There is more to keyword research than just search volume and researching competitors. It is key to understand your customer base and their search behavior.  For example, there are many tools such as Google Insights and Google Trends that can help you better understand what’s trending and how searchers find your product or service. It may also be beneficial to conduct a survey to gain insight into how your customer makes a purchase decision.

As you are conducting keyword research and trying to find the best opportunities, there are some factors to consider when planning for long term success.  A search marketing strategy, like any business strategy should have both long and short term goals.  While every search marketing strategy should focus on profitability, there are other factors that help build the credibility of your brand. These factors are difficult to measure; however, if you consider the principles I’ve outlined below and take some time to better understand your consumer; it will greatly affect the results of your search marketing efforts.

Outlined here are the stages of the consumer research process when making a purchase decision.  The time from beginning to end of the cycle can vary greatly depending on the price and technicality of the product or service.

Awareness of a Need

This is the beginning of every purchase decision and can be stimulated by a need or want.  It could be as basic as being hungry and recognizing the need for food or could be created by an advertisement for the iPhone 4s.

Information Search

In this stage of the buyer decision process, it’s vital that your brand is at the forefront of your consumer’s minds, or at the forefront of where they will seek information (search engines).  This is the stage where consumers are doing the majority of their research. For example, if you are in the market to buy a point and shoot camera, you may conduct a general search for point and shoot cameras.  Conducting this search will help you in the information search phase and allow you to determine which brand of camera and what features are available.

Depending on your business and the resources available to you, you will want to develop a strategy to be visible for relevant search terms. This may include targeting keywords that will not generate a sale on the first visit.  Not only is it important to be visible for the keyword but it’s also important to understand where your customers go for information through searching Google or visiting review sites.

Evaluating Alternatives

At this stage your consumers are finished feeling out the market and have developed a consideration set.  Depending on the product and the industry, most consumers have a consideration set of about 3-5 different brands or products.

Purchase Decision 

Most SEO strategies try to catch consumers at this stage of the purchase process, as this represents the lowest hanging fruit.  However, if your business has not done due diligence up to this point, your brand or product will not be in the consideration set, therefore potentially ruining your chances of making a sale. To this point, if your brand has reached your consumer at each stage of the decision process your chances of making a sale are much higher.

Post Purchase 

At this stage of the decision process, you have the opportunity to continue your relationship with your customer. This is where your customers determine their satisfaction level of your product or service.  Here you have the opportunity to encourage your customers to write reviews on your business and turn them into repeat customers.  It is much easier to keep a customer than acquire a new one.

Once you’ve thought through the consumer research process for your business, it will help you better conduct keyword research, and help you determine the strategic moves you need to make to be visible to your consumer.  All stages of the purchase decision process are important, and it’s vital to have a strategy surrounding each stage of the process.  The majority of SEO strategies focus on the purchase decision phase, by the time the consumer is in that stage it may be too late. Your search marketing strategy can incorporate anything from retargeting, utilizing pay per click services, SEO or a combination.

As you can see, search marketing presents opportunities in all stages of the buying process. To have the most effective search marketing strategy that will lead to increased brand awareness and long term success of your business, it is advantageous to incorporate a wide range of keywords as well as other elements of search marketing that work best for your business.

When going through this process, it is essential you have a specific focus in mind. For instance, if you were looking to expand a university’s web presence you may want to expand into one category of keywords that every degree could fall under, such as “online.” Meaning that instead of just targeting “business degree” or “information systems degree,” you need to locate all of the best phrases that combine those terms with “online” or other similar types.

Remember that even though we are using the example of a university campaign, this idea can work with any campaign.

First, go into Webmaster Tools and export your two pieces of data:

Top Queries:

This can be done by clicking on Your site on the web > Search Queries as shown here:

Download the table and it will appear similar to this image:

Top Relevant Keywords:

This can be done by clicking on Your site on the web > Keywords as shown here:

Download the table and it will appear similar to this:

From there we can begin combining the two pieces of data. Since we already have the focus of “online” in mind, the first task is filtering with Excel to pull only those top queries that contain the term “online” within the phrase.

With a list of “subject focused phrases” you can now begin your combination process with the “top relevant terms.” Select a single “subject focused phrase” like accelerated bachelors degree online, attach it to a “top relevant term” like university or course. Using that one phrase, expand it into a relevant cluster of terms using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

In doing this we accomplish our goal of establishing a list of phrases ideal in link building and content strategy, which helps create a stronger presence for the term “online.” The variation phrasing for each term like “accelerated bachelors degree,” will ensure that we are diverse in anchor text.

Overall Keyword Prioritization

Next, retrieve rankings for each term to begin prioritizing your campaign based on current marketing focuses and potential quick wins.

With a priority focus in place, create a short-term content and link building strategy (typically a three-to-six month strategy identifying types of links and content to target is best).

Previous Posts In The Series:

Post 1 - Building a Keyword List Based On Top Relevant Terms in Google Webmasters

Post 2 - Using Google Analytics for Long Tail Identification & Quick Wins

Next In The Series:

Post 4 – An Enterprise Approach To Keyword Prioritization & Targeting

Referring Keywords

If you are doing SEO right, your link building, content (both on-site and off), social media and other inbound marketing techniques will all have peripheral keyword advantage. This means that more than just those keywords you target will drive significant traffic. This is done through a comprehensive, intelligent and creative content strategy (rather than just a link-building strategy).

If that be the case, you can take advantage of this benefit and build upon it. The first step is to export your referring keyword data from Google Analytics. Depending on how much traffic the website of interest generates, your time frame should vary. Typically, I like to work with between three and six months:

Before exporting your data, be sure you are looking at both organic and paid keywords. There isn’t any point to only looking at one or the other as we are simply looking for overall keyword opportunities. With that done go ahead and export your data.

The next step is to gather your additional needed metrics to provide the ability to make comprehensive decisions. For this process those metrics should include:

1. Current Rankings / URLs:

As was mentioned in the first post, there are a number of great tools available for grabbing a high number of rankings. Once you have access to these tools the process of gathering rankings is fairly simple. You simply set up a campaign by dumping all of your keywords in. Allow for a day or so to gather the rankings, then run your export into an Excel file.

2. Phrase Length:

There are a lot of different ways to determine the difficulty of a keyword. Two common tools are the Keyword Difficulty Tool by SEOmoz and the competition metric provided in the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. But for quick analysis on a large number of keywords one of the best ways to sort them by difficulty is to look at the length of the phrase. When working in Excel, drop this formula into a column to the right of your keyword list and you’ve got your difficulty metric:

=LEN(A2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A2),” “,”"))+1

In addition to the above metrics, your analytics export should contain the following:

• Visits
• Revenue (if eCommerce)
• Pages/Visit
• Average Time on Site
• Percentage of New Visits
• Bounce Rate

While we won’t incorporate every one of these metrics into our decision filtering, they are good to have available when considering any potential expansion.

With these in place your last step is to “Find & Replace” each of the non-ranking terms to show a value of “100″ rather than “0″ or “-”.

Identify Missed Opportunities

With all of your keywords and correlative data pulled into one, you’re ready to start manipulating. Remember, our goal for this process is to quickly create clusters of long tail phrases to target for quicker wins.

So let’s get into it.

First step is to sort your current data. Highlight all of your data and run a custom sort.  The two metrics you are including in the sort are the length of the phrase—looking at the longest first, and the current ranking—looking at the lowest first.

In this sort we identify the easiest terms (longest phrases in number of words) to target with the largest missed opportunities (ranking low in the index).

With the sort in place you will need to use your own judgment. For instance, it isn’t usually a common thing to target phrases more than 10 words long. However, pieces of that phrase may be of great value to you.

There will also be keywords that have brought in revenue that rank low and keywords that haven’t brought in any revenue. Typically a keyword ranking low yet still driving revenue should be valued above those that are not. This type of logic should be used when evaluating opportunities.

Typically I find myself looking in the middle of the phrase length spectrum and working from there.

Identify Relevant Clusters

Next, you will need to determine which of those top showing phrases are of priority to the website of interest.

Select one term at a time, then re-sort the list to show any other terms ranking for that same URL to identify potential clusters to work from in your optimization on-page and link building strategy.

The amount of what you are able to expand out and begin targeting should be determined by you and your team.

Choose your clusters based on relevance first. The ranking URL will be a great driving factor for that identification. But you can also look at the use of words within a phrase to identify any possible outliers not yet ranking at all.

From there you will want to look at each target page for on-page optimization needs then begin building out your external content and link-building strategy.

Previous Posts In The Series:

Post 1 – Building a Keyword List Based On Top Relevant Terms in Google Webmasters

Next Up In The Series:

Post 3 – Using Google Webmaster Tools To Locate New Terms & Build Strong Variations

Post 4 – An Enterprise Approach To Keyword Prioritization & Targeting

Let’s get started.

One of the best ways to make a decision about which keywords to target is to look at high performing (revenue, visits, relevance) phrases for your site that are under performing (low ranking) in the search engines. Ideally, you should gather a fairly large number of keywords and correlative metrics to make these comparisons, and come to a final target list. This first process focuses on relevance as a value indicator.

Top Relevant Keywords

Your first step is to dive into Google Webmaster Tools and retrieve your top relevant keywords. This can be done by clicking on Your site on the web > Keywords as shown here.

Download the table and it will appear similar to this image:

Now take these keywords and begin filtering. Those at the top are to be considered the most relevant. What I like to do is grab a list of 10 to 20 top terms not used in your current SEO campaign. This list is suprisingly ideal for identifying terms that don’t necessarily come to mind in a typical keyword research process. For this particular campaign, a few terms not yet incorporated were “system,” “new” and “company.”

Once you have those keywords selected, it’s time to single them out and create a cluster of relevant terms for each. Do this by going to Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Include your most common keywords along with the new term.

This will give you a healthy list to filter through. In this case, once you have the document exported, to get rid of keywords you aren’t looking for, filter out any phrase not using main keywords like “system” or “gaming.” I prefer to keep these lists focused into groups of closely related keywords, so I filter down to between 10 and 20 phrases.

With this process, you will end up with a much narrower list than with the options we will cover in future posts.

The idea here is to take those terms Google has already identified as highly relevant, locate missed opportunities, and build upon them through common phrases related to your product or services.

This is one of the quickest ways I’ve found to expand a targeted keyword list for increased diversity.

Once you have established a cluster for each subject, it’s important to gather some type of correlative metrics. We already have the estimated search volume from the Adwords Keyword Tool. In addition, I would recommend gathering at least your current rankings for each term in order to determine which are most worth targeting. A few common tools for doing this will be Authority Labs, Raven Tools, Advanced Web Ranking or Rank Checker.

Remember this process is based first on relevance as a factor. With this understanding we need not question whether the keyword is right for the website under review.

The next question to ask is which terms have the greatest potential for increase in rankings, traffic and revenue—and should be a point of focus in strategy. To do this use your ranking data. Sort your file to show those keywords ranking low but high in potential search volume and start making some decisions for your upcoming months content strategy.

This process is ideal when you are looking to build upon phrases already involved in regular strategy providing support to prior efforts through a diverse approach in both link building and content on-page.

Up Next In The Series:

Post 2 – Using Google Analytics for Long Tail Identification & Quick Wins

Post 3 – Using Google Webmaster Tools To Locate New Terms & Build Strong Variations

Post 4 – An Enterprise Approach To Keyword Prioritization & Targeting

1. Show Search Volume Based on City/State Level, Not Just Country Level

Having data in a specific geographic location is key for locally focused businesses. Currently, the only numbers we have to work with are geographically focused keywords (E.g. “Portland Electrician”), but how many people in Portland are simply typing in “Electrician” and relying on Google to automatically detect their IP location and serve them local companies? My guess is that service-industry keywords without a geographic location get searched far more than we realize.

There is one solution to this problem; PPC. Targeting specific cities or regions within your Adwords account with industry keywords like “Electrician” can give a good idea of the local searches based on the impressions that keyword gets.

Until Google changes this, the only thing we have to work from is possible PPC data and assumptions. For the most part, I think it’s safe to assume that the majority of the traffic is actually searching with a geographic variable within the keyword (E.g. “Portland Electrician”).

2. Differentiate Search Volume Between Web, Image, Places, Video and Product Search

The search volume number for any given keyword on Google’s Keyword Tool is an aggregate of all searches that are done on Google.com. This presents a unique problem for many marketers because the keyword that they may go after could have several different searcher intents.

For example, if I wanted to rank for the keyword “Mustang Exhaust” because I’m looking to sell more products, I want to know how many searchers are searching the web, image, places, video and product search route.

Because Google doesn’t report the different search avenues, the 1,300 exact searches for “Mustang Exhaust” are getting mixed up among people looking to buy or research exhausts, find sound clips on YouTube, locate a local dealer for installation or people just wanting images of a product. Knowing which channels get the most search volume would help to know where to spend your marketing dollars, whether it’s for SEO, video production and optimization, uploading a Google product feed or setting up a Google Places page (should you be local).

3. Closely Related Search Terms Box is Too Black and White

When you research keywords, you can either have Google pull every possible related keyword or you can get keywords that are closely related to your typed in keyword with the check box shown below.

This is too black and white, there needs to be some middle ground. I would love if checking that box kept the results closely related but not so close that it ignores other very important keywords.

For example, searching for USB Drive only pulls keywords that include that term within the phrase. What about “thumb drives”, “flash drives” and the many variations in between? Using closely related synonyms would prevent any main keywords from falling through the cracks.

4. PPC Competition Bar Needs Some Sort of Basis

Even though this is a PPC tool, it’s still helpful for SEO because it’s supposed to determine the amount of PPC competition for a given keyword. You can generally get an indication of how hard a keyword will be to rank for, based on the amount of business bidding for a keyword. But this Adwords feature is perhaps the most misleading tool Google has made.

The keyword “home mortgage refinance” is claiming a medium competition level yet there is a full page of ads back to the fourth page in the results pages. I’m no PPC expert, but this competition indicator is hardly accurate. Also, what is Google even looking at to determine the competitiveness of a keyword? I can’t find anything explaining the process or formula.

5. Select Target Keywords to Track with Google Program or Third Party Website

Now I really am asking for the world from Google. Selecting keywords within their Adwords Keyword Tool and tracking my sites’ rankings through a new Google service or third party website would be an absolute dream, assuming the data is accurate.

I know what you’re thinking: Why would Google spend millions developing a tool that doesn’t provide them anything in return? My answer: because that’s what Google does with the most of their products. Look at Google Docs, Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Gmail and Voice, they’re all meant to grab Internet users and lock us into their network of services in hopes that we use their search engine. Bing, Yahoo and Ask hardly have the level of free services that Google does and they consequently share a pathetic 30 percent of the market. Coincidence?

What do you think? Are these five flaws the biggest with the Adwords Tool? Granted, nothing is perfect, but with enough users suggesting a change with their tool, my hopes are that Google may make a change. Share your thoughts, opinions and suggestions below!

Example: “Cookie the be to of and a in”

If you’ve ever seen a screen capture like the one below and gone into rage-triggered cardiac arrest, you probably know which myth I’d like to debunk:

Red boxes and over-the-top red arrows are a must when a manipulative or misinformed SEO shows that their (or their client’s) page is ranked FIRST out of 260 million sites! Who’s winning?  This guy. Now you’re going to get all of the traffic when throngs of people search for “cookie the be to of and a in.”

The fact of the matter is that the number of results is largely irrelevant. Considering the number of results as a gauge of competition is akin to trying to figure out how hard the Seahawks will be to beat by asking how many fans they have in the stadium. Just as this might lead you to erroneously believe that the Seahawks are talented, some SEOs use a high number of page results to fallaciously suggest that the term is harder to rank for.

Competitive Keyword Analysis – the Right Way

To gauge the true SEO competition for a keyword, I strongly suggest searching for the term and opening the first 3-5 results. These are the pages you need to out-rank to get meaningful traffic. Consider the following:

• Authority: Use tools like Open Site Explorer to determine the “page authority” and number of linking pages, domains, and class C IP addresses. Generally speaking, a newer site is not going to outrank a PageRank 7 site with a page authority of 85, even if the keyword is ranking incidentally and not through intentional targeting.

• Relevant Links: Take the analysis a step further and analyze the anchor text pointing to the page.

Would anyone like to guess which shoe maker is on the first page for the keyword “basketball?” If you think you can stop at anchor text, though, we need to have a heart-to-heart about how Google determines relevance. Are the linking pages authoritative and relevant to the topic?  What about the domain? If you really want to get crazy, you can look at the pages/domains linking to the linking page/domain.

• On-Page: Is the ranking page targeting the keyword, or ranking for it incidentally? Does the exact phrase exist in the title tag? Is it even in the content? If the exact phrase is at the front of a highly authoritative page, can you top that?

Strategic/Competitive Keyword Analysis

Determining the true amount of competition for a keyword can be tricky and takes a little practice. Luckily, you can look at tens of thousands of SERPs (search engine results pages) to learn how the variables/factors are connected. Between the first draft of this post and publication, SEOMoz announced a new tool that should prove extremely helpful for the discerning strategist. It actually looks disturbingly similar to a report I have been tracking data with recently.

Non-strategic SEOs play it by ear and learn what works based on results, learning slowly while campaigns succeed or fail. Strategic SEOs can determine what works before even starting a campaign, based on lessons learned from hundreds of results and case studies available on each page of any given query.

Keyword research will set the course for an SEO campaign, and changing course mid-way can be costly and frustrating. It is important, therefore, to use a more strategic approach to targeted keyword selection to determine what terms will provide acceptable results within a given timeframe.

In this initial process of keyword research, it can be easy to go one of two ways—just barely scratching the surface or going overboard and wasting time. With a process set in place, you will do much better at achieving quick, quality results.

Quality keyword research includes 5 phases:

1. Baseline Keywords

To begin your keywords research you will need a starting point. This will usually be a smaller list of phrases that define what products, services, or pages you would most like to promote. Here are a few great ways to get your baseline keywords:

Keyword Rankings or Top Referring Keywords

Knowing what kind of ground your website has already gained in the search engines is a great way to determine how your are viewed by them. Whether your are assessing rankings manually or through a ranking tool this should be a fairly quick snapshot of potential opportunities that should not be passed up. Take those keywords and add them to your preliminary list.

This step is very similar to checking which keywords you are ranking for. Naturally, those that rank well (or rank at all) are going to be those that drive traffic to the website. Typically I would not recommend pulling both rankings and top referring keywords to get your baseline. Go ahead and choose one or the other and you should be good to go.

2. Keyword Expansion

Let Search Volume Set Priority

While keyword research is not determined solely upon search volume it certainly is a major playing factor in the final selection of target keywords. Not only this but—as one of the only few ways we can clearly communicate the potential value of targeting a certain phrase—this can be a great motivator to clients. The process of compiling a list of keywords to filter through and discover your trophies should be fairly easy and quick when using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.  Knowing how to use this nifty tool correctly is important.  Check this post out for the best practices for the Adwords Keyword Tool.

3. Keyword Filtering

There are a few questions to ask yourself as you begin eliminating keywords from the list. For example, how quickly you would like to rank? What type of keywords from the list support one another? Which keywords and phrases here represent the biggest money makers of the website in question?

With these questions answers will come best in the following processes:

Use Your Client

If you haven’t already done this in the “baseline” process make sure to speak with your client about what keywords you are looking at.  Determine which of these represent their best money makers. Having this bit of knowledge in mind could hugely change the end result of what is selected. A lower search volume phrase with the potential to drive only 10% or even less in traffic as compared to another could earn much more.

Clustering

This should be a process familiar to most—the idea of bringing supportive and similar phrases together to target one page.  The idea is to spread the value of link building and on page optimization across multiple phrases while keeping the content natural and not forced. For instance, when you are writing an article on “link building” it is likely you will use the phrases:

• link acquisition
• link bait
• building links

What we have here are 4 different phrases that can be used almost interchangeably to support one another.

When beginning your clusters, first choose what you would consider your “trophy” keywords.  These will typically be those that are super competitive, have a high potential for traffic or are the big money makers. From these phrases start breaking your list out into iterations following them.

What Does The Competition Look Like?

When asking yourself how quickly you need to achieve a quality rank, and the answer is “NOW!” then stop doing keyword research for SEO and start building out lists for a great PPC campaign. If your answer is “soon” you will want to make sure the keyword has less established competitors. Typically I like to fan out the time frame possibilities for ranking and competitiveness in the final target keywords—classing them into 3 different levels of difficulty and estimated time of performance. To evaluate your competitors for a certain phrase consider these processes:

First, run a search for your phrase. Then take your top 4-5 results URLs. These are your main competitors.

Open Site Explorer

For a quick, in-depth analysis of your competitors link portfolio, the SEOmoz Open Site Explorer is your source. While this tool can be used for a plethora of different purposes, for our intent here you will want to pay attention to the following:

• Linking Pages – take a quick look at what type of pages the website has gained links from.  Is there only one or two with a super high authority or is the entire first page of linking pages high in authority. If you have a wide spread of authority in linking pages you can assume this is a more competitive website and will take more time to overcome. (At this point you should also be asking yourself if the acquisition of these same links is possible for the website in question. If so, how difficult will they be to acquire?)
• Full Metrics - once you the snapshot of linking pages in mind go to the Full List of Metrics. In a spreadsheet gather the data found here to compare to the other competitors and your website too. This will be a great determinant of what you are up against.

Page Rank

The page rank provided to your competing URLs will also help you gauge the difficulty level. Use a toolbar or extension to grab those digits quickly and throw them into the spreadsheet as well. These will give you a comprehensive enough snapshot to know your difficulty level relative to other keywords in question.

4. Keyword Selection

What Are The Trends?

At this point your list should begin looking narrowed and nearly final. For quality assurance, you will want to check the trends of your keywords. The trending graph you see above is from Google Trends. This is a good way to get a snapshot for a Year-over-Year (YOY) comparison in the demand of key phrases.

Search Optimization is a long term approach to your online success. With that in mind even search volume, as it stands today, should not entirely determine your selection of keywords. I will usually implement Google Trends at two different points of my keyword research: First, when I am selecting my “head keywords” or those I will then select iterations from to build a cluster of supportive phrases as explained above. And second, at the final quality assurance check of the target keyword clusters selected.

5. Keyword Mapping

What Are You Targeting?

Throughout the entire process of keyword research, we as SEO’s have link building in the back of our mind.  This is the end goal and the very reason we are choosing key phrases to target. But just as important as the selection of phrases is where you are going to be pointing them to: the target page.

Choosing which URLs to target can be part of the process throughout or at the end. The poignant matter to be aware of is whether or not building new pages is in the realm of possibility. It is likely you will complete your research and determine that one or two of your ideal keyword clusters may not have sufficient, relevant content to link to. At that point a new URL and webpage is essential.

Other Factors To Consider -

Stay Legal

Some companies and clients will be dissident toward certain phrases or keywords due to an overcommitment such as with the word “best” or you may have selected a phrase that indicates a competitors brand without knowing. Check into these items and discuss them with your client to be sure you don’t run into any issues.

Other Tools To Consider -

Microsoft Ad Center – for expanding keywords lists and finding missed opportunities

Microsoft Commercial Intention – determine the commercial intent on a scale of 0 to 1.

While the Adwords tool is meant for PPC, it’s also a vital tool when performing keyword research for SEO. Google Adwords identifies the number of searches for specific words or key phrases. However, many people leave with false information because there are several different filters with different numbers.

If you go to the keyword tool and search for “online schools,” “online degrees” and “online education,” you’ll get information about those keywords as well as many other related terms.

Underneath the search field is a checkbox as shown below:

Make sure this is checked; otherwise you will get a huge list of keywords that may not actually apply to your business.

Google automatically presets your location and language to serve you the most relevant results. It sets my location as “United States” and my language as “English.”

You can change this if it doesn’t happen to apply to you by expanding the Advances Search section.

The next step is to simply click search. This is where the tool can get confusing.

If you’re like many, it would appear as though there are 246,000 searches for “online schools” all over the globe. Likewise, somebody would think that there are 201,000 searches for the same keyword in your local area.

This is not true and I’ve had many people regret their decision to pursue these keywords because they just didn’t understand the data.

Over on the left there is a column with “Match Types.” Check the box associated with [Exact]. This will change the keyword numbers to reflect more realistic search volume.

“Why wouldn’t the keyword tool show me exact search volume from the beginning?”

The default match type of “Broad” is referring to the number of searches that involve the phrase. For example, it’s giving you search volume numbers for the keyword “online schools” as well as search volume for all the other keywords that mention that phrase such as “best online schools,” “online schools degrees,” “online high schools” and others.

The other match type, “Phrase,” shows you keywords where the exact phrase of your keyword is used. This includes keywords where the term is used with other words within the phrase. For example, using the Phrase match type while searching “online schools” would give you search volume for other keywords like “best online schools” or “online schools degrees” but not “online high schools” or “online accredited schools” because the original phrase is being broken up.

If you’re looking for how many people search a specific keyword, stay with [Exact].

Now that the data has been changed to realistic numbers, you’ll notice the number of searchers go down drastically.

Because there are some terms that are searched worldwide, Google differentiates the two searches columns to Global and Local. The numbers underneath Global are the amount of searches all around the globe averaged out over 12 months. Searches in the Local column are referring to the location that you specified in the beginning. In our case, they’re showing the number of searches in the Unites States averaged out over 12 months.

That’s basically the gist of the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. There are some other things you can do with this tool to improve your keyword research and discover additional relevant keywords. This is by no means advanced or the end to your keyword research, you still need to analyze your online competition, research the searcher’s intent and decide what’s worth going after given your time and budget.

If you have tips or advice you’d like to add, comment below.

Marketing objectives

Seems like a simple thing, but you need to know how SEO will fit into the overall marketing objectives of your company. What will it accomplish? What do you want it to accomplish? Don’t just do SEO because everyone else is doing it. Do it for a specific reason.

Timing is everything

Don’t rush into an SEO campaign because you are feeling pressure to get results. Here are some timing considerations to think about before you move forward:

Seasonality. Does your industry have a high and low season? If so, then you probably want to start your SEO in the low season. This way, you are in prime positions during your high season to capture key traffic.

Website redesign. A new site launch is a big deal, and yes, it DEFINITELY affects SEO. If you want to start an SEO campaign, but you know in your gut (and have known for a while) that your website desperately needs an update, take care of the site FIRST. New site launches during an SEO campaign are a huge hindrance and can delay results significantly.

SEO is not a quick fix

Search engine optimization is a long term marketing strategy. No, let me rephrase, EFFECTIVE SEO is a long term strategy. If you are looking to jump into an SEO campaign in October because you need to finish out Q4 well, you’re a day late and dollar short. There are no “special contacts at Google,” no magic buttons, and no amount of guarantees that can change this. Depending on your situation, SEO can take anywhere from 6-18 months to see top results.

Access to a Web developer

Chances are that if you have a website, you have a developer you work with that manages that website. SEO campaigns require many time sensitive website adjustments. Having a reliable and available Web developer that can implement recommendations made by your SEO firm is vital to success. Make sure you have a developer and he or she is ready and willing to make changes before embarking on your SEO campaign.

Content generation capabilities

It is no secret that content is king. Relevant content on your site is a huge aspect of SEO. Be aware that some sites require more website content then others, depending on your current layout. Assure that you have content creation capabilities, and if not talk about your limitations with your potential agency upfront.

“I only need you for…”

SEO companies can be partners in your marketing efforts. They have the ability to provide expertise in Internet marketing, not just SEO, that can benefit your overall marketing vision. Let them do what they do best. Don’t tie the hands of your SEO company because you only want link building from them. Mostly likely their approach is more holistic, and not allowing them to utilize all the aspects of SEO will underhand their efforts and sabotage success. Listen to the expertise of you SEO firm. Allow them to perform their work, because after all, you hired them for a reason.

The full Monty

Full exposure. Complete transparency. SEO companies cannot be your partner if you treat them like a vendor. Be open, honest and transparent with your goals and the current state of your business. Explain your business model, your industry, past experiences with search marketing, and most importantly what it is you are trying to accomplish with your website. Give your SEO company the data to prove their value to you, in dollars.

If your SEO company only sees a small piece of the pie, they will do their work based on that information. This can cause frustration and a communication breakdown as bits and pieces of information can be taken out of context and misconstrued. Prevent this through open and honest communication. If you don’t feel comfortable exposing yourself just yet, you may want to hold off on an SEO campaign until you can.

ROI

Everyone knows that it’s about the bottom line, so what return are you getting on this investment? Do you know? Can you know? Have you put the appropriate metrics in place that will tell you? Ask these vital questions first. If you don’t know the answer, don’t hesitate to consult a trusted SEO company to find out.

When you do hire a SEO company, make sure you communicate the importance of evaluating ROI, if they don’t already, and your willingness to cooperate in that effort.

It takes two to Tango

If you haven’t noticed already, an underlying theme throughout this post has been cooperation and partnership. To execute and effective and successful SEO campaign you have to be involved. SEO is an active marketing effort, requiring constant communication and adjustment. The best SEO firms will always be in communication, and wanting to work together as an active partner. If you lack the time to attend such an effort, find someone who can.

Try to eliminate red tape as much as possible so things can get done. Again, SEO can be time sensitive. The quicker recommendations are implemented, the quicker you see results. It’s that simple.

Hopefully now, you will be better prepared to ask the right questions before beginning your SEO campaign.

Have you ever done keyword research for a blog post and experienced no resulting organic traffic? You may be thinking, “What happened? The terms I optimized for had search volume. Why am I not getting a piece of that?”

Welcome to the club.

Poor Keyword Research = Poor Optimization = Poor Results

Credibility is a major obstacle for blog posts. Search engines want to rank the most credible, comprehensive resource for a given keyword term. Most blog posts don’t have what it takes to be “most credible.” A blog post can gain credibility and ranking as it picks up links, either naturally or through deliberate linkbuilding efforts, but this is more commonly seen with evergreen content than with blog content. Bloggers typically aren’t linkbuilding.

Competition is another reason for the difficulty in getting organic traffic from blog posts. Google’s keyword tool, used by many bloggers, does not display all of the terms that people search for, nor does it display terms with small levels of search volume. Because of this, many bloggers in the same niche research and optimize using the same limited set of keyword terms and make it nearly impossible for newcomers to rank without a lot of SEO work. It’s hard for some to accept this idea that Google’s keyword volume tool is actually setting a post up for organic failure.

As a hypothetical example, suppose I write a blog post about keyword research methods (how apropos). I do a little bit of research using Google’s Keyword Tool and find that “how to do keyword research” gets 320 global monthly searches.

I convince myself that the term is within reach. 320 isn’t a very high number after all. So I title my post “How To Do Keyword Research,” and interlace those words and phrases throughout the body of the content and press “Publish.” A couple of days later, the blog post is ranking on page 6 and gets no organic traffic except for the occasional hit from a bizarre semi-relevant phrase. Failure.

Obvious Keywords = Higher Competition Levels

What I didn’t realize when I published the post is that the competition level for a term like “how to do keyword research” is high enough to keep my new blog post from getting anywhere near the first page.

On the results page are several posts that have my exact term in the title. As a blogger, I know my niche well enough to know that several of these sites are far bigger and more credible than mine. (A few SEO-savvy bloggers will be able to verify their hunch by looking at backlinks, PageRank, etc). So if I want my blog post to rank well for this result and get any organic traffic, I’ll have to build my own links to the post and I just don’t have that kind of time. I barely had time to write this post! Alas!

Best Keyword Research Method = Find Under-the-Radar Terms

If you’re a blogger who cares enough to do some keyword research for each post, but doesn’t want to build links, then consider trying what I’ve been testing for about the last month. It involves targeting under-the-radar keywords that are relevant and being searched, but are too low to register on most keyword tools.

The goal in being a guerrilla keyword researcher is to find the best “ultra long tail” terms, optimize the post, rank in the top spots automatically, and reap the traffic. As you get traffic, you’ll get more engagement, more natural links, and more site credibility, allowing you to rank for even more competitive keywords later. This approach works best if you have a blog with a little bit of PageRank. A PR1 or PR2 should be able to get a high ranking for guerrilla terms.

The basic steps to my blogging keyword research strategy (which I’ll explore in detail):

1. Write a good, interesting post
2. Identify core keywords related to the post
3. Use Google’s Keyword Tool to find long-tail variations with search volume
4. Use Soovle.com to find even longer variations with implied search volume
5. Search these terms in Google to identify low competition results
6. Optimize and win!

Step 1: Start With Strong Content

Whatever you write should be engaging, have a unifying theme, and a decent length. More is usually better for SEO, so try for at least 300+ words.

Step 2: Identify Core Keywords Related To The Post

In the example, we identified “keyword research” to be the core term. In your case, there may be certain terms that are used interchangeably so you may have multiple possible core terms.

Step 3: Use Google’s Keyword Tool To Find Long-Tail Variations

Working off the core term, Google’s keyword tool provides some keyword suggestions that still have measurable search volume. You can play around with different combinations of these to find relevant long-tail terms. In this case, we liked “how to do keyword research” as a long-tail keyword, even though it was still too broad to keep. There are probably other long-tail terms we could work with.

Step 4: Use Soovle.com To Identify Longer Variations With Implied Search Volume

Soovle.com is basically an aggregator of “suggest” results from search engines like Google, Bing, YouTube, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Answers.com and Amazon.com. One thing we know about “suggest” results is that they are based on searcher behavior and that results at the top have more search volumes than those below (but the important thing to know is that all “suggest” results have some search volume).

There’s nothing novel about the way Soovle works, but I like it for its simplicity and its breadth of results. And it’s free (you could also use something like ScrapeBox for a more robust, paid solution).

So we plug in the term “how to do keyword research.”

We get several variations of this term including some relevant ones:

• How to do keyword research on google
• How to do keyword research for seo
• How to do keyword research seo

Since there are 10 results listed, there’s a good chance that there are other combinations we’re not seeing, so starting with “how to do keyword research,” we can start going through the alphabet and adding letters as if starting a new word at the end of the phrase, e.g., “how to do keyword research a” and “how to do keyword research b,” etc. Doing this reveals a few more variations we didn’t see before:

• How to do keyword research for free (this made me laugh)
• How to do keyword research google adwords
• How to do keyword research niche
• How to do keyword research tutorial

As I mentioned before, all of these terms get search volume, even though most of them would show none using Google’s volume tool (which is exactly what you want).

Another thing you can do is start with a broader term in Soovle, like “keyword research.” By starting broad, nearly every suggested term is one that also has a good amount of traffic, so none are good candidates. What you can do, though, is start front-loading the term “keyword research” with the most common adjectives and verbs to find under-the-radar variations, phrases that people naturally use when trying to search, like “easy keyword research.” For adjectives, I find that “good” and “best” are great places to start. You can also start with verbs that are associated with the term. The only verb that really goes with keyword research is “do” so I type in “do keyword research” and see what else is generated.

When I start with the term “best keyword research” and then add letters like we did previously [“best keyword research a(b,c,d,e…)”] we end up with some more fun and relevant terms:

• Best keyword research article
• Best keyword research guide
• Best keyword research method
• Best keyword research strategy

Step 5: Audit The Terms In Google

Once you have identified some good terms through Soovle, check them for search volume in Google Keyword Tool, then search for the terms in Google. You’re looking for a search result with close to zero exact match titles for the term you selected.

In this case, “best keyword research method” is nearly free of exact competition and the sites that rank look easy enough to overtake.

Step 6: Optimize and Win!

Optimization includes having the exact keyword phrase in the post title, meta description, and body content. The rest of the content should also be relevant to the keyword. If possible, you can do some internal linking from older blog posts. You can optimize images as well by giving them names that include your search term.

Once you get into a rhythm of going through this keyword research process, you get used to it, and it honestly doesn’t take very long. In some of the posts I’ve tested this out on, I’ve found it easy to rank without extra linkbuilding, and one post can pull in dozens of monthly organic visits from one term and its variations. It’s really quite nice.

But Don’t Take My Word For It…