3 Keyword Research Tips: Looking Beyond the Tools

Posted by Upslope Media on Apr 13, 2011 in Upslope Media | 317 comments

In a world of keyword research tools, it’s easy to depend on them solely for our keyword research and keyword list expansion… I, like many of you I am guessing, spend quite a few hours every month working in the common culprits (Microsoft Advertising Intelligence, Google Keyword Tool and about a million other 3rd party tools) to expand my current keyword lists.

The Expansion Process Kind of Looks Like This:

Pull a search query performance report
Take the winners and plug into your favorite keyword tool
Export the results to excel
Descend by volume of traffic
Extract the lowest or middle competition words
Add those keywords to my list or create a new campaign for them

Bam! Keyword research is done for the day. Or is it?

The truth is, there are a number of other places you should be mining for new directions to grow your account. Some of these ideas are far more intuitive and far more lucrative than simply going after the same keywords your competitor just pulled from the same tools.

So, what are some of these other places I speak of? Today, I thought I’d run through the underdogs of keyword research expansion. Let’s take a look at a few places you should visit the next time you are tasked with growing your paid search share of voice on one of the engines.

1.) Your Website and Your Competitor Websites

It’s almost too obvious to mention, right? Well, let me ask you: when was the last time you looked at your site or your competitor’s site to get ideas for keywords to buy? I am betting it was around the time you first set up your account. Am I right?

If that is true, I am also guessing you and your competitors have added to your sites since then, changed the top navigation, re-categorized, etc. I can guarantee there is more to work with, as these sites are constantly growing themselves. So, set aside some time and take a look; returning to these practical sources is a great way to get your creative juices flowing.

2.) Hub Websites and Authority Websites

Every advertiser knows the power of a thesaurus. We also know that many of the keyword tools out there base their suggestions on thematic algorithms they apply to your current keywords. This means they often show you longer queries and very similar queries to the ones you are already buying.

The problem is, that doesn’t account for completely different ways of explaining the product or service you have. All keyword tools do is send you down a very deep and wide funnel expansion around one or two roots.

Enter hub sites and authority sites. Hub sites are sites that searches can find aggregated information and directories for related sites on a topic. An example of a hub site would be DMOZ.org. Authority sites are similar, but are usually user-driven in nature. The most well-known authority site is Wikipedia.

These sites are great at helping you catch a new audience of searchers, and possibly go after something your competitors haven’t even thought of.

3.) Surveying and Conversation

Again this feels so intuitive, but is rarely done. When was the last time you polled your blog readers, or surveyed your site visitors? Maybe you sent them a survey asking how your service was, or if they are happy with your products?

I guarantee these surveys are full of keywords you should be buying, or keywords you should integrate into your ad copy. The words they use to describe what you sell are perfect foundations to kick off your brainstorming.

We all know the keyword tools out there are comprehensive; they provide a ton of valuable information – particularly around traffic estimates, cost estimates, and competitiveness. But they are most powerful when you come at them with a range of keywords to examine, as you are able to discover less chartered areas to go after. If you want to get super crazy you can even build your own keyword tools.

It’s worth noting that I don’t think any of the ideas above should replace the very effective keyword tools our lovely engines put out, or the tools that so many 3rd party vendors have refined. Instead, I am saying that no process should be solely guided by one source—especially the keyword research process whose success is so closely tied to creativity.

While your competitors are living in their keyword tools and never moving past the process described above, you will have brainstormed your way into a niche far less competitive and far more lucrative.

I’d love to hear what other ways you shake up the keyword list expansion process. Other than tools where are you guys going to find inspiration?

Source: Joanna Lord

Joanna Lord is the Director of Customer Acquisition at SEOmoz.org, a leading SEO software company out of Seattle, WA. While she currently heads up SEOmoz’s paid search, affiliate, and acquisition marketing efforts, she is also a well-known social media enthusiast and frequent conference speaker. Her diverse experience in data analysis, paid search marketing, search engine optimization and content creation enables her to provide tactical acquisition strategies that work.

Bing-Powered Share of Searches Reaches 30 Percent in March 2011

Posted by Upslope Media on Apr 12, 2011 in Upslope Media | 6 comments

Bing.com Share of Searches Increases 6 Percent; Google Monthly Share of Searches At 64 Percent.

New York, N.Y., April 11, 2011 — Experian® Hitwise®, a part of Experian Marketing Services, announced today that Google accounted for 64.42 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending April 2, 2011. Bing-powered search comprised 30.01 percent of searcherpectively. The remaining 69 search engines1 in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis report accounted for 5.58 percent of U.S. searches.

Yahoo! Search Success Rate Highest For March 2011

Yahoo! Search and Bing achieved the highest success rates in March 2011. This means that for both search engines, more than 80 percent of searches executed resulted in a visit to a Website. Google achieved a success rate of 66 percent. The share of unsuccessful searches highlights the opportunity for both the search engines and marketers to evaluate the search engine result pages to ensure that searchers are finding relevant information.

Longer Search Queries Down 3 Percent

Longer search queries — five to eight words — were down 3 percent from February 2011 to March 2011. Shorter search queries — those averaging one to four words long — increased 1 percent from February 2011 to March 2011. One-word searches comprised the majority of searches, amounting to 24.40 percent of all queries, a 2 percent increase from February 2011 to March 2011.