The first component of keyword attractiveness is popularity. What are the keywords most customers will use today to find your site? You may think you know already (and possibly you do), but then again you may be surprised.
One of the most wonderful things about search engines is that they make available (for public research purposes) “insider data” about what people search for on their sites. They do this in a variety of ways, generally through application program interfaces (APIs), which allow developers to point their web-based or desktop software directly at the underlying search engine index.
Imagine that: basically the highest-quality market research data that has ever been made available, continually refreshed in real time and based on massive sample sizes. Wouldn’t you be mad not to take advantage of this data? Of course, and I am going to show you how. To access the industry data yourself, you basically have two choices. Either you purchase SEO software that directly interacts with industry data sources; or you make use of the (now relatively limited) free keyword analysis tools online.
On the forum (www.seo-expert-services.co.uk), I maintain a comprehensive and up-to-date list of all the most important SEO tools and software, including those appropriate for keyword popularity research. Via the forum, you can obtain a special discounted price on the software I most frequently use.
However, for the purposes of this section, I will work with the current best free resource: www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/. The Digital Point tool allows you to check for recent combinations of search words (and their derivatives) on the search engines, returning search frequencies for each. The data you will be accessing is for the most recently completed calendar month.
Bear this in mind if your business is seasonal in nature. For example, if you sell Halloween costumes, you are likely to get an inflated view of search rates if you undertake this analysis in November and thus work on the October data! Visit the tool and try entering some of the two-, three-, and four word combinations on your keyword list. Make a note of the resulting frequencies. You will notice that you can drill down from phrases into their subcategories (by clicking on a phrase in the results).
Brad finds that the main subcategory for “business printing” (6,245 results) is “business card printing” (19,254 results). This surprises him more than perhaps it should. More than 50% of all US businesses are now home based, so the SOHO/B2C part of his market is bigger than he could ever have imagined. Consumers, not companies, are what drives big search popularity numbers, and most bedroom entrepreneurs need business cards.
You should really multiply the Digital Point search numbers returned by approximately 2.5 (which extrapolates its numbers to a rough estimate of worldwide searches). You can then add these numbers to your spreadsheet (in Column B) to give you the top keywords and phrases for your business, based on popularity alone.
You will find, as did Brad, that clicking up and down through the Digital Point results will suggest many more keyword combinations that your competitors have not spotted. Brad, for example, found that “color business card printing” and even “full color business card printing” were quite popular, despite not featuring on his competitors’ sites. Add all of these new finds to your keyword list in Column A and aim to get your total up to about 150 different keywords and keyphrases.
One of the most wonderful things about search engines is that they make available (for public research purposes) “insider data” about what people search for on their sites. They do this in a variety of ways, generally through application program interfaces (APIs), which allow developers to point their web-based or desktop software directly at the underlying search engine index.
Imagine that: basically the highest-quality market research data that has ever been made available, continually refreshed in real time and based on massive sample sizes. Wouldn’t you be mad not to take advantage of this data? Of course, and I am going to show you how. To access the industry data yourself, you basically have two choices. Either you purchase SEO software that directly interacts with industry data sources; or you make use of the (now relatively limited) free keyword analysis tools online.
On the forum (www.seo-expert-services.co.uk), I maintain a comprehensive and up-to-date list of all the most important SEO tools and software, including those appropriate for keyword popularity research. Via the forum, you can obtain a special discounted price on the software I most frequently use.
However, for the purposes of this section, I will work with the current best free resource: www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/. The Digital Point tool allows you to check for recent combinations of search words (and their derivatives) on the search engines, returning search frequencies for each. The data you will be accessing is for the most recently completed calendar month.
Bear this in mind if your business is seasonal in nature. For example, if you sell Halloween costumes, you are likely to get an inflated view of search rates if you undertake this analysis in November and thus work on the October data! Visit the tool and try entering some of the two-, three-, and four word combinations on your keyword list. Make a note of the resulting frequencies. You will notice that you can drill down from phrases into their subcategories (by clicking on a phrase in the results).
Brad finds that the main subcategory for “business printing” (6,245 results) is “business card printing” (19,254 results). This surprises him more than perhaps it should. More than 50% of all US businesses are now home based, so the SOHO/B2C part of his market is bigger than he could ever have imagined. Consumers, not companies, are what drives big search popularity numbers, and most bedroom entrepreneurs need business cards.
You should really multiply the Digital Point search numbers returned by approximately 2.5 (which extrapolates its numbers to a rough estimate of worldwide searches). You can then add these numbers to your spreadsheet (in Column B) to give you the top keywords and phrases for your business, based on popularity alone.
You will find, as did Brad, that clicking up and down through the Digital Point results will suggest many more keyword combinations that your competitors have not spotted. Brad, for example, found that “color business card printing” and even “full color business card printing” were quite popular, despite not featuring on his competitors’ sites. Add all of these new finds to your keyword list in Column A and aim to get your total up to about 150 different keywords and keyphrases.
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