Keyword research is an all too often under-appreciated aspect of SEO.
I've written a few keyword research posts here on Moz and that's because I believe it to be the blueprint of any successful SEO campaign.
Here are some of the more common mistakes that I see people make with their keyword research.
#1 – You're being Unrealistic
"It is better to have a bigger slice of a few smaller pies rather than not getting even a slither of a much bigger pie."
Keyword research appears to be a very straightforward task. You fire up your keyword research tool of choice and find the keywords that relate to your industry with the highest search volumes. Sadly, that's not the way to do it if you want to see real results.
To many businesses, high-competition keywords are simply out of reach – at least in the short and medium term. Part of good keyword research is about being realistic and selecting appropriate keywords for targeting that take into account the site's age, current authority and any future optimisation that will take place.
Targeting one word keywords is quite often unrealistic but it may also prove unprofitable – someone searching for 'Toshiba l670 laptop' is likely to be much further along in the purchasing process that someone who searches for 'laptops' – think about which searcher is likely to have their credit card out already.
There's nothing wrong with targeting generic keywords, I'm simply saying that if your campaign has limited budget and you need results in the short to medium term then targeting less trafficked, less competitive keywords is a much better way to utilise resources.
Lower traffic but lower competition keywords might not seem as exciting to target but if your website can dominate these areas fairly quickly then you are going to see far more traffic from the search engines than failing to effectively target a much more competitive term.
#2 – You're looking at broad match instead of exact match
A seemingly simple mistake but one which many people continue to make...
Search volume is of course a very important metric when it comes to keyword research but all too often people make the mistake of looking at broad search volumes rather than the exact match figure when using tools like Google's Keyword Tool.
There can be a huge difference between broad match and exact match search traffic for example:
There are 135,000 broad match searches each month in the UK for 'dog kennels' but only 14,800 exact match searches for the same keyword. Still, this wouldn't prove particularly problematic as this is obviously still a keyword worth targeting – it would knock traffic and ROI projections way off kilter if you do these kinds of things though.
The real problem comes when you choose to target a keyword like 'ladies leather handbags' which has a broad match search volume of 2,400 but an exact match search volume of only 260 – failing to base your research on exact match data might mean you think you are targeting a reasonably well-trafficked keyword when in actual fact, once you've factored in data inaccuracies, you could be looking at a very low search volume keyword indeed.
It is widely accepted that Google's Keyword Tool isn't entirely accurate when it comes to search volumes but using exact match gives you the best data available when assessing how viable a keyword is to target.
#3 – You're targeting plural instead of singular
It is very common to see a website targeting the plural version of a keyword but in most cases, it is the singular version of a keyword that people are searching for.
I see this most often on eCommerce websites where the site owner optimises category pages and because they sell more than one product, they naturally focus on the pluralised keywords for example "tablet PCs" which actually gets 91% less searches than "tablet PC".
I will readily admit that Google is much better at determining that a singular and plural version of a keyword are one and the same, but in many cases there are still differences in the search results. Failing to target the singular keyword can be the difference between your search listing being highlighted in the SERPs (=higher clickthrough) and it can also mean your website appears lower (even slightly) than marginally better targeted pages – that could be the difference between making a sale and not.
#4 – You're ignoring conversion
This one could easily turn into a rant for me because so often I come up against clients who want to rank for [insert trophy keyword] when in actual fact they'd do better (financially) targeting a different keyword or set of keywords. I try to explain that a keyword that brings in traffic is wasted bandwidth if that traffic doesn't convert. You don't hire my company to get traffic for traffic's sake...you presumably hire us to help you ultimately make more sales.
The online world is competitive and it's only going to get more competitive, therefore making the most of every penny being invested is vital.
This makes conversion and language analysis a vital part of keyword research. The human mind is the only software capable of performing a good quality 'conversion audit' of a keyword list because whilst there are programmes out there that can filter and sort keywords to make your life easier, there's no real substitute for industry experience and SEO knowledge.
There are some very basic indicators for example prefixes such as 'buy' might be a clear indicator that the traffic from this keyword is going to convert.
A keyword conversion audit is more complex than that however since each situation and market is individual. I find existing data to be a very useful way to determine which keywords are likely to convert well. If you have goal tracking setup with Google Analytics, you can easily determine the highest converting keywords your site currently gets traffic from, try to identify patterns in your highest converting keywords and then translate and apply this knowledge to other areas of keyword research.
#5 – You're selecting keywords that are out of context
This is yet more rationale to further humanise the keyword research process because most keyword tools struggle to compute words and their meaning in the way a human would.
For example, a searcher looking for 'storage' could be looking for a self-storage centre, boxes and other storage furniture for the home or even professional storage solutions for a warehouse or office.
Opportunities for confused targeting are abundant which is why it is essential the keywords you decide to target are highly-relevant and laser-focused towards what your business offers.
A good way to do this is to search manually for the keywords in Google and see the kinds of results that come up, you will likely be able to get a feel for whether the keyword is applicable to the product or service you intended to target.
#6 – You're failing to conduct keyword reviews
It is accepted that SEO is an on-going process but rarely are target keywords reviewed and audited. If a marketplace is shifting over time then you would also expect customer search behaviour to develop and evolve over time too – this makes regular keyword reviews essential.
In most markets, I find an annual review is perfectly adequate. Any time period shorter than this and there is a risk that targeting becomes a bit chaotic with efforts focused on new keywords before results on old keywords have been achieved or evaluated.
That being said, in some competitive and very fast moving markets a more regular keyword review may be required.
The aim of a keyword review is to:
- Weed out poor performing keywords
- Identify opportunities and areas for growth
- Shape your SEO strategy for the future
To do a strategic and actionable keyword review you can use this adapted version of the Boston Matrix that I like to use.
Large brands use the Boston Matrix to assess the health of their product portfolio and to identify where to concentrate their resources.
You can do the same thing for your keyword portfolio.
Sort your keywords into four categories in order to better shape your search strategy for the future.
- Question marks – these are keywords in areas where growth is likely but at present you're not getting the performance you'd expect. These are very often untapped keyword opportunities and you should plan how you are going to improve performance on these kinds of keywords.
- Stars – high-performance keywords and loads of room for growth – find ways to capitalise on growth. My advice is to focus your resources of gaining results in these areas for maximum ROI in a short period of time.
- Dogs – the poor performing keywords with little or no chance of growth – bin these in favour of other keywords, reallocate any resources to other areas.
- Cash cows – the high performing keywords that show little opportunity for growth – look for ways to enhance and maintain performance whilst identifying patterns and translating this learning to other areas or verticals.
What mistakes do you see happening in the keyword research process? Please share them in the comments section below...
By James Agate, founder of Skyrocket SEO and a regular SEO contributor to leading blogs and publications across the web.
Great post James. I especially like what you said in #4, I think many people tend to overlook what keywords are converting and focus on the keywords that bring them the most traffic, even if some of those long tail keywords have very low search volumes.
I think one thing people tend to miss as well is looking at keywords that their competitors are targeting. Especially if your or your client's site is new to the game, you can really find great keyword opportunities by determining what your established competitors are doing as they most likely are seeing pretty standard conversions from those targeted words you will find.
A couple free tools I have been using to determine those competitor keywords is Microsoft Ad Intelligence excel plugin and Xenu. If you use the keyword extractor on the Microsoft plugin it will usually give you a set of terms that with a little investigation will get you target terms for the page you are looking at. The Xenu tool is much better for determining target keywords for a large amount of pages. Although it's used to check linking throughout a site, the tool provides you with meta page titles for every page it crawls. You can dump that into excel and extract the first few words in the page title to get that competitors target terms. Pretty simple and a common resource missed by many businesses.
I like the Xenu idea Dan, thanks for that. I've used the tool before but not really applied to keyword research in the way you suggest - good idea though.
I find it hard to understand why clients want me and my company to chase traffic when I explain that we could do X or Y and make them an extra Z% - it's ROI focused search engine optimisation which is what gets me out of bed each day.
James
Looking at the meta keywords tag in the source code of the page can be helpful for determining competitor keywords too...just about its only decent use these days!
This needs to be used with discretion. Any modernized SEO knows that meta keywords hold no value to major search engines. The keywords you find on your competitor's meta keywords tag may be dated (why spend resources updating it?) or false (to "mess around" with people who think they can scout out keywords like this). Always have a better, more reliable resource for competitor keyword research.
Great, i'm not alone. I also use this technique. Only i have developed a bonus feature for my sitemap generator app that gives me back the tree like structure of titles and attached descriptions. The general view instantly shows (of course if you have the experienced eye for this) not only targeted terms but how much resources and content are directed towards those keywords.
Later i upgraded this thing to get data from an excel in which i organize anchor texts (internally and externaly) and then compute everything to get a descending list of keywords strengh in sites.
Back to the article i think James did a good job at poining out the strong points actually of a keyword research process. Very helpful idea for the keyword reviews task !
Hi Dan,
Where can I find Xenu?
Hello David,
You can download Xenu for free here:https://xenus-link-sleuth.en.softonic.com/
Hope this helps!
Thanks James, a timely reminder. Certainly big slice of big pie is a very challenging keyword strategy now, but not impossible. I feel your pain regarding clients unrealistic or unfocussed keyword requests! There used to be an interesting "Commercial Intent" keyword tool at Microsoft AdLab, https://adlab.microsoft.com/alltools.aspx but it's gone. Anyone suggest an equivalent?
Sure, just take a look at how many sponsored results you get/how competitive the keyword is in ppc etc :)
I am trying to understand exactly how to do this. Any resourse would be greatly appreciated.
how do I determine how competitive it is in PPC?
How do I determine how a websitre advertizes?
HI Qasoiel,
This is a great site to get a lot of the information you are asking about.
There are also lots of courses
You might start out by typing your question into Google
A great internet marketing forum is the Warrior Fourm
Good, I'm glad it isn't just me facing the clients who are way too optimistic. Thanks for your comment.
Why would anyone put thumbs down? This is a exellent blog post Good job. I enjoyed the read. :)
Thanks Joseph...much appreciated.
Great post - not sure I completely agree with you on the plural aspect. I'd agree that if someone has a specific product in mind they'd be likely to search on the singular however if you're searching for a more generic term they'd be more likely to search for the plural - an example might be Shredders vs Rexel Shredder.
I usually target both singular and plural. If you don't target keywords in sets, I'd question your strategy. Of course I might begin by targeting one over the other, but "always singular" and "always plural" are both overly-simplistic.
Hi James,
Great article. I also like the ending matrix. I need to check my exact matches vs broad matches.
Most of my traffic comes from long tail, so i get a sliver of a whole lotta pies. Nice variety though. Great analogy.
Thanks for your post James, keyword research is my favourite part of the job. I also have the same issues with, usually very small clients, who want to dominate for very competitive terms like, 'mortgage' and it can be difficult getting them to understand that they don't have the time and money to compete on such terms. I try and get them to take, as you suggest, more a conversion point of view and suggest that they look at keyword phrases as questions and the more of these questions they can answer the more likely people will be to buy from them.
Ah a fellow keyword research fan - not many of us around :-)
I was just doing keyword research this morning and stopped to read this article. I realize now that I have bad habits with this particular aspect of SEO. Thanks for posting this.
Happy to be of service
Does anyone else really miss the old Google Keyword Tool? I know we are all humans and creatures of habbit and hate change, but dang I miss the old tool.
The search based keyword tool?
Great post, James. Thanks for the insight. One mistake I have encountered, (because I've made it), is when internal marketing teams presume to know what keywords/terms prospects are using to search for particular products and services, then realizing your industry's consumers have adopted a different term among themselves.
As an example, people were referring to the golden-arched burger giant as "Mickey D's" long before McDonald's figured it out.
Thanks James for an excellent article on keywords. Being only about 6 months into the SEO world, your article is a huge help.
One other point: David Meerman Scott reminds us that one cannot determine keywords until a thorough analysis of the target audience or audiences is conducted. I have found that many businesses are so product focused that they have a difficult time being converted to thinking like a customer and how a customer might find them. Once they "get it," this buyin from the business makes a lot of difference. Then we, as their SEO company, can most effectively partner with the business to improve their bottom line using the same language.
I like that way of thinking, so many people forget that SEO is about marketing a business...
Nice work James. Great article. If you don't mind, I'd like to add #7: Believing Keyword Competition inside Google's Keyword Tool. Not only is the bar graph ambiguous (there's no numeric number assigned like SEOmoz's tool), but from my experience seems to be flat-out wrong. Does anyone even know how these are tabulated and why they are so inaccurate?
Google likes to throw a curveball every now and then - that's why I think they do it anyway.
Thanks for your comment Kyle, glad you found it useful
Fantastic post, great advice. It absolutely baffles me the number of people who a) dedicate a tiny amount of time to keyword research, and b) don't occasionally review their progress and instead treat it as a one-off, which are both recipes for disaster.
In my opinion it's one of the most important areas of SEO, especially as SEO can be so long-term - it's basically the foundation of a campaign - so for people to skimp or glaze over it is foolish.
I'd give this comment 3 thumbs up if I could Stevie - nice to meet someone who shares my belief on this. SEO is like building a house with the foundations as keyword research (that's how I visualise things anyway).
Wrote a post on this actually on my blog
Thanks for the comprehensive post!
"You don't hire my company to get traffic for traffic's sake...you presumably hire us to help you ultimately make more sales."
The fact that you are facing this same issue with your clients calms me down :)
I feel quite proud of myself here - I dont actually make one of these six mistakes!
Good work sir!
Failing to understand user intent is one of the biggest mistakes a company can make when conducting their keyword research. Like your "storage" example. That term is so broad it can mean anything. People search for the same thing using different terms, and often they search for different things using the same terms!
This---> "someone searching for 'Toshiba l670 laptop' is likely to be much further along in the purchasing process that someone who searches for 'laptops'"
But I do have to ask: wouldn't a non-transactional brand site obtain a lot of impression value ranking for relevant though less-specific keywords, even with traffic that doesn't "convert"?
Unfortunately #1 is not always the case...
Despite being very competitive, the volume of traffic in short-tail keywords is often so great that it is still the best RoI. The problem in these cases is more the perserverance of the company to invest in an SEO strategy that won't yield results for 9 to 12 months. If you don't have a war chest large enough to do that, then certainly mid and long-tail is where you have to go...
I understand where you are coming from on that front and maybe I should have added more to #1 to cover off situations like that...
I suppose also that I was coming at this from the angle that I am most used to which is working with small and medium sized clients who just wouldn't run with a strategy that sees little or no return for 12 months :-)
Great post, BTW :-)
Awesome post! This is something I would feel comfortable sharing with clients who disagree with our keyword research process.
Good list. I think another "common mistake" worth noteing is that people often confuse which keywords to use in their ads, and which keywords to use on their homepage.
I know some people think you should optimize your home page for every long tail keyword you can imagine, however most of those keywords would better be targeted through an ad or a blog.
The biggest issue I see is people doing keyword research using the Google tool and having 'broad' checked. I wonder how many people register exact match domains with this bad information?
You only have to browse a marketplace like Flippa.com to see just how many newbie 'internet entrepreneurs' have registered domains like darkwoodenkitchenstools.com thinking they've got a killer domain...
Completly Agree with the conversions point. I have never found a one word term convert anywhere near as well as a 3+ word search.
For many clients I would use paid search to test conversion rates on keywords before investing a huge amount of time in trying to achieve a high natural ranking for highly competitive terms. Its nice to know if the the payoff will be worth the effort!
I agree about the PPC testing although sometimes this can be out of reach of clients who don't have a click budget to use if they're already investing in SEO. It can offer some great insights that the 'best guess' tools like Google's Keyword Tool can't offer but sometimes I have found the results from a PPC campaign just don't translate in the same way when applied to SEO. I couldn't say for sure why - so we've found it to be a mixed bag in that sense.
So I both agree and disagree with your point. :-)
Salam
I have been working on a lot of Keyword research recently and I definitely...totally agree to the author's ideas.
Excellent post indeed
Thanks
bye
I agree that keyword research is the building block for any SEO effort! Def a blueprint to what needs to be done. Clients need to attract vistitors whom are in the 'buying phase' and not simply window shopping. Keyword selection is a biggy!!
Never a truer word spoken "Keyword selection is a biggy!! "
That's why I'm often found to be wittering on about it every day whether online or face to face with a client :-)
It's always interesting reviewing the research findings face to face with clients and seeing their reactions to my findings!
Totally right. Too few seem to understand the full value of keyword research.
I really liked your ending matrix. Nice way to segment, and love the terms.
Good work and mad props -
Thanks Glenn, I love applying my old-school marketing and business education to SEO - it works really well in my experience and yet so few do it...
Regarding Keyword Research
The Metric I wish Google could disclose--
The Keyword Metric that Google should reveal (WHOLE PAGE SEARCH METRICS)
One missing peice DATA I would like to know. from Google when selecting keywords.
There are countless times people will search for a term and "Not Click" Anything!No maps, No Ads, No Organic NADA - They just move on to a new search.Yes you get searches on a keyword, but the results may suck due to poor content or badly formed descriptions, usually auto generated.
Having these stats would let advertisers and SEO's know there is an opportunity available, thatthey are not wasting time on useless impressions.
Ok what about Webmaster Tools:
Web Master Tools shows organic CTR for keywords. (But only for your Website)
PS: I'm opted in to the experimental WEBMASTER TOOLS/ANALYTICS program--the good news being that you can now get long range data beyond 30 days (Sweet!)
Hey GOOGLE - Give me the entire picture.
fyi: Avinash, Matt Cutts
BENCHMARK RESULTS - AT THE SEARCH PAGE LEVEL - for Exact Keyword Searchs
--------------------------------------------------
PAGE LEVEL CTR PAID (Adwords)
PAGE LEVEL ORGANIC CTR (Seo's)
PAGE LEVEL OTHER CTR (Maps, Video, Local Search)
Benefits:
Not only will GOOGLE let us know which words get real click traffic.But let us know the overall quality of the Real Estate of the search page keyword in question.an increased CTR overall means engagement, more satisfied searchers.
a real benchmark of the QUALITY of the Keyword & Page.
Obviously for Broad words the stats will be very high 90%+ 160% (Mutiple accrued clicks) But for Niche words - Long tail keywords -we could use this as a measuring stick for finding opportunities and improving the content for those terms.
Everybody wins. The User, The Advertiser & Google
The benefit for Google is they can Tweak the algo to serve better related results, based on page with poor results...a poor search result means Google can serve alternative content, until someone writes something better. Lets face it, every extra search eats into Google electricity bill.
Searchengineman
Working on an account now that wanted very high competition keywords before they were ready. I made the mistake of saying yes. Ugh.
Thanks James. Your post have enlightened your vast experince in keyword research! Very usefull to me as beginner!
This is good stuff. Its like you are reading the mind of many SEO Professional. I am in the industry for almost 2 years and still see many experience seo consultants are making these mistakes. Thanks for this again.
Good stuff... the worst is when your client falls into one of these traps and insists that you follow...!
Also, I think you want "sliver" instead of "slither" for #1 :)
I agree with #4 110%. Sometimes clients fail to understand that the terms they have in mind are not the ones that are going to convert best.
about #3, depending on the industry or category, plural has more traffic than singular. Our industry is dominated by plural key words. Target both and check their traffic frequently with conversion rate. :)
Hi James,
Great article. I am glad you pointed out the broad and exact issue.
I usually use the phrase match, but look at exact too
To many people get all caught up on the numbers. The only
thing they are concerned about is traffic, but not quality.
Doesn't matter how much traffic you are getting if you
are not making any sells
Thanks again for the article,
Jeff Faldalen
Thank you for the reminder. The only point I would add to the list is "check location targeting"
I was doing some keyword research recently and had both the US & UK selected!
Not good!
Thanks for this info James. Indeed, one of my first mistakes in keyword research was performing the research with the "broad option" :) .. Until I realized that one keyword that was getting some thousands of traffic per month was actually getting 0 when doing it with the "match" option... Learing from mistake...
As for the conversion , it's a very good point. I also focus on stating that we do not want to get some traffic for the sake of having some traffic.. effectively the only thing that this will bring, is a higher bandwith bill... you want a traffic that will convert.
Great post.
Thanks for this post James, I totally agree with all your topics and great that you remind us all about the basics in SEO.
As a matter of fact I would like to share with you all, a great tool which I use myself in keyword analysis and research.
I guess most of you know it allready, Google Analytic site search:-)
When I get a new SEO client, one of the first things I do, is to hook up the on site search engine to the Google Analytics site search functionality. From experience I know that this tool is very usefull when researching which search queries and frases the visitors tend to use on the site. Also I can see exatly what frases and keywords (including misspellings) gives the best traffic and conversions – for instance this is very usefull when starting up or running PPC campaigns.
On top of that, some pretty need information usally comes along, for instance you often see sites where users search for ”contact” which could indicate that the contact info on the site needs to be more visible. Another cool thing I use site search for on my own shops is to investegate in what products might be missing on the shop.
Thanks from Denmark
I ran broad search for a long term before I realized the power of [exact search]. I've had much more targeted keywords since making the change. Great tip!
Thanks for this, but i have had some issues where Google would state thet recieve 9000 local searches for a particular term, so our SEO Company in Kent then optimizes a site for this particular keyword, gets the site to page one only to find we get no hits, really how accurate is the google keyword tool?
[link removed]
Hi,
I had done a same mistake in my career once. "Silver Chain"- The broad search volume is showing 201,000, in exact it's showing only 1,600. I came to know the difference when the keyword reached in 1st page of Google.com. I didn't get visitors as my expectation. So it's a serious mistake to go through only broad match.
Now days, I am following the all above tips that you have shared here. But, tell me about the Google trend. Can we use it for a depth analysis? Does it work for a future keyword for any business?
Oops. Hit submit twice.
Based on the moz tools, what could I use to compare my (websites) ability to rank for a keyword to the keyword difficulty. Getting the keyword difficulty is only half the equation. Knowing if it's realistic for my site would be the other half. Any ideas?
One thing I see quite a bit is targeting keywords which only gets search in certain times of the year.
So the user is doing all the above, using google keyword tool, exact match searches etc, the local monthly searches are actually an average over the last 12 months so if in Dec 'gift ideas' gets 12,000 searches and the next 11 months gets 0 searches then the keyword tool will show monthly searches of 1,000.
So best to look at Google insights along with the keyword tool when researching to also get an idea of the traffic trends.
Thanks for sharing
The thought on reviewing the keywords later on is one that I am sure gets dropped. Great point.
I've learned interesting new stuffs from tip 3,4 and 6. Thanks!
All the tips are useful. Thanks for sharing this.
Thanks jamesagate you are saying like good sound many newbie and experience person focus on high competitive and short keywords even long tail keywords is always be like conversion keywords..
Thanks for sharing info
Very good article. I agree that the key foundation to a good internet marketing campaign is targeting the right keywords. In the beginning it is best to target some longtail keywords that can convert into sales. Once you establish authority with those than it is time to go for some other good keyword matches that may be more competitive and offer more traffic down the line.
Thanks James great article. Really appreciate it.
Very helpful article. I learned some new tips. Thx!
Great post, keyword research most important task for seo. This update will more helpful to seo. Thank You
I've been working on a lot of keyword research but mainly for local businesses looking to compete in the local market... Key Words like "Miami Dog Kennel" or "Miami Traffic Lawyer" for example. Any keyword with Miami in it is usually the main focus of my keyword research.
looking at the exact match over broad is an important factor for me so thank you for bringing that up.
Very similar scenario here, but up in CA. The problem I continually encounter, especially when conducting "exact match" for local search terms is: little or no data. What then? I find myself broadening the search queries by reverting to "broad match" or removing the local geo-modifer to produce additional data for the term. Then, I use instinct to guesstimate what percentage of the data might be applicable on a local level.
Hi James,
Nice content item around the BCC matrix for keywords. Im going to use this view on keyword segmentation.
thnx
You're welcome, I'm glad you've found it useful
Interesting insight I must say - thanks for that.
I deem the Google Keyword Tool highly inaccurate though and it's very difficult to trust it.
The majority of data hasn't been updated for a good few years would you believe plus on Google's Q & A it does say that the search data is from Google itself and all the "Search Properties" that Google have access to so you have to bear this in mind as well.
Thank you.
Is that true, that the data is a few years old? That seems like a lot.
Loving the keyword matrix. I think this might be a good way to get the client to understand why some keywords are out of their reach too.
Thanks
Very well written! I just realized I have a lot of keyword research mistakes and this post opened my eyes to make it right. :D
Excellent post, used to make many of the errors myself, for example telling clients certain keyword has 150000 searches a month using broad match!! All part of the learning curve :-)
Have found exact match figures also give a great indication on how hard it will be too rank well for certain keywords, making it easier to predict timeframes.
Where possible, even if clients are on a limited budget, try and get them to think in terms of a budget for at least 9 months, to give project a chance to succeed.
This way can use a combination of keywords with a more stable higher search volume, in combination with some less competitive, with a chance of converting in first few months.
Getting the client to 'buy in' to a long term investment is a challenging aspect of this job but if you have some convincing case studies, positive testimonials and good word of mouth then this becomes a whole lot easier.
It is far better all round for SEO to be a long term play because the client gets a stable solution with longevity rather than a rush job to crank out some unstable results in a few months and you as the consultant get longer and more scope to prove what you are worth.
Thanks for your comment
Very interesting insight into Keyword research. We are currently adopting similar tactics for our Keyword reserach techniques and use Google keyword tool. Any suggestions on any other useful tools?. We track our SERPs using Raven Tools and they have SEM rush and word tracker which are also both good keyword tools and we find a combination of all of them works well.
I use (and have used) quite a few different keyword research tools but the point is that you should be focusing on how the software can take the strain leaving you and your human resources to properly analyse data and use your time and brain effectively to do the best keyword research possible.
Google's keyword tool is of course excellent, SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool is very useful, Market Samurai is a good way to pull in data quickly and easily (other features of that software are less useful), SEOGadget's keyword tool is very good and Ubersuggest is useful for keyword ideas.
Like I say, there are plenty out there.
Review of keywords change timely. So that point is much noticable. I am wondering where to take review for any keywords because any keyword tool will provide data of past month. Is any tool available which provide data for upcoming trends?
RE: Inkman12. There is nothing that can predict what people will search for in the future, so you only option is to react as fast as possible. Google Trends, Twitter hot topics and simlar are useful for this, and if you have the resources to create a page and generate some good links fast it could be very useful.
Your keyword audit technique is one of the most unique ways I have seen someone address a common problem. I know many SEO's that commit to a few keywords and do not look for any opprotunities outside those keywords.
There are consumers who pay monthly for the same keywords on more than a yearly basis without thinking to check if their keywords are performing the same. This technique not only helps SEO's but can protect customers.
Thanks, I have to agree with you about protecting clients too - scary to think so many are blindly handing over retainer fees each month 'to maintain rankings' on keywords that might not even be having an impact
Good point you also added conversions as an important factor to consider.
You can have a good idea of a keyword conversions by looking at its cpc. The higher the cpc, usually the higher its conversion.
That can be explained by the simple fact marketing people are ready to pay more (higher cpc) for better converting keywords. With this in mind you can easily create and place your keywords in a sales or search funnel with the broader keyword higher up and the more precide (also usually longer tail) keywords closer to a sale.
If you always keep in mind keywords represent a person search intent the more precise the keyword, the best performing the keyword should be because the person is closer to achieve its intent.
Hmm yes and no, I've seen many big corporate and small business PPC campaigns exceptionally poorly managed and these kinds of advertisers may be skewing CPC data and limiting the effectiveness of this strategy but I do agree with your sentiment.
Hi James, thanks for the nice po9st and i am frankly saying that you post point 2 is very important for me because whenever i research for the keywords whether for PPC or SEO I mostly used broad match keywords. I am not focusing on exact match keywords i think this the only reason that some of my websites are not getting enough traffic because in exact match keywords don't have enough demand. Thanks for the alarming tips.
Your points about broad search volume and exact match are absolutely right. because most of the website owners or SEO workers are showing interest while select some keywords according to its broad search volume. But they are not selecting keywords by viewing exact match figures.
And Most of the person at first think about Google Webmaster tools, if he want to select keyword or to know the search volumes of keywords. But there are more tools available in this webworld to know the exact search volumes of kewords. Those tools are really not worthfull ?. They have to just think about like this.
Good work James. We often find ourselves trying to convince our clients of many of the same points you are making in this article. Lately the feedback we receive has to do with very targeted keywords that have low competition but a good amount of searches (popularity) that we know will bring them qualified traffic, but the client wants to see a larger popularity number. We have been working to convince clients that by using targeted keywords, their conversion rate will increase. Lower numbers (searches) simply means that they are most likely going to convert closer to 100% of the searchers who are using those phrases in their search. In other words, there may not be a lot of traffic that comes through on those gems, but the traffic that does come is actually qualified. Quality vs. quantity.
I made the broad search mistake when first venturing into SEO and it really is such a big mistake to make, the exact match lets you know what you're actually targetting and gives you a much more realistic outlook on whats going on. I think people generally get put off cause keyword research can take a long time, but it gets easier and getting used to Keyword tools is actually quite essential.
This post and discussion has been very helpful in presenting alternatives and supplements for keyword research outside of using Google tools. Thanks for that, James! Our researchers are always looking for ways to provide the best and most powerful keywords to clients and these suggestions will definitely help.
Have to say that number 4 is really the sticker. Clients always seem to have this idea of the "best" keyword in mind from the start. It's often a challenge to explain that while ranking is certainly important for traffic, what we're really after are the conversions. Thanks to everyone for your helpful discussion. Looking forward to sharing the info with our employees and blog visitors at https://www.searchinfluence.com/blog
I think must seo expert are aware that keywords research with google tools is not always accurate...but on this post i have found new insights for my seo team
Thank you
I think it's a big mistake when one doesn't add geo-modified keywords to a campaign/ad group when it applies to the business. While geo-targeting corrects for this to some extent, I think it's important to have all bases covered.
Great guest post, thank you.
Geo specific keywords are key also. Metro areas like New York, Chicago, San Francisco. People forget to target this for local businesses and end up losing local traffic and not ranking as highly nationally.
With regard to keyword research, sometimes long keyphrases will surprise you with their traffic numbers. Big traffic KWs are often thought of as being 2-3 words long (if that), but sometimes a phrase or question, esp. one beginning with "how," like "how long does marijuana stay in your system" can drive a ton of traffic too. Although that sort of phrase is definitely lower-converting, it's worth thinking about how to capitalize on that kind of traffic one way or another.
Great post, James. A lot of little things in this that we sometimes overlook.
#4 is the one that always kills me. My clients always have some arbitrarily chosen keyword that they must rank for, and I have to explain to them that while ranking for that keyword will certainly drive in traffic, it won't do much else.
All the traffic in the world means nothing if you can't make at least some of it do what you want (buy, subscribe etc). Good to hear we're not alone on this!
I completely agree with you. Keyword research is one of the most important aspect of SEO which is not given much importance. Targetting the right keywords is important to get good traffic.
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Thanks for this article - I will need to re-read it to enable me to better guide clients - I have had one in particular that has used the Google Keyword tool and therefore thinks he understands SEO. Yet he also wanted a meta keywords tag, rammed with keywords.
And adding/removing keywords is so vital to keeping SEO fresh and growing the website presence, yet sometimes clients seem to have one keyword in mind and judge everything on that. Grr!
Great post, James. I especially liked the tips about exact vs. broad match and knowing the context of the keyword.
To take that last one a step further, failing to categorize keywords in their appropriate spot in the buying cycle can kill the conversion opportunity for that particular keyword. Consider this page Diigo'd.
The one thing I would like to add is competiton analysis. Some time we choose keywords which is related to some type od information. When we type those keywords the result of search displays websites like "Wikipedia". As we all know that it is hard to beat the Wikipedia and one more thing is the keyword is actually for some sort of information. Actualy we should target the keywordsa which drive the potential people to our website.
hi,
is there any restriction for targeting keywords within limitations?
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