Omar Kattan

Archive for the ‘Keyword Research’ Category

Google announced the release of Google insights for Search which provides more insight into  search behavior, and adds some cool new features like a world heat map to graphically display search volume and regional interest.

Like Google Trends, you can just type in a search term to see search volume patterns over time, as well as the top related and rising searches.

The tool also allows for comparison of search volume trends across multiple search terms, categories (verticals), geographic regions, or specific time ranges.

This is a great tool to use to give an added dimension to your keyword research!

According to the Wikipedia, Latent semantic analysis (LSA) is a technique in natural language processing, in particular in vectorial semantics, of analyzing relationships between a set of documents and the terms they contain by producing a set of concepts related to the documents and terms.

Google uses LSA in its algorithm when determining which pages to serve back to users, the process is called latent semantic indexing (LSI).

Here is a quick way to discover what words Google sees are semantically related to the word you’re trying to optimise for:

In the Google search box preceed your keyword by ~. so for instance if you’re trying to see what keywords Google sees as semantically related to the keyword tennis, type in the Google search box ~tennis.  Here is what you’ll see .  Note all the keywords that Google bolds (besides tennis).  These words like Wimbledon, Sport, and WTA are all semantically related to the keyword “tennis”.

How do you use this information?  Whenever you’re writing new copy for your website, make sure to include semantically related words in the title, meta description and copy of your website.

Also try to get as many links pointing to your site with your original keywords as well as words semantically related to it.

Google’s Keyword research tool found at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal has been updated to include actual number of searches per keyword and suggested keywords.  This is a fantastic development for both paid (PPC) as well as natural search (SEO) campaigns as we can factor Google’s data into the keyword research projects conducted for clients.

More imprtantly, this update will enable us to measure Google’s data against a client’s very own analytics data to begin to understand the synergies between paid and natural search and to better advise how to spend our client’s money for maximum ROI (return on investment).

 Some of the benefits of the new functionality in the Google Adwords tool: 

• Discover high-traffic keywords to include in AdWords campaigns.

• Maximise ROI by analysing CPC and search volume data side by side.

• Identify niche keywords to be be included in Adwords campaigns.

• Analyse average search volume figures to get a better understanding of keyword seasonality.

The official Google Adwords Blog has further information on this new development.

Here are some tools I use for estimating traffic potential for keywords:

Google Adwords Tool

The Google Adwords traffic estimation tool gives you an estimation of traffic to a particular keyword(s) or allows you to plug in a URL for a particular site to crawl and bring back suggestions. 

The figures from Adwords are displayed in graphs and not actual numbers, but it gives you a good place to start you keyword research as it generates lots of suggestions.  Keep in mind though that this tool is based on PPC traffic, not natural. 

Keyword Discovery

Keyword Discovery is by far my favourite tool out there.  It allows you to plug in a keyword and outputs suggestions including estimated daily searches.  Its data is compiled from 180 search engines. 

If you had some money to invest I would recommend investing in the commercial version of this tool.

Word Tracker

Word Tracker also allows gives you suggestions based on a seed keyword including daily estimates.  Its figures are based on statistics from Meta Crawlers (such as dogpile.com and metacrawler.com) which account for 0.63% of all global searches).  Word Tracker is a good tool, but if you had a choice between Wordtracker and Keyword  Discovery I would go with Keyword Discovery (see above)

Wikipedia Traffic Estimation Tool

The Wikipedia shows up for more and more generic (1 word) keyword phrases than any other site out there.  This tool, that estimates daily page views from the Wikipedia, allows you to get an idea of keyword potential (you need to account for 15-20% internal search traffic from within the Wiki)

SubmitExpress.com

This tool from Submit Express combines the results from both Keyword Discovery and Word Tracker in one interface, very handy and saves lots of valuable time!

Everybody knows that getting on the number one position in any of the search engines, and especially the big G, has its rewards in the form of lots and lots of (if you’ve done your keyword research correctly) very valuable and free targeted traffic.

Whats frustrating to most though is how much traffic?  Keyword estimation tools such as Keyword Discovery, and Wordtrackergive you a rough guesstimate of how much traffic a certain keyword generates overall but does not tell you how that figure is broken down.

Luckily, there are a few studies out there that have estimated the click through rates on the various positions in the search engines (mainly Google).  SEOmoz, estimates clickthrough rates for SERPS as follows:

While another study conducted by a group of students at New York’s Cornell University predicts the following clickthrough rates in the Google SERPS (search engine results pages):

• Position 1 receives 56.36% of the clicks

• Position 2 receives 13.45% 

• Position 3 receives 9.82%

• Position 4 receives 4.00%

• Position 5 receives 4.73%

• Position 6 receives 3.27%

• Position 7 receives 0.36%

• Position 8 receives 2.91%

• Position 9 receives 1.45%

• Position 10 receives 2.55%

As you can see, the above SERP clickthrough estimates show that ranking above the fold -and especially in the top 3 positions- generates between 60 to 80% of all possible clickthroughs for any keyword.

Lesson to take from this post..make sure you (or your seo agency) make efforts to rank above the fold (top 3 serp positions), anything less is just not good enough!