Rather than trying to make this post go through all the tactics and specifics of Rebecca's already comprehensive Keyword Research Guide, I figured I'd instead provide a solid list of every which way you can look at a keyword to get an idea of metrics, value and potential from the engines themselves (rather than services like AdWords, YSM, Wortracker or KW Discovery). This is more of an "expert" level post, as you'll need to use these searches/tools yourself to figure out exactly how they apply to your business, but it's stil valuable to have all of this collected in one place.
Keyword Research Data from the Engines:
Search Term Counts
The numbers here are not always particularly accurate, but they can be, at the least, representative. Oftentimes, you can get more exact counts by scrolling to the last page of results. For example, this search for "addicted to workahol" shows 551 results, yet when we add the URL parameter &start=990, we can see Google only reports 222 results. I personally like these results a bit better when doing competitive keyword analysis.
Intitle Counts
They don't work everywhere, but using the search parameter "intitle" at Google & Yahoo! provides only those pages where the term is specifically used in the title tag - this helps to give you a sense of how many pages are actually truly focused on the term/phrase, rather than those that simply have it somewhere in the content. For example, note how the word "fjord" has 7.9 million results, but when using intitle:fjord, the count drops to 231,000.
Inurl Counts
As with "intitle," "inurl" gives you only those results that feature the target term or phrase in the web address of the page. Once again, you're narrowing by intent and focus. Quick example - inurl:dog inurl:years (639 results) vs. dog years (90.6 million results).
Inanchor Counts
Same story - inanchor is designed to show only those pages where the target term appears in anchor text pointing to the page. A perfect example of this might be a search for "inanchor:greatest inanchor:living inanchor:american." As you can see, the first result is the Google-bombed page, www.colbertnation.com (see this post for more on that story). For keyword information, inanchor can give you a good idea of the quantity of pages that have attracted anchor text-targeted links.
Intitle, Inurl, Inanchor Combination Counts
Combining intitle, inanchor and inurl gives you a good idea of how many pages are seriously targeting (with good SEO practices) a particular term or phrase. For example, a search for "intitle:student inanchor:student intitle:loans inanchor:loans" shows 83,600 results, vs. the general query "student loans" which shows a whopping 19.6 million results. I prefer combing intitle and inanchor (rather than inurl), as many serious competitors don't use the keywords in the URL; however, using the inanchor can show you how many truly SEO-savvy competitors are out there.
Blogsearch Counts
Blog search data is terrific for picking out hot topics or keywords in the blogosphere and the realm of social media. Since blog search often incorporates forums and other social media properties (anyone with a feed, really), it's a great way to see how a term/phrase is looking in the social space. Be aware, though, that the data is temporal - anything that's more than a few months old is likely to be out of the blog index (this does make it a great temporal tracking tool, however). For example, check out the 14,479 results for cupcake recipes on blogsearch vs. 1.89 million results in web search.
Related Terms
Several of the engines offer "related" terms, including Google, Yahoo!, Ask & Vivisimo (which shows related terms in clusters). This data can be invaluable if you're looking to find related terms that may not have come up through competitive analysis or brainstorming. Check out a search for whale at Google, Yahoo!, Ask & Vivisimo (the related searches are on the sidebars or the footers of the pages).
Common Usage & Phrase Combinations
Using a search with the * character can give you a good idea of what terms/phrases commonly precede or follow a given term/phrase. For example, using * ringtones can show you phrases that are commonly associated with the term "ringtones."
Frequency of Recent Usage
Using the very cool Google date search operator, you can find how many times in the past day, week, month or year your term has appeared. This can give you some seasonal data if you follow it closely and can also show you who is producing content in your arena. For example, try a search for blogrush (past 24 hours).
News Saturation
Both Google & Yahoo! News are great places to do a bit of digging into anyone who's using press releases or getting news coverage on the terms/phrases you might be researching. If there's a lot of activity in these arenas (and it's not all PR spam), you can bet the terms are going to be even more competitive. For example, here's SEOmoz at Google News & at Yahoo! News.
All this data can combine to form a very well-rounded view of a particular term or phrase, and while it's probably overkill for most keyword research projects, it's certainly a valuable exercise and something to monitor closely if you're basing a lot of your success off a single search query (or just a handful). Even in the event that you're just trying to get a better sense of what's going on infrequently and informally, these pieces of the keyword puzzle can be remarkably valuable.
Let me know if you've got others that I've missed.
Once again I'm reminded that I wish the big G had an API (even a paid one) that would return accurate data on many of these things. The tools you could build off their data if they opened it up would be amazing. Maybe the new 'moz funding can be put to some crawling / spidering use to build an SEO-specific data-set...
Will you read my mind. The lack of data Google shares is very frustrating. I'm not expecting to see anything from them, but it would be nice.
The lack of proper data from google is what most propably is keeping yahoo going, esp from aqn SEO enthusiasts perspective...
Some nice stuff there Rand - mostly ones we use; some we should probably pay mroe attention to.
Just wondered if you were planning top update the KR Guide, now that Overture seems to have finally given up the ghost?
Oh great, plop another task on my plate why dontcha!
Seriously, I've been meaning to update the guide soon. We'll probably have to look through all of our guides and see if they need a lil' bit of tweaking.
Good on ya'; that should keep you busy till Vegas when I can buy you a beer as a thank you!
hi,
i have two questions.
the small one: isn't inurl:keyword1 inurl:keyword2 the same as allinurl:keyword1 keyword2?
the big one: all these ways show us SEO competition, but not real traffic generated by keywords. what if other SEOs chose wrong keywords?:)
cheers
Combining intitle, inanchor and inurl gives you a good idea of how many pages are seriously targeting (with good SEO practices) a particular term or phrase. For example, a search for "intitle:student inanchor:student intitle:loans inanchor:loans" shows 83,600 results, vs. the general query "student loans" which shows a whopping 19.6 million results. I prefer to combing intitle and inanchor (rather than inurl) as many serious competitors don't use the keywords in the URL, however, using the inanchor can show you how many truly SEO-savvy competitors are out there.
I would have though it to be quite the opposite as adding more search qualifiers has a tendancy to manipulate the results, and most searchers dont search this way. Aside from that, my own results for my own site show a regular search for 'website design' without quotes shows in the number 4 or 5 spot based on datacenter
regular search
but modifying the search using the inurl or inanchor modifiers pushes us further down the serps
intitle inanchor version1
version2
I guess my point is I will take the traffic from the common search all day long. The serps from the common search is who I truly want to compete with as this is how our customers find us.
Sorry for the edits, but i cant ever get the freakin quote thing to work.
Without wanting to put words in Rand's mouth, what I think he is saying here is not that you should aim to rank in the more convoluted searches, but rather that it tells you what the real competition is, and therefore what words/phrases should be 'easier' to rank against.
So for your search of web design, adding the advanced searches shows those sites that have actually optimised for the term. Using the standard search, you might think that you;ve got millions of pages of competition who simply aren't even in the race.
That's precisely it, Ciaran :)
Excellent!
I'm glad that the reason we do this matches..
I'm sure that seomoz already has a tool for this, but for those of you that don't, I've created a small page that will build these queries for you, since all that tedious typing is so time consuming.
Click here to see the queries in this article performed on your keywords.
That's just brilliant. I am going to use that alot! Thank you.
Bam, bookmarked in the same folder as Rand's top bookmarklets.
Thanks!
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/30-seo-bookmarklets-to-save-you-time
Awesome, thanks you're a star!!!
Well,This is one of the most comprehensive lists I've seen lately about the assessment of keywords.
I do think, That it has a huge value, but mainly (and only) with relevancy to assessing the competition level and the "noise" which sorrounds a keyword.
What I do miss, and rarely find relevant onformation on, are ways to assess the actual demand for a keyword.
With wordtracker, keyword discovery, yahoo! tool, now the new compete tool and some others- I find the numbers are way off the actual demand.
Moreover, I think we (SEM's) have a real problem defining the actual "demand".
Even if I had the exact number of searches for the keyword "wodget" last month, it can hardly predict the amount next month - as the number is influenced by numerous parameters such as season, taste, news etc.
Therefore, I think the given milestones described here can be a great start to assess a niche market.
Still, I do miss some kind of a benchmark to the actual demand for a niche. This can only be done with data going back 2-3 years, and calculating statistical variances such as market growth, seasons and providing regression models to predit a specific niche demand index.
good idea Crash - might just be a perfect post forthe youmoz section...
Now that was very useful: I wasnt aware taht that we could use the operators in the manner that Rand points out "inanchor:term1 inanchor:term2" - I used the inanchor:"term1 term2" to get results.
Cheers!!!!
yet another bookmarked page from SEOmoz. 'Rands Operands' are very handy indeed...
I think that ranking research is going to become more difficult as the engines ramp up the influence of geolocation factors; I wish there was a big 'off' button for all search personalisation and localisation that I could just switch whenever i need to...
Hi all
I've been reading these posts for the past few months, and finally registered. So a big hello to all. SEOmoz is one of the few rays of light in this dark art, and it's honestly fantastic to see collaboration amongst professionals... I get the feeling even the Google algo would be posted here if 'found' rather than kept to the sole benefit of one SEO (swiftly followed by lawsuits and black helicopters no doubt)!
It's good to know I can use intitle:, inurl: and inanchor: together, but can anyway tell me if I combine with site: to get into the ribs of my own clients' websites? I can't seem to get any results.
e.g. site:www.example.com intitle:london intitle:plumber
Nice post
Nice article. I always start my research on Google, especially using the allintitle and allinanchor search terms. Once I think I've found a couple of good blog topics I then move to other paid tools and services to do a more in depth research.
Very interesting. I have been looking for a tool that will query Google.com or .co.uk with intitle:"keyword 1" inanchor:"keyword 1", does anyone know of such a tool where I can insert a list of keywords and it will return results?
Great stuff. The only thing that can be a bit confusing is during some keyword research, why is that if some people are doing what they supposed to do by optimizing the keywords in the title, anchor tags, etc..
Why is it that sometimes those sites won't show up for the keyword typed by itself and only with intitle: inanchor: ?
I think I understand what you mean: the reason is quite straightforward. When doing a "vanilla" search, their page does show up for the keyword, it just shows up way behind a bunch of other pages! When refining with intitle: etc, it is competing against far less pages and has a better shot at page 1.If I make a blog post on my crummy new blog, perfectly optimised for a competitive term, it won't stand a chance against the top 10/20/100 powerful domain sites, even if their optimisation is less than exemplary.
It's absolutely incredible the amount of work that needs to be done to mine data these days and the best tool seems to be a combination of patience and sheer determination. Very nice an insightful article, BTW.
This is my first comment on this website. I've been referred by a good friend and I'm glad I've got the reference.
This post was strait to the point with clear information. Very valuable for me, thanks again and I'll be back ;)
Great comments and help for rookies through to old timers.
Good to see that open knowledge sharing that has made SEOmoz well known. Keep it up. Keep sharing the love and building the expertise.
lots of thumbs up.
Thanks for the great article Rand. I'm wondeirng if you'd throw more light on the "site:URL - (site:URL-allinurl:URL)" query these days used as a supplementary page count.
Just noticed my date search was set to 24hours, as I followed through the article! How embaressing :)
It does work rather well actually, although combining with inanchor: is a little inaccurate as it brings up pages within the site that Google is adamant no-one links to.
The only way I can see this to be accurate is if inanchor: reports on internal link anchor text also.
Can anyone advise on this?
Another informative post Rand. Thanks!
Along with the operators, I find that Google Trends gives some useful info as well (volume, news info, regions etc) all on one convenient page.
I'm currently in the process of compiling all the juicy operators into one easy reference list. If anyone would like a copy, let me know ;)
Crash,
I'm interested :)
I would like to have a copy of juicy operators
Please email me - zrudman at gmail.com
Thanks!
Hey Crash
Hope you still have this copy availabe, be it 18 months old. Please could you send it to me at the.ceo.office at gmail.com.
Thanks a lot :)
Great post as usual...I see the MAN isn't controlling things yet...but just wait....dun dun duuuuuun...
I still find Google Trends to be the most useful keyword research tool. Sure it has its limitations (higher volume phrases only and only relative popularity) but I've found it to be by far the most accurate -- the best match to the true kw popularity based on our PPC data. Using keyword pairs you can construct a pretty accurate KW hierarchy for any categogy and then couple that with PPC data to figure out the scale. Just remember to select your country market and use quotes for exact match phrases.
What does &start=990 mean/do?
It shows you page 90-91 for that particular search -what is to be focused on is the "Number of results" has changed to a more real number rather than what it was on the 1st page ...
- Perhaps the algo; has a more sense of the actual results the deeper you go into the search ..
-.rb
It's actually the 990th page of results - right to the tail end :)
That takes you to the last page of the Google results where you tend to see a different count of results than on the first page of results. It also has the link at the bottom of the page to repeat your search with previously excluded results.
Forces your results to the end of the SERPs. For example, running a query on term X may have Google report 8,923,209 results. If you append &start=990 to the end of the result url, then you'll often see Google revise the accuracy of the data it gives you, such as Google admitting it really only has 8,192 results for term X.
I've not seen a clear reason for this effect openly shared, but I have observed the behavior myself.
Great post, any chance that a new SEOMoz tool will be built using some of these techniques?
Very nice article. Search engine queries where something I felt I needed to do some more research into at somepoint but you've done it for me!
Great article Rand.
I'm using a lot more allintitle, allinanchor etc.
You can also check related terms on https://livesearch.alltheweb.com/
Thanks Rand. I've used many of these searches for a while now, but I know I underutilize the advanced operators in competitive research. I probably don't combine operators as much as I should and I've never really taken advantage of the wildcard character.
I appreciate the reminder and some new searches to try.
Hey Rand
Great use of the advanced search operators. I use them to determine if I should take a new client or not.
The idea of putting them together or into usage for each word of a phrase is genius.
Peace!
I'm probably missing the obvious, but I've never founds a tool where I can upload a list of X keyword phrases and have it return to me the corresponding # of search results per phrase (whether that is the number from page one or after 990). I'd love to just copy out of spreadsheet, dump it into a form, and get back a list of numbers I can then paste into the adjacent column of the spreadsheet.
Bueller? Bueller?
I would like to poll everyone and see how they are using these operators. There seem to be multiple ways and all seem to have different results.
3 search queries
inanchor:credit repair
inanchor:"credit repair"
inanchor:credit inanchor:repair
Rand seems to favor using the third, but is there documentation on which one is actually the most accurate? Also are certain operators more accurate one way compared to the other?
I persoanlly have been using inanchor:"credit repair" formats.
This is how I read the 3 formats.
inanchor:credit repair - Searches for "repair" with the serp results only containing results that have the word "credit" in their anchor text.
inanchor:"credit repair" - Searches for pages that have the exact anchor text of "credit repair". "credit repair companies" would not qualify as a matching anchor text.
inanchor:credit inanchor:repair - Searches for pages that have anchor text that include both words "credit" & "repair". "credit repair companies" & "credit report repair" would all qualify to be returned as a result.
Would love to hear feedback on other people interpritation.
that's a good question. it sounds to me like you got it. and if so, then i would personally prefer using [inanchor:credit inanchor:repair] for competitive research to get the variations. i would think if your competitor is using those terms they'd be smart to mix it up and not just use "credit repair" everytime.
i didn't want to add another "great article, rand!" but, umm, great article, rand!
You got it.
What people need to be careful with though is that they often enter the first one in when they really want the second or third. And always remember no space after :
inanchor:credit repair - a butter knife... a dull, blunt, serves a purpose and might be used in ways it wasn't meant to.
inanchor:credit inanchor:repair - a steak knife... sharp and to the point, cuts through, but not entirely a precision instrument.
inanchor:"credit repair" - a boning knife... a precision instrument, practically surgical, but also a specialty tool meant for very specific purposes.
Which is best, the right tool to use? All of them, depending on the job at hand.
Great post.
Another essential tool is an Adwords campaign. On competitive term sets, we've used a 30 ppc campaign with generous spend to get accurate numbers about search volume. Then we use tools like these to analyze the competitive marketplace for the terms that really matter (at least at Google, which is 80% of the battle anyway).
Great list Rand. What I'd really like to see is a company like Hitwise (or even Google) allow us to query its data and show us what terms are driving which searchers to which sites (and not have to pay $25K for it).
Just like Rand.
When we start to rest on our laurels he lets us know just how lazy we really are.
Google Sets and the external Adwords tool (if free is still a requirement--although $5 is pretty cheap) are handy for finding synonyms and LSI related terms as well.
How about using KeywordSpy? - This will give you an opportunity to immediately track down your competitors and gather keywords for the promotional campaign of your online business. It offers Free trials.
KeywordSpy is keyword research technology where you can also earn and even surpass what your competitors are making with Google Adwords and Overture. KeywordSpy gives you the key to their success: a good ad-campaign with the right keywords.
It also has a ClickBank Affiliates Search Engine where you can see the actual market landscape at ClickBank.