if your competitors are as fluent as you think they are.

4. Use a tool to conduct popularity research:

Digitalpoint Keyword Suggestion Tool.
-United States, Austria, Australia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Overture Suggestion Tool
-Spain
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/?mkt=es
-Japan
http://inventory.jp.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
-Korea
http://inventory.kr.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
-Australia
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/?mkt=au/
-Norway
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/?mkt=no/
-France
http://inventory.fr.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
-Germany
http://inventory.de.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Google Sandbox - AdWords Suggestions - one of the most complete
Everything from English to Urkrainian
https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox

Scandinavian Keywords
http://www.keywordmaker.com/free.asp
Germany Der MetaGer-Web-Assoziator
http://metager.de/asso.html

Spain: Espotting
http://es.espotting.com/popups/keywordgenbox.asp

Italy Keyword Suggestion
http://www.godado.it/k_lookup.vep

Good Directory of Suggestions Tools
http://www.dwoz.com/default.asp?Pr=123

5. Repeat Steps 1-4 again. Compile list of research and start to select the best phrases for your pages.

In light of other news today, thought this would be quite helpful for those that are doing keyword research for their sites or clients. A thread over at Highrankings, offers some insight into how to select keywords, where to conduct keyword research, how to format the data that you collect to deduct the best and highest ranking keywords. As well as ideas about brainstorming keywords and phrases, where to start, and what to do once your done. Many of the members share their specific techniques for this process. Excellent thread, continuing reading and discussing about the best methods for finding keywords over at Highrankings.

The most competitive keyword on the planet, the big blue pineapple chair. Of course I am being sarcastic. Besides, the closest place I saw that sells big blue pineapple chairs is this one, but its not really blue. I guess I can paint them, and resell them at this page. :)

What is my point?

Again, I had a client who was contacted by an 'SEO Firm'. They drew up this huge guarantee, top rankings or your money back. My client was wise enough to send me the email exchanges, between the seo firm and himself. From what started as nicely targeted keyword phrases turned into very obscure, none relevant keyword phrases. Just like me ranking for the big blue pineapple chair. Which I am sure this page will rank number one at Google in a weeks time (I guarantee it). )

This afternoon at the Advanced Search Term Research Issues SES session, Trellian was asked to step up to the podium and speak about its new keyword research tool they named Priority Submit. It looked impressive. It is the only tool of its kind for this price, free. Dan Thies had great things to say about this in the forums and to me at the conference (he by the way is coming out with a neat tool as well - more on that in a week or so). Andy Beal said the tool is great as well but he said it looks like there are some minor flaws in it (but still a great tool for what it does). So here are some screen shots and my thoughts on the tool.

I did a search on the keyword "web development" and it shows number of searches and suggested alternatives to that keyword. The cool thing is that they have been collecting 12 months of search data. So you can see the number of search over the past 12 months. Great for seasonal search words, like they demoed on "valentines". But I did a search on "web development" not a seasonal term, I think (Dan or Andy can you verify?). Why in May would there only be only be 5,000 searches but in February there would be almost 20,000 more searches on "web development". Seem to me to be a bit wild. A similar historical chart came up for "web design". Well actually, I just tried the keyword "tuxedos" and there was a similar pattern. I guess May data was lost? :)

Anyway, it has other features and seems to be a neat tool.

View Large Image

Try it out, it is free at http://www.prioritysubmit.com/.

Okay, the Earth may only be shaking quietly right now, but just wait. This is the biggest news in SEO all year. If anyone wants to argue with that, tough.

Trellian has just released the beta version of their keyword research database / tool. Their database includes over 9 billion search terms, and a full year's worth of history.

Yes, a full year's worth of history, so you can see how many people searched for "chocolate bunny rabbit" in March, or "college football picks" in September. Seasonality is finally, at long last, no longer the biggest problem in keyword research.

Everyone wave your hands in the air and say, "Thanks, Trellian!" Currently, access to the tool is free, but you do have to register (free) for a PrioritySubmit account. I'm so happy I might even pay to have a URL included somewhere!

We launched the new SEO Research Labs site today, with an appearance on Brad Fallon's SEO Radio. SEO Radio is new, but they've already covered some great topics. The format works pretty well, with almost a full hour, and segments long enough to have a good conversation.

The main reason for the relaunch and hype is the addition of a few new keyword metrics to our keyword reports, including:
- KEI calculations based on "intitle" and "intitle+inanchor" results, in addition to the "old school" Wordtracker formula. In this sample report (MS Excel, zip archive), you can see how a more accurate KEI score properly identifies "SEO company" as a better search term than "SEO" by itself, which the Wordtracker formula sees the other way around.
- Link popularity / competition data for top ranked sites, courtesy of Alexa data services. This is a really unique measure, based on the number of unique sites linking in, rather than the number of pages, which provides a much better indication of how much work it will take to outlink the competition.
- We also have the usual metrics, enhanced a bit: color-coded Overture bid data, search term popularity from Wordtracker, and estimated click-through traffic for ranked sites based on our logfile data mining program.

The scariest part of launching this site, besides building the keyword metrics application: putting my trust in a conversion rate specialist instead of building my usual direct-response site. I'm throwing a bunch of Adwords/Adsense traffic at this thing to see if it really converts any better.

If anyone has seen a good resolution to Yahoo's 301 problem, post!

No one ever talks about misspellings on forums or in articles anymore but they are still a very viable source of traffic. And synonyms are a whole new realm of traffic potential that many of us are aware of but I'll be honest I slack a bit when doing my research for anything below 2000 searches on the overture search tool.

When ADOBE the software giant called me and said "Hey SEO Guy we need your help finding all the misspellings and synonyms for our products" obviously my first response was "ADOBE! No problem" but after I hung up the phone I realized that other then wordtracker and inventory overture there werent any decent resources I knew of to start hunting! So naturally I head out to forums in an attempt to learn what I should have in my pocket over the weekend posting thread such as http://forums.seochat.com/t10149/s.html at SEO Chat but it really hit home that I wasnt offering a complete service if my keyword research doesn't exhaustively involve the likely hundreds of keyword phrases that bring only 50-200 hits per month. I know most clients only have the budget for their top 10 to start but even to put together a package for them to follow to be able to take advantage of them on their own will only put more dollars in our clients pockets and mean then have more dollars to spend on us at the end of the day.

An interesting thread over at WebmasterWorld named How Many Matches Indicate High Competition?, discusses how someone defines the competitiveness of a keyword phrase.

John_Caius provides three classifications to determine the level of competition for a keyword phrase.

My general rule-of-thumb definition of low competition would be where the top ten returning results haven't been SEOed. Medium competition would be where the top ten returning results have been SEOed. High competition would be where the top hundred results have been SEOed. Really high competition would be where a major site, like Amazon, Yahoo or WW is targeting that keyphrase. That's a better guide than number of results, because it tells you about how hard everyone else is also trying to be number one.

Finding the keyword phrase that is not SEOed but is a big bread-winner is where it is at, but I will leave that to Dan Thies to talk about. I had a law client that was paying a fortune for a few targeted keywords with AdWords. They were very competitive PPC campaigns but to my surprise, no one was optimizing for those keywords organically. So we quickly changed some title tags around and presto, free traffic. Soon enough the competition caught on, but it was fun to see. Many SEMs/SEOs have stories like this to tell.

After explaining for the umpteenth time this week why KEI (Sumantra Roy's "keyword effectiveness index") is not a reliable guideline for selecting the right keywords, I was relieved to see some new action in the keyword research forum at High Rankings.

I'm supposed to the be "IHelpYou" representative here, but I also moderate the keyword research talk over at High Rankings. "Measuring Keyword Competition" stirred up a lively discussion, but we're still shy of a good keyword metric to replace KEI.

My question, though, is whether a single metric can do the job. Any metric that ignores relevance (like KEI) is bound to fail, and my best advice these days is to target the best relevant search terms, regardless of how competitive.

But I can see that ignoring the competition (or measuring it as poorly as Wordtracker does) will not get us to a better keyword metric. Nowdays, though, what does competition mean anyway?

For all of you optimists who say "you're only competing against 10 sites," I get your point, but wake up already - everyone else can optimize their pages just as well as you can.

You may be competing against hundreds of optimizers, and what you see in the rankings has very little to do with what they put on the page. I'm sorry, but it's true - 99% of websites could use a trained monkey to do their optimization, if all you care about is rankings, and it seems that there are a lot of little monkeys banging on keyboards out there.

So where does that put us in terms of competition? Has the "real competition" moved off site now? Are inbound links, link text, link relevance, and (god forbid) themes the new battleground? If so, how in the world will we measure that?

Okay, rant's over... on to forum news. Doug Heil of the Best Practices search engine forums (formerly known as IHelpYou) has announced private SEO forums for donors, which should be an interesting experiment.

The private forums at Webmaster World are attractive because of all the noise in the public forums, and the (false) belief that Googleguy is in there. IHY/Best Practices doesn't have a Googleguy. They don't have a lot of noise either (in fact, their public forums are less noisy than WMW's private area), so I wonder if there will be enough interest.