One of my colleagues sent me a link to a fun little tool that he had been using from Wordtracker Labs, the people who brought you the fantastic keyword suggestion tool. You type in a word and it tells you what questions people have been asking on their partner search engines within the last 140 days containing that word. A lot of people have been talking about the benefits for SEO work that a tool like this can provide, and there is no doubt that that is the case, but there is also one massive benefit for anyone running a Paid Search account. For PPC this is a great source of potential negative keywords, particularly for those broad match terms that you can’t switch off but you know produce unspecified quantities of irrelevant traffic. After all, most of these will never click on your ad so they will not show up in the Search Query Report and will allow you to easily eliminate them with negative keywords.
If you are running a PPC campaign for an online bed shop, for example, typing in ‘bed’ gets you 100 results that immediately produce potential negative keywords. Some you will no doubt have already thought of this, but there are always new (and ridiculous) questions for you to create negatives from. In this list of 100 questions about ‘bed’, only 1 was about someone wishing to purchase an item and that was for a pillow. The list of potential negatives includes the usual internet preoccupation with sex:
- How to last longer in bed
- How to please a man in bed
- What to say when talking dirty in bed
- How to get rid of bed bugs
- How to build a bed
- How to get cat from under bed
Quirky:
- How long was brian wilson in bed
- How can i wet the bed on purpose
- How do people lay on a bed of nails
And also the downright wrong (and yes, “wetting the bed on purpose” guy is quirky compared to these – read on):
- How to get your sister in bed
- How should i get my mom into bed with me
I'm noticing the prevalence data on the questions is a bit lacking though; some pretty potent keywords are only showing up 100-150 results (in the last 140 days?). This is likely because the tool is only showing queries in the form of a question; I'm also unsure of how far-reaching their search engine partners are (e.g. does it include Google). I guess it can be used as you said for negative keyword research, but if the incidences are so small I'm not sure if it's worth excluding.
Some idea of how statistically relevant these numbers are would be helpful, though I guess you can just turn around and plug some of the more awkward questions into Google and see if your site(s) show up as the sponsored or organic results. Though that will just increase the prevalence of getting mom into bed if enough keyword-paranoid people search for it ;)
My observation over the years.....
Wordtracker ⇒ Bares no resemblance to reality
Google Keyword Tool ⇒ Resembles reality
Creat an AdWords campaign, test and monitor ⇒ Close to reality
- Michael
Michael,
I agree that 3rd party keyphrase research tools are rough guesses at best but the thing I do like about this tool is not the search volume figures (I ignore those) but rather the natural language phrases - it allows you to find some very interesting negative keyprhases for your PPC account - and you don't need to know search volume for that.
Hah ... it's Monday morning and I'm slowly trying to wake up here with my coffee. This post is this first thing I've read this week and I must say, it's been a good way to start it off. I am always halfway between being completely amused and completely disgusted when performing keyword research.
I am about to compile a negative keyword list for our own corporate site for a PPC campaign ... I am dreading the infinite list of sicko keywords associated with the term "web site" ... I'm sure I'll get some good ones that I'll be nudging the guy beside me to check out ...
Thanks to everyone for the kind comments - much appreciated.
And Will, if the internet (and youtube in particular) tells us anything, the answer to 'how to get a cat out from under the bed' is that cats do what they want...he'll come out when he's damn well ready.
By the way this doesn't really work for some smaller niches...here's a good way to find some questions about what a person is asking directly from Google Suggestions:
1. Go to google.com with suggestion turned on
2. Type your main phrase for example "learn spanish"
3. After typing it, leave space
4. Try with different letters. Write 'a' and you'll get suggestions like "learn spanish abroad", "learn spanish at home", then try "b" and you'll get suggestions like "learn spanish books etc etc"...
It sounds like of obvious yet I don't know many people who said they are using this huge advantage. Google Suggest can be used as a keyword tool definitely!
Even i agree with this and rather then tool from word tracker i like to use google suggest more.
Nice first 'moz post, Rich. I could do with an answer to the one about getting a cat out from under your bed.... I'll pass on the others.
I just came across that tool myself today (um..in a wordtracker email that's been languishing in my inbox - and I wasn't even at Pubcon). Very cool. I'm looking forward to using it to come up with some fantastic content ideas.
Rich this is hilarious and helpful, the way I like all my SEM advice.
This reminds me of the time I started typing "why did" in Google and the top suggestion was "why did I get married". You're spot-on about negative keywords and layman suggestion tools... it's easy to forget how many crazy (and unfortunately non-revenue-generating) things people are looking for on the Internet.
nice Einstein quote!
Hours of entertainment if you accidentally type in the wrong keywords. ;-)
I run many PPC and use negative keywords a lot to refine the search a bit better. will play with the tool some more. Thanks for the link.
Lovely and straightforward - just how I like it. I think it's unfortunate that many websites can get dragged into negative SERPs for targeting the wrong keywords and not taking the right steps to protect themselves when it comes to certain keywords/phrases.
It's just a pity that those tools generally don't work in other languages than English.
For example: the extremely popular Dutch word 'voetbal' (=soccer) produces exactly 0 results.
Isn't Pubcon over? Or, is this Pubcon recovery week?
In any case, nice post although based on some of your results I'm not sure I wan to do any research on "what people are really looking for"...yikes!
Judging by the number of emails in my inbox, fires to be put out, and general state of un-Vegas-like activity I'm in, yes, Sean, Pubcon is most definitely over.
:(
Awesome post. This is the first time I hear about this tool. The biggest benefit in my opinion is the ability to figure out what information people are looking for about your subject, then all you need to do is to create content based on theses questions. This tool help you give to your users what they are looking for - answers to their questions.
Thanks for the post, nice way to break the ice.
Richard, hey, interesting post.
I have been thinking more and more about negative keywords as a way of controlling waste... a lot of good work can be done here.
One of my big concerns is "over filtering," especially w/ negative keywords. Speaking of Google, the "negative match options" alone make this work potentially tretcherous. I bet a LOT of advertising are "broad negative matching" terms that are blocking searches they could be making money from. I hate to miss volume.
In that way... I think *actual* bad traffic is better source for negative keywords (SQ reports, etc.). Traffic that does drive waste, as opposed to keywords that maybe/might cause waste, who knows. As Chomsky says, "No a priori conclusions."
We are trying to be smart w/ our clients with the options for optimizing... however, at the end of the day, we need to make "profitable volume" go up. Right? Sales need to go up, month over month, or we're in trouble as consultants. I worry about spending a lot of time to narrow, restrict, and potentially block volume.
[Guy
DroidINDUSTRIES
Nothing beats data. If you can see the queries people type and use analytics to see which convert, you can negative out the non-converting words and phrases. Otherwise it's just guesswork.
I used this tool for the first time in conjuction with Google Keywords (UK) for a client quite recently...really just looking for content ideas at the inception of a new blog. Really came in handy as the client is trying to build an online resource, it provided a long list of questions to answer...a bit more keyword research and analysis around that list and it provided a great starting point for the blog...it's been helpful for me so far anyway...
I have used this tool quite a bit in the last couple weeks, but I am using it in conjunction with Google Trends. I then take that and compare it to some adwords data and the numbers are interesting. The Wordtracker lab is nice because it doesn't require a subscription currently. Nice article BTW.
I'm ashamed to say that I had a website up until about a year ago that ranked in the top 3 on google for "how to please a man in bed".... nothing sordid but it was a bit of an eye opener. I'd used the content to entice visitors in... nice to see its still showing in keyword research... ahem... ;)
It's good to know that you're knowledagble on how to please a man in bed...well done! Just kidding! ;)
LOL yeah I know.... the wife gave me some funny looks too when I showed her the results and admitted I had written the content!