There are a variety of tools and techniques recommended for SEO keyword research, from the free to the expensive, from the well-known to those that are almost kept a secret. However, there's one source of keyword ideas which is often overlooked: the customers (and potential customers) served on a daily basis.
Let's get sidetracked for a moment: I've lost track of the number of people at agencies who have been asked the question "If you're so good at SEO, why don't you rank for 'SEO in New York'?" (Or wherever the agency is based.)
The answers vary, but one important thing is almost always the same: when you look at the off-line inquiries, people rarely phone up an SEO agency and say "Hello, I'd like you to perform some SEO for me, to cover a variety of tasks including keyphrase research, on site recommendations and link building" - the phone call is more likely to begin with "Hi there, er, I have a website where I sell my widgets, but I want to sell more, and I think I need to promote the site better online. Someone said there might be stuff you could do to help me?".
To mine this rich source of keywords, you want to teach your front-line staff to spot the 'keyphrases' that are embedded within the first three or four statements the enquirer makes, such as 'sell more online' or 'promote my website'.
Your new, killer Keyword Research Tool
Get Your Hands Dirty
Of course, you don't need to be a fashionable new industry like search marketing to make this work for you.
Let's say you work for an auto garage. One of the most popular services you offer is tire balancing - it noticeably helps improve a vehicle's driving experience, but it's not too expensive (though it has good margins). The page on your website is well targeted towards 'tire balancing' and ranks fairly well in your area, but doesn't receive many visits or have a great conversion rate.
You head down to the garage and ask the mechanic how many tire balancings he's done recently.
"We've had three in just this morning", replies the helpful greasemonkey.
"And they all came here because they know we do tire balancing?" you ask, naively.
"Aw, no - all three just said their steering wheel was vibrating when they were on the freeway, so it had to be the balance was off," he replies.
You've heard what you needed to, and without another word you race back to the office, and update the page. The new title reads "Steering wheel vibrating? We'll fix it in 1 hour with tire balancing" and the rest of the page is updated too. You not only start to receive more traffic, but it converts better as well.
Showing staff - whether they are receptionists, shop assistants, hard working mechanics or professionals - the value of spotting these keywords will help you gather a rich source of new targetable ideas, and it's one that your competitors won't be able to get to.
Keyphrase research? Oooh, that's gonna cost ya....
Next stop: New Keyphrases
You can also go one-step-removed to get keyword ideas.
National Express are a UK-wide coach service (a little like the Greyhounds in the US) that get you from A to B more slowly and much more cheaply than taking the train. Their site targets terms such as 'coach trip from Bath to Newcastle' etc.
However, if I were them, I'd be calling the travel agents who have made bookings on behalf of customers, to find out what people asked for, when the booking ended up with a coach trip being the right answer. It's possible that phrases such as 'overnight journey to Newcastle' or 'cheap way to get up North' will have actually come up in conversation, and the agents have then recommended a coach trip.
These phrases should then definitely be considered for targeting on the site.
Loitering with Intent to Research
One final example, from a conversation overheard in a garden center, between a customer (played by a middle aged female, looking lost) and the sales assistant (an underpaid college kid, looking increasingly confused):
- Customer: Hi, where could I find a mopsy?
- Assistant: I .. I'm sorry ma'am?
- Customer: You know, the thing I can screw to a wall to grow plants up?
- Assistant: Do you mean a trellis?
- Customer: Ah yes! I knew it was the name of one of my daughter's rabbits.
If I worked for an online garden supplies website, I'd have immediately made a note to write a blog post about 'How to Grow Plants up a Wall.' I also think I'd have spent the rest of the afternoon hanging around to listen to what else people were asking for by description or by describing their problem, rather than searching for an item by name.
Whatever your niche, see if there's a place you can hang out to get the opportunity for this kind of real world keyword research.
It's Search Marketing
It's been said many times that a significant part of sales and/or marketing is to solve each customer's problem. This is just another way of getting you close to that goal, and bring you new business at the same time.
CC Photo Attribution:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pepemichelle/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
I find the phone call usually starts with "I sell widgets. How much do you charge for a #1 ranking on Google?"
Le sigh.
you mean they sell widgets and don't want to be #1 for blue widgets?
le sigh LOL Pepe! It's a shame you can't employ Mad Magazine's "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions"
Customer: "How much do you charge for a #1 ranking on Google?"
You: "I could get you a #1 ranking for "Stupid Idiot" for less than $1"
Thanks for sharing this little great tip, which is based on a fundamental assumption: listen before talk.
A basic rule that sometimes we forget due to having in mind some "standard answers" in order - especially - to fasten the pre-contract phase of the job.
That's the reason why I give in my contact form a big space for my potential clients to describe what's their webs about, which is its market, to describe with their own words what problems they're having and what should be the objective of contracting a web marketing agency.
Then, even if I use a standard template answer (a small pre SEO analysis + budget quote), I personalize my answer to the client using is own words.
In a corollary function, this method helps me also to understand the "language" and "knowledge" of the clients, which is great in order to mimic them and be more understood.
Great Post. I think this is one of the most frustrating things about offering SEO/SEM services to a client.
Yes, we understand you want to rank for "Blue Widget" but do you know if people are searching for that term/phrase? "Well they must be, that's what we do". And the conversation goes back and forth like this for minutes, hours, days, etc.
In the end you have to show them, as you have given a great example above, how finding out the way their customer thinks and searches is much more important than doing what they think people will search for. "Blue Widget" might be "Colored, thingamabob" to someone else.
Another great source for this kind of insight is available 24/7...turn to strong forums that cover your topic area. Here you'll find the newbie and experienced exchanging in communication, so you'll hopefully see the spectrum of language used.
The nice part is, you can perform searches for the "proper/technical" terms, then scour the thread to find other language used. You may also find that certain forum areas (How to, Tips, Help, etc.) may provide more insight than others. Best of all, this is something that someone could do on their own with whatever time they have.
Blog comments, Yahoo Answers & similar may also provide this kind of insight.
review sites and industry news can also help.
Great Article... I never thought of a way of Keyword reasearch without using traditional tools, when I can fine some good keywords in my clients mails as they mention their objetcives there. Well, I'll try to review all of those mails and will try to add few more keywords in my projects. Thakns for this great article :)
Great post! I never would have thought that the best keyword research tool isn't labeled as a "keyword research tool".
And the worst part is now you guys rank for "how to grow plants up a wall"!
Call it Long Tail ;)
And I was really hoping to dominate that niche!
Great, SEOmoz just made it that much harder :)
So true. Client's don't use SEO terminology because that's not their business. They use the words that make sense to them. There'a a similar article/case study here.
Nice article you linked to kristof. Thanks.
Good note... before people start to thumb him down without thinking.
Yea appreciate the article, thanks!
Great post!
I also had a great experience sending a brief survey out to a clients current customer base asking them for what words they associate with the brand and products - incentive to fill the survey was a pretty spectacular discount on their next purchase.
A large portion of the reponses were words we already were targeting, but we found quite a few keyphrases that are now producing moderate traffic but have very high conversion rates.
awesome post. Here are more ways to conduct real time keyword research and find money keywords:1. Ask sales and marketing people how they promote and sell their products/services.What is their sales pitch? How they start their sales presentation, how they describe their products, its features, its benefits, what type of inquires or complain they get from their prospective clients and what clients look for in a product before taking a purchase decision. Since these guys deal with clients on daily basis, they are the walking talking goldmine of money keywords. I just can't imagine a real time keyword research without their help. 2. Other guys who can help tons in keyword research are the guys from the quality assurance and control department. These guys have access to all the recordings of voice and text based interactions between sales people and clients. Analysis of these recordings can help in discovering wealth of money keywords. 3. Any voice or text based Interaction between you and your client via skype, emails, face to face etc can also help in finding money keywords. You just need to be attentive.
SEO is a mainstream marketing activity for a reason.
Point 1 is the best one of the three you listed: what clients ask to your client. They are real life keywords, and many times source of incredible surprise.
Anyway, to dig into the client daily experience is key, also because an SEO is not bornt (literally traduction from napolitain dialect: "nasce imparato") with the knowledge of every market.
point 2 works better for in-house SEOs who work in big companies as there voice and text based interactions are generally recorded for quality management. Anyways the point is to get and stay in touch with sales and marketing people and customer support of your client throughout your project tenure. They can help not only in keyword research but also in CRO.. Nobody understand the client's industry, products and market better than these people.
Nice points, Himanshu. When I do keyword research (and I am a keyword junkie), I listen carefully to how the client describes the business and ask them to send me as many marketing materials and possible. The nucleus of my research is the clients USP (unique selling proposition). That's that the business is all about. A few times I have run into clients/prospects that did not have one, and those are usually grateful to me for forcing them to write one.
But one caveat (and Rob's post more than hints at this) is that marketing language is often far removed from the way searches and users verbalize their need. Roughly put,
1. The marketer tends to use the "head" of the keyword list (a handful of cometitive industry terms) while customers talk in longtail.
2. The marketer's language is terminologically precise, the customer's is often colloquial and imprecise (see the "mopsy" example in Rob's post).
I did SEO and AdWords for a company that wanted to target the term "email server," and we were able to generate lots of additional traffic via search terms such as "email sender," "mailer," "mail messenger," "mails sender" etc.
Lastly, sometimes the client will send you a keyword list unprompted. "We want to tank for the following keywords..." More often than not, this will be a combination of terms that are so broad as to be nearly irrelevant to conversions and of others that no one is searching for. Be patient. Educating is a major unsung part of SEO work.
Thanks for the excellent post, Rob.
This seems to be one of those head-smacking "duh" moments!
The first thing I do when I'm researching sites to put links on is put myself in the customer's shoes. I say, "Okay, if I were a guy who loves working on my truck and making it run better and look cooler, which sites would I visit and which words would I most likely enter in the search bar to get to those sites?"
Most of the analytical stuff for SEO is still way over my head and I haven't dabbled in keyword/keyphrase research much, so this is a common sense way of going about getting what I want. Works pretty well. You have to "speak their language."
:)
Thanks for this. It's all too easy to get tied up in heavy traffic or vanity keywords ESPECIALLY when using online keyword tools.
These "back to basics" type strategies are a good way to source traffic with a higher tendency to convert once you have them on the site.
Thats a great little post as it shows how easy it is to get that information, no 3 page questionnaires just simple questions that lead to more than yes/no answers.
I'm not sure every agency is ready to actually get their hands dirty, and you mean you might have to visit a client... oh damn... ;)
Note: i don't rank for "seo in brisbane" because the Google Local team has flagged my account... but im sure i could get a new account and get ranked for another city...
What? Why The Lost Agency is the best SEO in Brisbane. It's simply common knowledge that for Best SEO in Brisbane The Lost Agency is #1!
(would have put links in if Jen would have let it slide)
Its one of the reasons I love Adwords!
You let it run a while on broad matched keywords then run a Search Query Report to see what search terms folks really used to find your blue widgets... or trellis...
An interesting use for AdWords data, although not sure I could recommend that. I just inherited a new account, and one of their core brands is "Silva". During a branding exercise recently they used "Silva" as a broad match. Silva are a wholesome, practical, Swedish company who make binoculars, pedometers, weather monitors and the like.
Unfortunately, this term is quite like "Silvia Saint", at least according to Google. If you don't know who she is, I advise you not to use Google to find out - especially if you happen to be using your home computer and have a wife/girlfriend/kids. Or indeed a boyfriend, although they may be more intrigued than angry...
Thanks for this.
Reminds me of the post I read in Youmoz on the 5 minute keyword research tool https://www.seomoz.org/ugc/the-5-minute-offline-commercial-intent-keyword-research-tool
I guess most times we always forget who we're actually supposed to be doing the SEO for and articles like this help remind us about that tiny little detail.
Another great way to get into the mind of potential customers is to read customer reviews, forum discussions etc.
By reading this we'll be able to see which synonyms they use + see some very nice long tail suggestions.
A basic principle in marketing is sell benefits not features.
You are not selling state of the art break pads, you are selling
safety. The lives of the customers' children are at stake.
When creating copy, it pays to ask better questions.
There is a story about a famous copywriter who was
trying to come up with the hook to sell a golfing
course. When the copywriter discovered that the
trainer only had one arm, he had the story that would
draw the buyer in. A one armed golfer who plays professional
level golf.
This applies to search because people search to solve a problem or
get information.
I happen to be a certified handwriting analyst. I know that
people don't wake up in the morning thinking, "I need to hire
a handwriting analyst". They are thinking about "Which person
am I going to hire?" or "Why does this person act like that?"
They need insight that my service can give them. They need
the benefit of understanding someone's personality better.
I like it. I 'humanizes' keyword research much more then I currently do.
Excelent examples! Loved trhe simplicity you achieved with the tire balancing one.
Terrific insights here Rob. Being in customer service for the better part of 16 years I can tell you it always pays to listen to your clients. ;-)
Cheers,
Kevin
very good, all searches are completed by humans not Analytics. We sometime forget this.
concentrate on the problem not the solution and the solution will become obvious.
This is a great post. It is amazing how businesses do not value the power of internal feedback.
Getting staff to spot keywords that help with marketing is something that does NOT happen often enough.
Thanks for this. Intresting article, its shows that sometimes the ansers we are looking for are infornt of us.
And another strong post from the House o' Distilled!
I'm not sure which I liked better Rob. Your post (which was spot on) or the retro graphics that gave me a warm fuzzy feeling. But in combination they make a smashing post.
The comments have been great too. I'm printing the whole shebang out for my "keyword" binder.
Hey, thanks.
I'd give it another day or so before printing out the comments - they're shaping up to be pretty awesome.
Intresting article, its shows that sometimes the ansers we are looking for are infornt of us.
Thanks for pointin it out.
it pays to listen to our clients in general, but dividends for keyword research.
Thanks for this, a useful reminder for refining keyword operations and not getting bogged down in what the last commentor called 'vanity' keywords.
"vanity keywords" - that's a good name for it.
Creative thinking - gotta love it :-)
simple and outstanding
Like most good ideas this seems obvious once you have pointed it out, thanks. It is important to listen to the client as they know their business and the terms in use. Even if each of the suggested terms do not have significant traffic by using a combination of terms the traffic numbers accumulate.
Thanks for nice posting....
Good information....its gonna be much useful with some common instinct.....
I m gonna apply it seriously n get back with results soon...