SEO Expert, Anthony Yap

Keyword research, with subscription based tools like Keyword Discovery or WordTracker usually ends up in a massive list of keywords and for some, the list can number in the thousands. Many of the keywords in the list form the “long tail” of search results, a term coined by Chris Anderson. It refers to the collective searches for “low traffic” searches outweighing the searches done for more popular searches. There will be some keywords that don’t even show up in the keyword research that get traffic in the long tail. If you haven’t read it, it’s a good idea to get your copy. It will certainly give you a whole new insight into online marketing. Understandably, it is difficult for many small or medium-sized businesses to attempt to rank for so many terms initially. We only have to choose a handful of the higher traffic, relevant keywords to start.

In the first article of this keyword research and analysis series, we discussed keyword lists and the smart selection of potential keywords suitable for further SEO analysis. Now that we have built up a massive list of possible keywords (hopefully), how do we whittle it down to the select few to target? What if we have hundreds of potential keywords for different products/services to sift through? Ironically, to select only the most targeted keywords that drive quality traffic to your site, you would have invest in a small pay-per-click search marketing campaign. We would only do this on a small scale and for a short duration of time to determine the true value of this massive list of keywords. You can get immediate feedback from the PPC traffic. Rather than guess which keyword phrases will drive quality traffic, we’ll know for certain which ones truly will from detailed web analytics. If you haven’t already opened up a Google Adwords campaign yet, now is a good time to do so for this test. For this trial, shutting off the content network where ads appear on Google Adsense publisher sites is highly recommended. We are trying to test keywords for traffic quality. Remember, proper testing can only be done on one variable at a time. If you don’t have use any web analytics for your site currently, sign up for a free analytics account with Google Analytics. Google Analytics complements Adwords nicely for tracking so it is an excellent way to get started. Investing a small amount to test the keywords using PPC only serves to improve the probabilities of only optimizing for the best keywords resulting in time and cost savings. The traffic should result in an action you want your visitors to take such as opting in or a purchase.

Once we have identified profitable keywords to optimize for, we are not finished yet. We still have to perform keyword competition analysis on the keywords. Again, what drives the most traffic is not necessarily the best to go after at this point of the site promotion process. If no SEO work has been done previously, it’s usually best to avoid very high traffic key terms because they typically have large amounts of competition. To be certain what competition exists for your search term, search each term in Google with each key phrase wrapped in double quotes (eg. “online dating service”). Obviously, with the large number of keywords, it’s best to keep all our data on an Excel spreadsheet to record all important data found during our keyword research.

Let’s run through an example. When we type in “online dating service” (with the quotes) in Google, notice that it reports that we have “Results 1-10 of about 1,570,000 for …” as the top right corner of your browser window. Hmm… That seems like a large amount of competititors to go up against.

We want to see if there really are over a million competitors for this phrase. Since Google only shows 10 pages of results at a time, we’ll have to adjust our browsing preferences to make our searches faster. First, set browsing preferences in Google to list 100 sites at a time by clicking on preferences near the Google search box at the top. This can be done in any browser. Note: cookies in your browser needs to be enabled. Now instead of showing 10 results per page, you can view 100 results at one time.

We click on the last page of the search engine results pages which should list the 901-1000th result. At this time of writing, when we click on the last page (in this case, 10) we find that we truly only have 818 “real competitors”! Google’s focus is on relevancy and it’s likely that these other pages were not included because Google deems them as unimportant to the searcher because of irrelevant content or duplicate content. These unlisted pages are in therefore in Google’s supplemental index. The supplemental index is different from the “main” search engine index and supplemental results usually show when there aren’t enough results to show or the terms are very obscure.

We now have the number of real competitors for this keyword phrase. We rinse and repeat the process until we have completed competition analysis for all the keywords in the list. Is this process time consuming? Yes! Worth the effort? Definitely, especially if you’re serious about long-term results.

The next step is going to make the difference in your SEO campaign. It is investigating keyword phrase difficulty. From our experience as SEOs, we can understand why many clients want fast results. From a business cashflow perspective, if it takes some time and a significant investment to get the site ranked with a reasonable level of traffic. If a website owner embarks on a campaign to achieve higher rankings for a very difficult search term, they are almost certainly doomed to fail. Sometimes it’s because the SEO techniques weren’t sound. Many times, it’s keyword choice. SEO is an art and takes quite a bit of skill to get it done right. Feedback is difficult to obtain with difficult terms therefore it’s hard to gauge what really is needed to accomplish the task. Because they do not see much progress even in a year, many give up before reaching the finish line.

Now, you can mitigate these risks. By comparing the difficulty level of your search terms on a whole, you’ll increase your chances of ranking higher in the search engines in a shorter period of time and with considerably less resources expended. We will covered how to do this in our next article.

If you want to get keyword research done but don’t want to spend the time to do it, let our SEO experts handle it. You can learn more about our keyword research services here.

Anthony Yap is the principal SEO expert for http://www.searchmarketingroi.com. He delivers higher search engine rankings for his search engine optimization clients, driving quality website traffic that converts. For internet marketing consulting services, contact me.

SEO experts perform extensive keyword research and analysis prior to starting any SEO campaign. Much like PPC marketing, obtaining a large list of related keywords gives a search marketer the opportunity to select the most profitable and high traffic terms. Without a large list of keyword phrases, choices for optimization are slim and probabilities for success decline along with it.

Armed with a good research tool (which is usually a paid version), a SEO collects a large subset of related terms in a list and analyzes the competition levels for the ones with higher search traffic first. It is important for web marketers to understand that keyword research tools are not perfect in their data by any means. This is because many of the search tools available gather data from meta search engines. Unless the search tool is directly linked to the actual search engine database and outputs data in it’s entirety, there is always room for possible error since the data collection method is not perfect in itself. For search engines to provide direct access to this data without limitations would be any SEOs dream come true. This, however, is unlikely to happen because the potential for abuse is just too high. There are two ways keyword research tools may not report completely accurate data. First, your tool of choice may output incorrect daily or monthly search traffic. Second, it may not list other keywords that are actually being searched for. Just because the data isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it isn’t useful. We can still deduce relative search traffic strengths from the numbers given so you can feel reasonably safe, in general, when viewing traffic potential on relative terms.

Great search engine optimization experts, though, are not only looking for the most targeted and relevant search terms but are also seeking keywords and search phrases that have a decent chance of getting ranked in the search engines. Like any marketplace, there are gaps and opportunities which competent SEOs will seek out before expending a large amount of resources on optimizing similar good search phrases. This is because similar, yet relevant, search terms have varying levels of difficulty and competition levels. After collecting a large subset of related terms in a list, a SEO analyzes the keyword competition levels for the ones with higher search traffic first.

For websites starting their optimization, it is highly recommended the internet marketer goes after the low-hanging fruit. Why? This simply means to quickly rank for terms with the least competition levels and reasonable traffic volume. Many inexperienced to the SEO game, naturally lean towards the highest search traffic terms first. This is the single biggest mistake newbies make and sets them up for failure before the SEO campaign even gets started. Let’s say you sell diamond jewelry. An amateur would go for “diamond jewelry” as their first target since this keyword yields a higher number of searches. In most cases, however, the keyword which is the most intuitive is not the one to go after because it is the most generic term for that product. Rather than going after “diamond jewelry”, you have a choice of related terms such as “black diamond jewelry”, “blue diamond jewelry”, “discount diamond jewelry”, “blue diamond wedding jewelry” and so on. Of course, you’d generally only optimize for products you actually sell so as to increase sales conversion and not mislead your visitors. Thus, if you don’t offer “blue diamond jewelry”, you don’t want to go after it unless your expertise as a diamond retailer tells you that black diamonds are far superior to blue diamonds and you are attempting to sway potential buyers of blue diamonds to black diamonds as a strategy.

With a more straightforward approach to optimization, these search terms “black diamond jewelry”, “blue diamond jewelry”, and “discount diamond jewelry” show significantly lower search numbers relative to “diamond jewelry”. These keyword phrases are considered tier two search terms. Jewelry and diamond jewelry are considered tier one search terms. For most niche markets, optimizing for more specific terms and directing the visitor to the related subpage of the website converts a whole lot better than general terms. Therefore, it is a great strategy to go ahead and optimize for these tier two keywords (after you’ve confirmed the competitiveness of the keyword search phrase). By building up traffic for the a bigger basket of lesser competitive terms, you will be able to have the equivalent traffic levels as if you were going after one or two difficult search terms. You’ll reach your goal of getting higher search rankings with faster and with less resources.

There is also another benefit many fail to realize. Notice also that the terms above have the base term “diamond jewelry” in them. As an experienced SEO company, we have found that you are getting credit for the base term even though you aren’t specifically going after it in your inbound anchor link text. Furthermore, in terms of business cashflow, it is going to be much easier to rank the lower search traffic terms first and therefore start getting some sales to generate more profit that can be channeled into the tougher key phrases. Rather than hoping to rank a tougher search term which usually takes longer and costs more, it makes sense to generate profits that can be applied towards further aggressive Internet marketing and ensure that your pool of marketing funds don’t dry up before getting higher search engine rankings. Once you reach the top ten rankings for the tier two or tier three search terms, your attempt to rank your website for tier one terms, jewelry and diamond jewelry or even gold jewelry, will be an easier climb to the top.

We’ll cover how to perform detailed keyword and competition analysis in part two of this article. In the meantime, here are some useful free online keyword tools for starters:
WordTracker Free Keyword Tool
Google Adwords External Keyword Tool
Overture Search Suggestion Tool

More search engine optimization resources are available on our SEO tools page.

Written by Anthony Yap, leading SEO expert for http://www.searchmarketingroi.com. Search Marketing ROI offers unique, customized online marketing programs and internet marketing consulting for online businesses. Gain search engine visibility with our search engine optimization or link building packages.