Keyword research is critical to the process of SEO. Without this component, your efforts to rank well in the major search engines may be mis-directed to the wrong terms and phrases, resulting in rankings that no one will ever see. The process of keyword research involves several phases:
- Brainstorming - Thinking of what your customers/potential visitors would be likely to type in to search engines in an attempt to find the information/services your site offers (including alternate spellings, wordings, synonyms, etc).
- Surveying Customers - Surveying past or potential customers is a great way to expand your keyword list to include as many terms and phrases as possible. It can also give you a good idea of what's likely to be the biggest traffic drivers and produce the highest conversion rates.
- Applying Data from KW Research Tools - Several tools online (including Wordtracker & Overture - both described below) offer information about the number of times users perform specific searches. Using these tools can offer concrete data about trends in keyword selection.
- Term Selection - The next step is to create a matrix or chart that analyzes the terms you believe are valuable and compares traffic, relevancy, and the likelihood of conversions for each. This will allow you to make the best informed decisions about which terms to target. SEOmoz's KW Difficulty Tool can also aid in choosing terms that will be achievable for the site.
- Performance Testing and Analytics - After keyword selection and implementation of targeting, analytics programs (like Indextools and ClickTracks) that measure web traffic, activity, and conversions can be used to further refine keyword selection.
Wordtracker & Overture
| Overture Keyword Selection Tool
| Wordtracker Simple Search Utility
|
Currently, the two most popular sources of keyword data are Wordtracker, whose statistics come primarily from use of the meta-search engine Dogpile (which has ~1% of the share of searches performed online) and Overture (recently re-branded as Yahoo! Search Marketing), which offers data collected from searches performed on Yahoo!'s engine (with a 22-28% share). While neither's data is flawless or entirely accurate, both provide good methods for measuring comparative numbers. For example, while Overture and Wordtracker may disagree on numbers and say that "red bicycles" gets 240 vs. 380 searches per day (across all engines), both will generally indicate that this is a more popular term than "scarlet bicycles", "maroon bicycles", or even "blue bicycles."
In Wordtracker, which provides more detail but has a considerably smaller share of data, terms and phrases are separated by capitalization, plurality, and word ordering. In the Overture tool, multiple search phrases are combined. For example, Wordtracker would independently show numbers for "car loans", "Car Loans", "car loan", and "cars Loan", whereas Overture would give a single number that encompasses all of these. The granularity of data can be more useful for analyzing searches that may result in unique results pages (plurals often do and different word orders almost always do), but capitalization is of less consequence as the search engines don't deliver different results based on capitalization.
Remember that Wordtracker and Overture are both useful tools for relative keyword data, but can be highly inaccurate when compared to the actual number of searches performed. In other words, use the tools to select which terms to target, but don't rely on them for predicting the amount of traffic you can achieve. If your goal is estimating traffic numbers, use programs like Google's Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing to test the number of impressions a particular term/phrase gets.
Targeting the Right Terms
Targeting the best possible terms is of critical importance. This encompasses more than merely measuring traffic levels and choosing the highest trafficked terms. An intelligent process for keyword selection will measure each of the following:
- Conversion Rate - the percent of users searching with the term/phrase that converts (click an ad, buy a product, complete a transaction, etc.)
- Predicted Traffic - An estimate of how many users will be searching for the given term/phrase each month
- Value per Customer - An average amount of revenue earned per customer using the term or phrase to search - comparing big-ticket search terms vs. smaller ones.
- Keyword Competition - A rough measurement of the competitive environment and the level of difficulty for the given term/phrase. This is typically measured by metrics that include the number of competitors, the strength of those competitors' links, and the financial motivation to be in the sector. SEOmoz's Keyword Difficulty Tool can assist in this process.
Once you've analyzed each of these elements, you can make effective decisions about the terms and phrases to target. When starting a new site, it's highly recommended to target only one or possibly two unique phrases on a single page. Although it is possible to optimize for more phrases and terms, it's generally best to keep separate terms on separate pages, as you can provide individualized information for each in this manner. As websites grow and mature, gaining links and legitimacy with the engines, targeting multiple terms per page becomes more feasible.
The Long Tail of Search
The "long tail" is a concept pioneered by Chris Anderson (the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, who runs the Long Tail blog). From Chris's description:
The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.
This concept relates exceptionally well to keyword search terms in the major engines. Although the largest traffic numbers are typically for broad terms at the "head" of the keyword curve, great value lies in the thousands of unique, rarely used, niche terms in the "tail." These terms can provide higher conversion rates and more interested and valuable visitors to a site, as these specific terms can relate to exactly the topics, products, and services your site provides.
For example:
men's suit 27,770 armani men's suit 723 italian men's suit 615 Jones New York Men's Suit 424 Men's 39S Suit 310 Gucci Men's Suit 222 Versace Men's Suit 178 Hugo Boss Men's Suit 138 Men's Custom Made Suit 126
In the scenario in the table above, the traffic for the term "men's suit" may be far greater, but the value of more specific terms is greater. A searcher for "Hugo Boss Men's Suit" is more likely to make a purchase decision than one searching for simply a "men's suit." There are also thousands of other terms, garnering far fewer monthly searches, that, when taken together, have a value greater than the terms garnering the most searches. Thus, targeting many dozens or hundreds of smaller terms individually can be both easier (on a competitive level) and more profitable.
Sample Keyword Research Chart
The following chart diagrams how we conduct basic keyword research at SEOmoz. You are welcome to copy and use this format for your own keywords:
| Term/Phrase | KW Difficulty | Top 3 OV Bids | OV Mthly Pred. Traf. | WT Mthly Pred. Traf. | Relevance Score |
| San Diego Zoo | 63% | $0.41 $0.41 $0.40 | 116,229 | 42,360 | 25% |
| Joe Dimaggio | 51% | $0.28 $0.19 $0.11 | 5,847 | 7,590 | 10% |
| Starsky and Hutch | 53% | $0.16 $0.00 $0.00 | 19,769 | 16,950 | 30% |
| Art Museum | 77% | $0.51 $0.50 $0.25 | 19,244 | 7,410 | 5% |
| DUI Attorney | 52% | $1.63 $1.62 $1.60 | 13,923 | 3,960 | 60% |
| Search Engine Marketing | 83% | $4.99 $3.26 $3.25 | 1,183,633 | 74,430 | 40% |
| Microsoft | 89% | $0.69 $0.51 $0.32 | 1,525,265 | 256,620 | 10% |
| Interest Only Mortgage Loan | 50% | $4.60 $4.39 $4.39 | 3,745 | 8,910 | 75% |
Key
- KW Difficulty - The score from SEOmoz's tool
- Top 3 OV Bids - The bid amount from the top 3 listings in Yahoo!'s PPC results
- Overture Monthly Predicted Traffic - The amount of traffic estimated via Overture for the previous month's data
- Wordtracker Monthly Predicted Traffic - The amount of traffic estimated via Wordtracker (note that you must add up all terms in their database that match and multiply by the number of days in the month - the "exact/precise search" function can help make this easier)
- Relevance Score - The % of searchers using this term/phrase that you feel are likely to be interested in your site's products/services/offerings. Although this is a subjective number, you can use conversion rates or click-through rates from previous campaigns to more accurately estimate this in the future.
In selecting final terms, those with lower difficulty, higher relevance, and more traffic will offer the greatest value.
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