Posts Tagged ‘Keyword Research’

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This is part 6 of a 12 part series on keyword research. This series will guide you through four distinct phase of the keyword research process, providing you step by step guidelines to help you gather, sort and organize your keywords into an effective marketing campaign.

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.

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This is part 5 of a 12 part series on keyword research. This series will guide you through four distinct phase of the keyword research process, providing you step by step guidelines to help you gather, sort and organize your keywords into an effective marketing campaign.

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:

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This is part 4 of a 12 part series on keyword research. This series will guide you through four distinct phase of the keyword research process, providing you step by step guidelines to help you gather, sort and organize your keywords into an effective marketing campaign.

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.

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This is part 3 of a 12 part series on keyword research. This series will guide you through four distinct phase of the keyword research process, providing you step by step guidelines to help you gather, sort and organize your keywords into an effective marketing campaign.

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.

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This is part 2 of a 12 part series on keyword research. This series will guide you through four distinct phase of the keyword research process, providing you step by step guidelines to help you gather, sort and organize your keywords into an effective marketing campaign.

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.

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I think I stress too much about our clients’ performance of their optimization campaigns. Or perhaps I just create too much work for myself. See, all these years I’ve been working 10-12 hour days to help my clients increase their exposure in the search engines for some pretty important phrases. But just recently I found out that I’ve been targeting all the wrong keywords!

You see, I’ve been using keyword research programs such as Wordtracker to find out what words people actually type into the search field when looking for the product or service our clients’ offer. This has helped me to find various search phrases that are actively searched on a daily basis so, when ranked, they deliver traffic to our client’s website.

This is where I think I’ve created more work for myself. I didn’t know we were allowed to just make keywords up instead!

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• PPC FAQ – Action Packed PPC Keyword Research
• Pay Per Click Management: Seven Variables to Manipulate for Maximum Performance
• Using PPC Ads to Improve Your Organic Search Campaigns
• Pay-per-Click and Link Building Campaigns

Google has been spidering the new URL for the (EMP) blog so I thought I’d do a few vanity searches to see if it’s showing up in the search results. Not yet, but I did see something cool. It looks like Pole Position Marketing has gained some site links:

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SEMpdx Searchfest

Ok, this one has come and gone but I wanted to provide a short debrief. I have to say that I had a fantastic time. Searchfest marked my one-year anniversary speaking at conferences. They opened the door for me at Searchfest 2007 and were kind enough to invite me back this year. Boy, am I glad they did.

I have to say that I was really surprised by the marketing power they were able secure for each session was amazing. I felt severely out gunned on both panels I was on. I was amazed at the quality of the information provided and the overall environment established by the SEMpdx team.

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SEO

• Part Two: Why Use Yahoo! Answers
• Part Three: How To Use Yahoo! Answers
• What is your robots.txt file telling your competitors about you?
• How to SEO Your Site in Less Than 120 Minutes
• 6 Reasons Why Your Awesome Site Isn’t Indexed

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