Posts About ‘keyword research’

Targeting the Mindset of the Customer #SMX

SMX London

First session at SMX London 2013 I attended was run by Christine Churchill from Key Relevance looking at targeting the mindset of the customer.

Why Keyword Research Matters

Christine opens with declaring that keywords should be at the heart of all search marketing – the first and most important step in SEO. Keywords, she says, are the single most important thing for site relevancy.

Reassuringly she notes that it’s important to get into the customer mindset using the example ‘duplicate a CD’ and ‘burn a CD’: which would the customer look for: business jargon may work inside the industry, but mostly it’s not what customers search for.

Churchill is a fan of the long-tail term – they tend to be closer match and therefore convert better.

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The Many Faces of International Keyword Research

seo

Where would we be without keyword research? It’s indisputably the foundation of all search marketing and no doubt a part of daily life for most people reading this. International search is no different, and when done properly, keyword research can offer real value in a number of different ways; to inform international decisions and drive global performance.

I’m going to talk about several ways international keyword research can and should be used by any business with international ambitions or an existing global presence. (more…)

Long-Tail Keywords – Your Licence to Kill

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We must never forget how life-changing the internet has been for the people of our tiny planet. It’s too easy to think of it as being nothing more than a great way for businesses to make bigger revenues, but it really has done so much more. It’s broadened people’s horizons, made education accessible, and given the public a voice. Forget eBay, forget Amazon and forget the likes of www.buycheapfatburningpills.com; the internet is about people solving problems and enriching lives. You need something? You ask Google where you can get it. If you can’t afford it you ask Google where you can get it cheaper. If you still can’t afford it you ask Google how you can “make money online without investing a penny” – and guess what, Google has an answer for that, too! (more…)

SMX East 2012 New York – Day 1 #SMX

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This was my first time to attend SMX East and I was really pleased to attend the SEO and link building sessions. The sessions were Keyword Research and Copywriting, Surviving Penguins, Pandas and Other SEO Beasts, SEO is an investment and SEO Beware: Black Hat Tactics To Avoid and Be Wary of.

Here is summary of each of the four from the first day of SMX East.. (more…)

Understanding Your Link Profile – Part One

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I’ve always believed that link building without knowing what your current link profile looks like is a bit like flying blind. Especially with the recent goings on, as an SEO you really need to have a good understanding of who’s linking to you, and in what context those sites are linking. Ideally, you should have a good handle on anchor text distribution,  page rank distribution and also a solid idea of what your competitions link profiles look like – i.e do you fit in or does your site stand out like a sore thumb?

As a minimum step when starting a link building project, I’ll make sure I take a good look at the client’s current link profile, focusing in on what the anchor text looks like; and to try and ascertain what sort of link building has been conducted in the past. That helps me to make some decisions about what anchor text to target, and what I might be up against. Key to this is being able to quickly gather the data you need and organise it in a way that tells the right story. (more…)

Building Your Brand: Test Your Content, Not Just Your Keywords

Make Writing Fun Guest Post

I was doing my usual shuffle through a few analytics accounts the other day, for interest rather than with a clear goal in my mind when this blog post occurred to me. Firstly apologies for again writing something that is not ‘in the news’ as such. I promise my next post will be about current events – from Google plus-ing to site mobile-ing and everything in between.

For now, back to the thought I had about content, brand and analytics.

Here’s my train of thought:

1. We all know that our analytics accounts tell us what content is working, what search terms people come in on and  even what search terms send the ‘right’ kind of people to our site.

2. We all know that we need to hone our keyword targeting in order to get those ‘right’ kind of people – even if we are limited to using endlessly frustrating tools like the dreaded Adwords Keyword Tool.

3. We all know we need to write content, using those target keywords, in order to get conversions.

4. How often do we think about brand visibility and its value alongside conversions?

Let me give you an example. (more…)

Two ways of using Google Images for product keyword research

Today I want to share a way to do keyword research, specifically for products you want to sell online. Say you’ve got a new product you want to sell online. You’re going to start a webshop to sell this product and you want the shop to be findable for relevant keywords. But you don’t know how your target audience calls this product.

Normally keyword research would begin with an idea of how your audience searches. But there are other ways to find out how a product is referred to online. This type of keyword research is based on a few new functionalities of Google image search. (more…)

Working with clients to develop a robust and informative keyphrase seed list

chapter 5 keyword research

It’s been over 3 years now since a potential client (a B&B owner) from Bridgend told me that he wanted to rank Number 1 in Google for hotels.

Try as I might, I was unable to convince him that both he as a business owner, and I as an internet marketer, would likely have more success choosing a range of keyphrases that were less competitive, and more relevant to the product and services that he offered.  Suffice to say, it was not the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship.  I wonder where he is now? (more…)

New tool: Google Correlate: Google Trends in reverse

Google-Correlate

Google just launched an interesting new tool: Google Correlate. It is currently available in beta in Google Labs. The tool enables you to find queries with a similar pattern to a target data series. In other words: it does what Google Trends does, but in reverse.

The tool could very well be an interesting tool for SEOs doing keyword research, but is primarily intended for researchers. On their blog Google states that the tool is designed for researchers to see what terms best match the current trends in real life. (more…)

Review: SEO Effect

SEO EffectSEO Effect is a new suite of search engine optimization tools that’s currently under development by a team headed by Dutch search marketing expert Keesjan Deelstra. I had the opportunity to review the SEO Effect software recently, unleashing it on two of my websites.

First of all it’s important to state that SEO Effect is a work in progress. So far the tool suite has a keyword research module and a trend monitoring module. Under development are the site optimisation, link strategy, and task management modules. (more…)

The value of keyword rankings

Time to tackle another trend in SEO that may not necessarily be accurate: There’s an increasingly negative attitude towards keyword rankings as viable metrics of SEO success. I’m going to argue that keyword rankings are still valuable and should be an integral part of your SEO reports.

Over the years there have been many changes to the SERPs that, according to some, heralded the end of keyword rankings. From Local Search to Universal Search, every new tweak and addition to the results pages was seen as another apocalyptic event that now, Once And For All, made for keyword rankings truly useless.

The most recent Google features that have once again reopened the assault on keyword rankings are Personalized Search and Social Search. These would really make any monitoring of keyword rankings utterly and totally obsolete, some claimed.

That’s, of course, not quite the case.

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