Core Term Qualifiers

Optimizing your website for core terms is only part of the optimization process. The vast majority of searches are performed using longer, more specific phrases. When it comes to keyword research, these phrases are really nothing more than your core terms with key qualifiers added to them.

Using your keyword research tools you can find dozens or even hundreds of qualifiers for just about every core term. Each of these new phrases must be carefully analyzed for appropriateness for your site, whether it targets what you offer and fits with the page’s content for which that core term has been applied. Those that don’t can either be discarded or set aside for optimization to other pages.

Research Takes Time

The process of researching your keywords isn’t something that should be rushed. Each phase of the research process needs to be performed deliberately, ensuring that you take the time to find all relevant terms and discard the irrelevant. Any attempts to rush through the keyword research process will likely lead you down the wrong paths at best and at worst cause you to have to rethink your entire keyword targeting strategy.

Unfortunately the research process isn’t always linear. You can often be working on several phases of the research process at a time depending on what your focus is on at a given moment. There is a lot of overlap and moving backward and forward through the processes but care needs to be taken that you don’t skip over or leave any of the phases out.

Keywords are the blue-prints from which all your marketing efforts are built upon. Keyword research tools provide valuable insight into what words people are searching on the major search engines. But research tools are just the first step in a thorough and well-planned keyword research process. Great tools like Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker or even Google’s tools don’t tell you the intent of each search, however that information can be deduced with a bit of analysis and keyword organization.

But before we get into that, let’s look at how people search so we can better understand how to segment and organize your keywords into an effective optimization campaign.

Yesterday, as we begun the fourth and final stage of the keyword research process, we looked at several ways to analyze your website and segment keywords into groups based on user intent. Today we’ll wrap up the entire research process, and this series, by outlining the final act of keyword grouping. Often times even your segmented keyword lists can be quite extensive and it’ll be important to group these phrases even further in order to be properly optimized into the website. This ensures that each page optimized maintains a tight focus but still able to be optimized for a significant group of keywords.

Grouping phrases together for on-page targeting

The process of organizing your keywords is similar to the process of splitting a single core term into multiple cores, only its done in a much more fine-tuned scale. With core terms you were dealing with multiple themes, or different ways to search for the same product. In this phase we are working with only a single core term and deciding how to segment literally hundreds of phrases into manageable groups that are similar in nature.

Phase IV: Organizing Keywords for Success

Making SEO Successful

Organizing your keywords into an effective marketing strategy is the most important of the four phases of keyword research outlined in this document. While most often SEOs and keyword researchers focus on the research phases, organizing your keyword properly can truly help you create a vastly more successful optimization and marketing campaign.

Let’s use the analogy of building an engine to help us understand the value in this final step in the process.

Analyzing Phrases for Quality

As we began Phase III of our keyword research process we discussed several different aspects of analyzing phrases. This helped us better understand the value of each phrase and the pros and cons that each bring to the table. Each of these much be considered and weighed carefully when determining if a keyword is valuable or not.

All of the above noted elements are pretty cut-and-dry and fairly easy to analyze. But in addition to those there are also some more vague elements that must be duly considered as well. These additional elements are far more subjective and require a good deal of thought and analysis.

Yesterday we began Phase III of the keyword research process discussing several elements of key phrase analyzation. We’ll continue today looking at a few more considerations when determining how valuable any particular search phrase is.

Phrases that convert

As you sort through your lists of keywords, you want to be sure to eliminate phrases that won’t deliver converting traffic. Whatever keywords that you keep for optimization, you want each to be able to drive the most qualified traffic, giving you visitors that are most likely to buy your product or services. Many search terms, if ranked high, can generate tons of traffic, however any term does not directly apply to your site or what you offer, should be scrapped.

How to find search phrases

I’ll continue where I left off last week, looking at the different factors involved in finding relevant search phrases. You’ll remember that we discussed the first three; Time, research and deletion. The fourth factor is a bit more involved and it has to do with analyzing the phrases in a bit more detail.

The split / combo factor

Depending on your keywords, a search for any particular core term may produce results ranging from 0 to 1000 different keyword search phrases. Obviously if it produces zero then that core term can likely be scrubbed, or maybe set aside for a day if/when it gains in search popularity. If you’ve broken down your core terms correctly you will usually get a list between 10-300 keyword phrases returned, but again, this varies by industry and term. In the real world, things don’t always work out like we hope.

Phase II

What is a search phrase?

Before we go any further, let’s discuss the difference between a core term and a search phrase. For the purpose of this document a core term and search phrase are similar in that both will be searched and both can provide potential traffic to your site. Core terms, represent a broader topic while the search phrases are simply core terms with added qualifiers, therefore representing a narrower focus. Both core terms and search phrases will be optimized into your website to drive traffic and hopefully, be instrumental in generating strong conversion rates.

In the research process each core term will be used to uncover dozens, if not hundreds of search phrases which collectively will bring in the bulk of your targeted traffic.

Four factors of core term prioritization

By now you should have several dozen or more core terms documented on your spreadsheet. The question is, what to do with all of these keywords. Before moving on to Phase II you’ll first need to prioritize your core terms a bit. In the next phase you’ll start digging deeper into each core term to find the relevant search phrases it produces. Instead of taking the shotgun approach, you can go at deliberately, starting the the core terms that provide you with the best opportunities and will have a more immediate impact on your optimization campaign.

There are four different factors that you need to analyze in determining the relative importance of each core term:

Yesterday I discussed three steps in finding core terms: looking through your website, brainstorming, and then scouring your competitors’ websites. These three steps can give you a wealth of information and you’ll uncover some very important core terms. If you missed yesterday’s post, that quickie recap above doesn’t do it justice so be sure to go back and read. Today I’ll finish up with the steps in core term research before concluding phase one of our keyword research process tomorrow.

Step 4: Use keyword research tools

Site owners often begin the research process by first going to the available tools. There are numerous keyword research tools available and it really doesn’t matter which tool or tools you use, so long as you’re getting the results you need. Since every tool is slightly different it’s a good idea to use multiple tools to ensure you’re getting a wide range of data.

But you can’t really use these tools effectively–or to their fullest potential–until you have some information in which to actually research out, which we’ve covered int he first three steps of core term research. In this step we want to take core terms that we’ve already discovered and plug them into the tools to help us find core terms that have still remained elusive.

How to Find Core Terms

In Part II of this series we defined what a core term is. Today I’ll show you the research steps involved in finding good, strong core terms that will be the basis for the rest of our research, and provide us some actionable intelligence that will be used throughout the keyword research process.

It’s very important that during this core term discovery phase that you don’t give up too early. There is never a point where you have too many core terms or “enough” to work with. To stop researching before you have uncovered just about every possible core term can leave you handicapped in not only the rest of your research, but also in the success of your optimization efforts.

I should also point out that keyword research isn’t a one-time process. No matter how hard you try to be as thorough as possible, you simply won’t uncover everything right now. That’s OK. As time goes on and new core terms come to mind, or search patterns change, continue to add these new core term ideas to your lists to be researched and optimized in the proper time.

Phase I: Finding Core Terms

When most people start with the task of researching keywords they often start by looking for keywords they are familiar with. They’ll use their familiarity with their products or services to find new word variations, maybe a few new relevant words, or even learn some new ways of phrasing what it is people are looking for. While this approach provides valuable information to the researcher, it’s somewhat disorganized.

Because keyword research is so crucial, a more organized approach to it is essential. Instead of starting the research process looking for words you essentially already know but are just in an unknown order, you must start the process looking for what is unknown. In order to find those unknown phrases, you have to start with a foundation that will guide you from where you are to what it is that you’re trying to find, a list of keywords that can be optimized into your site.

The keyword research process starts not looking for search phrases, but core terms that are the foundation of what your site, or specific pages of your site, is all about. Let’s start by defining what a core term is.

A couple years back I released a a 22-page document outlining our keyword research strategies for SEM and SEO campaigns. For the past several months I’ve been meaning to update it with some additional strategies and thoughts. What happened, however we less of an update than a total rewrite. Many of the basic concepts are the same but I’ve added new details, descriptions and even visual illustrations to make it all pretty!

The result is a 12-part series of posts (later to be put into a single downloadable e-book) that will be our new comprehensive guide to keyword research. This series of posts isn’t so much about individual tactics and strategies as it is a start to finish guide on how to find, analyze, prioritize and organize your keywords. The goal is create a solid keyword foundation for your SEM campaigns, whether SEO or PPC, that will put you in a much stronger position for success and give you a significant advantage over your toughest competition.

I recently saw an ad for a new keyword tool called WordButler. Rarely do I ever click on ads, but I’m always on the prowl for tools that are missing from the other tools we use.

So I signed up for a seven day free trial for WordButler and gave it a test run.

How WordButler Works

I have to say that I really like the simplicity of the WordButler interface. There are some drawbacks to this which I’ll explain later, but those can be overcome without overly complicating the functionality of WordButler.

When you open up the program you’re given three basic options: Build a keyword list, get keyword suggestions or estimate keyword traffic.

Suggest Keyword Ideas

The “Suggest Keyword Ideas” allows you to do a broad search for keyword much like the Wordtracker Related Keywords feature. That’s where I usually begin my keyword research process so I started there.

Click the link, type in your keyword in the box that pops up…

and wait a few seconds for the result (it’s pretty fast!):

You can check the keywords which you want to estimate traffic or save for later.

Build a Keyword List

Once you have all your keyword ideas together you can build yourself a keyword list. Whatever screen you happen to be on at the time, there is a “New Project” drop down. Click that and select “I want to Build a Keyword List.”

Enter your keyword in the popup box like before and let the list be built.

This is the most powerful part of the program. You’ll want to note that adding singular versions of words will only give you the singular result. WordButler doesn’t account for plurals or stemmed variations. If you want alternate variations you’ll have to run those searches separately.

Up top you can create or add your negative keyword list. Just type or paste the words in the box either individually or separated by commas and your negative list will build, removing the keywords from the list below.

You can then go and individually delete words, or select on any phrase and add it (minus the actual core term) to the negative list.

When you’re all done, you can export it into a spreadsheet for later viewing.

Estimate Keyword Traffic

This is really nothing more than an import function. Take any list of keywords you have, pop them in and hit OK.

You’re immediately brought to the Estimate traffic screen which is available from each of the two research options noted above.

What I didn’t like about WordButler

As I said before, I really liked the interface to WordButler. There is a lot of potential here, but they’ve got quite a bit of work to do.

Unrelated results

The first problem I came across was when looking for keyword suggestions. About 3/4 of the suggested results were travel related keywords (cheap travel, car rentals, direct flights, etc.) I wasn’t sure how these pertained to “school supplies” so I tried a different search. Both “baby bedding” and “motorcycle batteries” produced the same list of travel terms as well. Obviously this is a bug that needs to be fixed.

Poor quality results

Most of the words that actually were related to my search weren’t much use. Words like “accessories,” “supplies,” “materials,” and “store” don’t really provide me much of anything valuable. On the other hand a Related Keyword search on WordTracker gave me many more ready to use terms such as “classroom supplies,” “educational supplies,” “teacher supplies,” etc.

I honestly wouldn’t have much use for this section. It doesn’t provide me anything that Quintura or L3xicon doesn’t, and both of those are free.

Lack of results

Moving on to building a keyword list, the first problem I came across is that it produced no results for “school supplies”. I tried multiple times and got nothing.

Deleting keywords

If you want to delete keywords from your list you’ll either have to do them one at a time or hold the control key down and click all the words you want to delete. A better option here would be check boxes. It would also be helpful to have a deleted keyword list so you can review what’s been deleted and re-add keywords that may have been deleted on accident.

Another problem is that whenever you delete a keyword you jump back to the top of the list. With each delete you have to scroll to find your place. Very annoying. The same happens when you add words to your negative list.

Negative keyword list

You have to be very careful with the negative keyword list. I found two issues which can cause major frustration. If you add a keyword you have the option to remove it, but removing it doesn’t refresh the list below. That makes removing the keyword somewhat frivolous since it has no effect. The even bigger issue is if you type in a keyword list and accidentally add an additional comma and space after the last negative word (i.e. “free, uk, “). That last space will remove your entire list. And since you can’t just remove that space from your negative list, you’ll have to start your search all over again, including any edits that you’ve done.

I liked the fact that you could click on a keyword and add it to your negative list, but the application of that didn’t always make sense. Say I clicked on “baby bedding and papa smurf”, the words “and papa smurf” would be added to the negative list. This means that I’m not removing any phrase with “papa smurf” unless the word “and” is with it. This feature needs some tweaking to allow individual words to be added when you want to add a negative.

For the most part, adding keywords to the negative list worked, but I found in one case I added “india” to the negative list and the phrase with “in india” wasn’t removed.

Traffic estimator

When you’re viewing the estimator there is no way to remove keywords. You can go back to your keyword list but it would be a nice addition to be able to remove the keywords from that screen. Right now you have to navigate back and hunt for any keywords you decided to remove.

I’m not sure what the traffic estimator is based on. That’s a hard number to quantify and I would much rather see daily or monthly search volume figures.

Save and export

I have three major issues with the save and export feature. First, I’m not given the option to name the file. That’s a pretty basic necessity. The other two issues are with the export file itself. The data was not aligned properly which meant I had to go in and move things around to get it to line up.

You can see that the data is misaligned starting on line nine and then again on line 30. Look even closer and you can see that some of the data is in date format, rather than the raw number.

It would also be nice to export without saving first. But in this case, you can just copy your keywords and paste them into a spreadsheet or import them into Wordtracker.

How WordButler compares to Wordtracker

The two programs are vastly different so I won’t even attempt to do a direct comparison. but I will compare some various results.

In my search for “baby bedding” WordButler estimated that the keyword will generate between 2300 and 2800 clicks a day. On the other hand, Wordtracker only estimates that keyword received 568 searches in a 24 hour period. This is a pretty big discrepancy between the two. In order to get 2300 clicks a day the traffic volume would have to be between 5-20,000 a day. I just don’t see that keyword getting that many searches.

Another example, “baby boy bedding” shows 7 searches per day in Wordtracker but 44-50 clicks per day (Google) according to WordButler. I think it’s clear that WordButler is over-estimating.

I wanted to see how different the databases were so I typed in a very niche keyword, “brass casting.” Wordtracker produced a total of 10 results while WordButler gave me over 100. That’s quite impressive. On the flip side of that, when I ran the traffic estimator only four of the keywords showed any traffic estimates, again compared to Wordtracker’s 10.

On this issue, I think WordButler has the advantage. It is obviously providing keywords that Wordtracker isn’t finding and even if search volume is low, these keywords can be very important for niche industries.

Conclusion

I found it funny that WordButler fetches results from the “Google secret database”. I’d ask where this secret database is, but I guess that’s the point… it’s secret.

I actually liked WordButer a lot and think it’s got a lot of potential. Unfortunately it’s got of bugs to fix. I’m not sure it would ever be a replacement for Wordtracker, my keyword tool of choice, but it can be a nice addition to fill in the gaps that wordtracker leaves.

For right now, though, I’m not ready to shell out another $147 per year. Fix the issues and knock $50 off the price tag and then we’ll talk.

Update: I just received an email from WordButler stating that they have fixed the bugs I’ve mentioned here are are working to implement some of our other suggestions.

Thinking I’d go surfing and find more information on the same subject, I searched call to action words and was a little disappointed that the other posts I found also linking back to the original:

Irish Blog.ie
FiveStar Affiliate Programs

It makes perfect sense though, that the posts I found link back to the original article, considering the search terms I used. And here I am myself, doing just the same thing. At least I’m not reposting the same information – just linking you to it!

At the risk of wearing egg on my face, I am going to admit something I didn’t know. Something that kicked my butt. But I learned. The hard way. Wish someone had told me. Wish someone had blogged about this. If someone did blog about it, I wish I had read it! (how’s that for emphasis?) Hopefully someone else learns from my mistake.

Did you know — and here I am hoping there are at least a few people that, like myself did not know — that the Google Website Optimizer will display alternate landing pages and track conversions for you? Well of course you did. Even *I* knew that much. But what I didn’t realize was what kicked me in the butt.

Ya know, my thought would be that since the Website Optimizer is promoted through AdWords – that it would affect only the landing pages targeted with AdWords. Seemed quite logical to me.

I was all very excited to use the Optimizer to test alternate landing pages for one of my clients. I went through the first basic steps:

Choose your test page.
Choose your conversion page.
Choose what type of test is right for you.
Create the content variations you want to test.

Okay – so I got all the easy steps done. Setting up the experiment was easy too. As a former employer used to say all the time, “it’s not rocket science.” So I walked away all happy that I was going to have my landing pages alternately display automatically each time my AdWords ad was clicked.

But no.

Within an hour of starting the experiment, I got an email from the client asking me “Did you mean to replace the page with this or just have the ads point to it?” My reply back was quick “This is the alternate landing page for the Google PPC campaigns. I am using the Website Optimizer to run the A/B test.”

Thankfully I didn’t just let it go at that. I went direct to the client’s website and navigated to the page in question. Imagine the look of confusion my face when I saw the alternate page displaying rather than the optimized page the SEO side of our house created.

OOPS.

Rather than wait until I figured out why this happened, I immediately went and removed the code from the original page, the alternate page and the conversion page, and stopped the experiment. I also emailed a humble apology to the client, assuring them that the test had been canceled and their original page was now the only page that was going to display.

Then I went on a search for why the alternate page was displaying without having clicked on any of the AdWords ads that pointed to that particular page. I found the answer to my question: Does Website Optimizer test only AdWords traffic? In short, No. Website Optimizer tests all traffic, not just traffic from AdWords campaigns or Google search.

That’s what I didn’t realize That’s what kicked my butt. Website Optimizer tests all traffic, not just traffic from AdWords campaigns or Google search.

Ya know though, in hind site, I really have no idea why I even thought that the page would alternate only when my ad was clicked because no where in setting up the experiment was I asked to associate the alternate page with the ad text.

I guess I do deserve egg on my face. Lesson learned … before jumping in and trying the newest cool toy/trick/gadget – know what it is going to do. Think it through first.

As an SEO, this makes my life difficult. I’m coming to realize that it appears to be a bit easier to understand the way search engines work. Attempting to discover the human mind is my biggest struggle.

I’ve spent the majority of my first few weeks exploring the area of keyword research and have had to scour the web for resources in learning how to compile a list. The greatest lesson I’ve learned is that with some patience and ingenuity, teaching oneself the ways of SEO is possible.

I’ve also discovered how many valuable tools Google offers SEOs in compiling data and research. Lately, I’ve been using Google Adwords for research.

In the coming weeks, I hope to impress Mr. Trump with my strength and strikingly good work ethic as I fulfill my role as the “Apprentice”.

Ideally individual keywords are symbols which represent a coherent, sustained informational need

A Sustained Informational Need (demand) = A Search Engine Target Market.

Therefore in the world of search optimization, target markets are represented symbolically by keywords. Furthermore keywords are a symbolic medium through which the SEO interacts with a target market.

This is the conceptual genesis of SEO: To Satisfy an Informational Demand. Or more precisely; To Satisfy an Informational Demand BEFORE THE OTHER GUY.

There are a number of measurements that can be used when determining how good a keyword might be:

• Search volume (high or low)
• KEI
• Number of search results for a keyword phrase
• Number of search results that use the phrase in the title
• Whether a competitor uses a particular phrase
• etc.

Personally, I don’t think that any of those will actually pick the best keywords for your campaign.

Looking at keywords in terms of difficulty is great for having realistic expectation of how soon you might be able to displace other sites ranking well for them, but it won’t tell you if your keyword is a good keyword for you. Same with looking to see if your competitor uses that term. For all you know they haven’t done their research yet.

All of the information above is useful within context, but there are really only three things that truly matter. You want:

1. Keywords that target your audience
2. Keywords that get traffic
3. Keywords that get conversions

You can find and optimize for a lot of keywords that will perform well in one or two of these areas, but the BEST keywords are those satisfy all three requirements. Anything less won’t do.

You can target your audience with low traffic keywords – but your conversion rates will be low.

You can get traffic that doesn’t convert – but sales rates will be low.

You can get conversions by targeting low traffic keywords – but your traffic rates will be low.

You can target your audience with poor converting keywords – but your sales will suffer.

You can get traffic without targeting your audience – but your conversions will suffer.

You can get conversions without targeting your audience – but your traffic will suffer.

The best keywords ever are keywords that you have determined to be relevant and have tested to get results. Nothing else really matters.

Over the years I’ve written quite a bit on the subject of keyword research. I’m not sure what gave me the bug to put together what I would call the definitive keyword research manual, but late last year I decided to make a go of it. And I’m quite happy with the results.

The basic outline of the manual stemmed from my own research methodologies that I’ve been fine-tuning for our clients for the past several years. Once I began writing I decided to revisit all of my old articles on keyword research, including the keyword research section of my EMP book, to see what information could be re-used for the manual. Surprisingly, much of it could be however it needn’t be. I found that what I had already written for the Keyword Research manual was covered in far greater detail and clarity than all my other writings on the topic.

I was glad to have Jason, who covers things in much more technical detail that I could ever dream of, contribute his keyword research insight to the final product. Most of the technical information you’ll read comes from him. His insights were a fantastic contribution and essentially provided the “what’s missing” so the document could finally be completed.

Yeah, I know… we’ve been pushing this quite a bit on this blog here, but it’s only because we all feel that this is a great document and well worth $69.95 the read. Still haven’t gotten your eyes on it yet? No worries, download it here today. No charge!

About a month ago Stoney came to me to discuss a writing project he was working on. The project was to develop a keyword research handbook that was truly definitive. He asked me to organize the material he had and possibly contribute some of my own. At first I figured that we would be putting together an SEO tutorial on basic keyword research. Introductory level information is generally the norm within the industry, especially for publicly available works.

As I was working my way through a first read-through I quickly realized that Stoney was doing something different here. This was not another seo intro or cursory treatment. Stoney was discussing the real-deal nuts-n-bolts of advanced keyword research. The systems that he has perfected over the years and uses himself. Real SEO info!

I began editing the rough document and adding my own contributions and notes to Stoney’s very practical and functional approach to keyword research. Generally I tend towards the technical aspects of SEO: underlying mathematics, IR, library science, etc. This often works out to be a nice fit as Stoney’s practical approach to SEO very much compliments my own and vice-versa. The Keyword Research Guide was no exception and I am fortunate to have been able to contribute some of my own best practices and personal keyword research techniques to this great treatment of the subject.

The final product is a completely original and uniquely functional guide to professional keyword research as only a seasoned search optimization professional could produce.

Whether you are an SEO novice; still wet behind the ears, or a decorated veteran of the search wars:
Read this Keyword Research Guide…
Because its time to upgrade your skills.

• Evaluating keywords by: Brand, Conversion, Relevancy, Competition and Query Volume
• The importance of determining your client’s measures of success.
• The value (and prohibitive cost) of high level competitive keyword data from Hitwise.
• Using PPC data as a reference for converting keywords.
• Looking at offline keyword influences.
• Using Google Trends to understand search activity

Mainly I walked away from this session with a few good ideas for in-house tools to develop, as well as a couple of new metrics to tinker with.

The most common criterion employed for keyword selection include:

• Search volume - The number of searches performed for a keyword.
• Competition – The volume and strength of competitor websites.

Generally keyword research is an attempt to find a balance between these polar attributes and usually results in some kind of compromise in terms of keyword quality or relevance.

Often the greatest difficulty of the keyword research process is finding a compromise that you can live with. This I believe demonstrates that the common approach to keyword research leaves much to be desired. The remedy is to be found by using new and innovative research techniques and more importantly by approaching the process with a renewed perspective based upon a more complete understanding of the gravity inherent in keyword selection.

Firstly we must abandon the idea of “picking” keywords. There are a finite number of search phrases that accurately describe your business; this process is one of discovery. Therefore a more accurate perspective is keyword “identification”.

Additionally the notion of “picking” keywords describes (accurately) the common research model used in the keyword research process: That is; mining every search phrase possible that is remotely related to one’s industry and then picking the best one’s from the list. This method is highly imprecise, involves minimal business intelligence and enervates resources.

Going back to the idea that each keyword represents an important business goal, we can see that “picking keywords” is a flawed research model. Can one select important business goals from a list of all possible business goals? Not if success or longevity are among one’s business goals.

I would say that a research model that more accurately reflects our “keywords as business goals” perspective would look something like this:

Keyword research has two distinct simultaneously occurring projects each with a different focus. They are:

1. Business Intelligence Research
2. Technology and Application

Business intelligence research is concerned with identifying information to address the following questions:

Business Self-Evaluation-

• What phrases best describe our business, technologies, services, corporate culture and mission statement?
• How well do these phrases describe our competition?
• What search phrases are used by our sales motivated target audience?
• What distinguishes this business from competitors? What are the phrases that reflect a consumer interest in those distinctions?

Competitor Evaluation-

• Do our strongest real-world competitors also represent our top Internet competitors?
• Who would we like to consider our competitors? Is this the same as our actual competitors?
• What search phrases are driving conversions to top competitors?

Technology and application research is concerned with addressing the following questions and completing the following processes:

• In regards to competitors top conversion phrases; can our business become more relevant than our competitors for those search phrases?
• Are there any important search volume trends that can be observed for important keywords?
• Identify and compile an industry vocabulary containing all words, phrases and concepts that are commonplace within the business’ unique area of focus.
• Identify the search volume for phrases within the industry vocabulary.
• Exploration and alteration of the industry vocabulary using linguistic / semantic analysis.

For example mapping the following for elements of the industry vocabulary:

• Synonymy/Antonymy – Example: Light is an antonym of Dark.
• Similarity – Example: Warm is similar to Hot.
• Membership – Example: Senator is a member of Senate.
• Metonymy (whole/part relations) – Example: Piano has a part keys.
• Substance – Example: Lightning has substance Electricity.
• Attribute – Example: Mile and Kilometer are attributes of Distance.
• Causation- Example: Jokes cause laughter.
• Lateral bonds – Example: Happiness is related laterally to smiling.

Identification of pairs and triplets of phrases that most commonly occur together on top ranked competitor websites.

The formulation of two lists based upon information gathered from research data:

1. A list of essential criteria which each keyword must fulfill in order to be considered (document co-occurrence, lateral strength with a set of core themes, etc.)
2. A list of essential keywords identified during the research process based upon all of the information discovered.

At the completion of both research projects a series of collaborative presentation and brainstorming sessions should be facilitated so that the most effective keywords can be identified and implemented based upon the work of both research projects. Final selection would be based upon a variety of criteria, and keywords could be used for a variety of goals all of which is based upon solid data arising from the use of a thorough and intelligent research model.

The research model described above is of course very general and would need to be customized to individual businesses and unique business needs, however it effectively hints at the potential of a keyword research project that is based upon the perspective that keywords are important business goals.