Below is live coverage of the SMX Boot Camp: Keyword Research Tools & Techniques from the SMX East 2009 conference.
This coverage is provided by Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
| Keyword Research Tools & Techniques | (10/05/2009) |
| 10:43 | aviwilensky: Moderator: Disa Johnson, CEO, SearchReturn
Spealker: Christine Churchhill, President KeyRelevance.com |
| 10:47 | aviwilensky: Disa introduces Christine |
| 10:48 | Who is interested in keywords for:PPC SEO SMO |
| 10:49 | aviwilensky: People find products on search engines and social media sites - they use text and get results. Search engines go back and look at text and must talk to them in their language - text. Can incorporate video and images with text, but must use keywords! |
| 10:50 | aviwilensky: Step 1: Develop list of terms for SEO and PPC. Tip - use Excel and tabs = pages. |
| 10:52 | aviwilensky: If you've done your keyword research, use them to name your files, work them into press releases, blog posts/. |
| 10:54 | aviwilensky: Keyword seasonality, information helps with PPC budget and campaign planning. |
| 10:56 | aviwilensky: 20.4% of searches are 1 word. As time increases, query legnth increases. 1 word queries are mostly navigational |
| 10:57 | aviwilensky: the long tail: based on frequency graph. chris anderson pioneered the concept in his book "the long tail" |
| 10:59 | aviwilensky: Process of doing keyword research: 1-brainstorming - no judging words at this stage. cast a wide net and generate broad list. don't be myopic and use internal jargon. review internal documents and print collateral. |
| 10:59 | aviwilensky: talk to the customer - surveys, interviews, meetings, focus groups, talk to sales folks, tech people. if you dont have time - look at blogs that mention company name - look at language and terms. on twitter - can see how people describe your products. |
| 11:00 | aviwilensky: best keywords come from customer! thats what you want to find out! |
| 11:02 | aviwilensky: Look at traditional print and online magazines. Look at competitors. |
| 11:03 | aviwilensky: Look at your logs. Look at your analytics. Core phrases + filtering will give you insight on new keywords. |
| 11:03 | aviwilensky: Put a site search on your site if appropriate. Can get a direct feed from searches on website - reveals keywords actually looking for. Google custom search is perfect for that, SLI, and other third parties. |
| 11:04 | aviwilensky: Google custom search ties nicely in Google Analytics and Omniture. |
| 11:04 | aviwilensky: Keyword tools: Google Keyword Tool, Webmaster Tools, Insights, Trends, Search Based Keyword Too. |
| 11:06 | aviwilensky: Google keyword tool is best known tool. 2 ways to use it. 1) put in term, 2) or look at a particular website. Great for competitive analysis. |
| 11:06 | aviwilensky: Helps group keywords for Adwords campaigns. Good shortcut. |
| 11:07 | aviwilensky: Tip: Pull down "show all" on the drop down. Also keep in mind match type. Defaults on broad. |
| 11:08 | aviwilensky: Another tool is" search based keyword tool" - helps find keywords for adwords campaigns |
| 11:09 | aviwilensky: Google Trends: Gives insight into mind of searcher. Nice tool. |
| 11:11 | aviwilensky: All time favoite: Google Insights. Play with it. Lots you can do with it. Likes the demographic info, where the keywords are used down to the city level. Shows top and rising searches. Demo's a search for Twitter and shows spike. |
| 11:12 | aviwilensky: Hot Trends is another cool tool. Can put in a date - and tells you hot searches within a time frame.
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| 11:14 | aviwilensky: WordTracker: The Grandaddy. One of the earliest tools. Pulls data from meta search engines. Skewing of data on regular search engines because of tools like Web Position. By using a meta search engine you can avoid that. |
| 11:14 | aviwilensky: Wordtrackers Keyword Question Tool: Can find common questions as food for thought for future articles. |
| 11:15 | aviwilensky: Trellian keyword discovery: Has multiple data sources. Primary comes from Toolbar data. Related queries. |
| 11:16 | aviwilensky: Google Webmaster Tools: Many overlook this. |
| 11:16 | aviwilensky: Wordstream: Free. Great sorting features. |
| 11:17 | aviwilensky: Google Sets. Helps give related terms. |
| 11:17 | aviwilensky: AdCenter Tools: adlabs.msn.com. Search funnel tool is her favorite. Shows searches before and after a term. |
| 11:18 | aviwilensky: Clusty: Clustering type engine. Shows related keywords in categories. Great way to mine into deeper levels of KW's. |
| 11:18 | aviwilensky: Yahoo! Suggest. Shows keywords embedded in phrases. |
| 11:18 | aviwilensky: Ask.com related search suggestions. |
| 11:19 | aviwilensky: Quintura: Shows keywords in clouds. Shows related terms. Helps define relationships. |
| 11:20 | aviwilensky: SEOBook.com Keyword suggestion tool - aggregates. Another fine product by Aaron Wall! |
| 11:20 | aviwilensky: Microsoft Ad Intelligence - plugs into excel. Data comes from live.com. |
| 11:21 | aviwilensky: Facebook Lexicon: Shows what's hot on facebook by looking at terms on Walls. |
| 11:22 | aviwilensky: Twitter: Real time search engine. Twitscoop, Tweetbeep, Twhirl, Tweetdeck (for monitoring) |
| 11:23 | aviwilensky: TweetVolume: Show's keyword volume on Twitter. |
| 11:23 | aviwilensky: SiteVolume: Looks at 5 different sites. Digg, Flickr, YouTube, etc. |
| 11:25 | aviwilensky: Youtube: Keyword suggest tool. Also have a keyword tool for the Ads. Similar to Adwords tool but a little different
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| 11:25 | aviwilensky: WikiRank - shows keyword frequency on Wikipedia |
| 11:25 | aviwilensky: Wikipedia Stats - similar to WikiRank |
| 11:27 | aviwilensky: Technorati has some cool tools. Top searches page. Keyword clouds. |
| 11:28 | aviwilensky: Expand list further - adjectives, mispellings and typos, abbreviations and slang, Aaron Wall's keyword permutation tool @ tools.seobook.com |
| 11:30 | aviwilensky: Popularity gives insight on traffic potential. Being popuiar is overrated. Popular phrases are often less relevant, more competitive. Less popular terms are often more focused, satisfied needs of searcher, higher conversion, and less traffic. |
| 11:31 | aviwilensky: User Intent! Get inside the mind of the user. What is their motivation? Research vs. Purchase, what stage in the buying process, what is the audience demographic? |
| 11:31 | aviwilensky: 80% of all searches on the web are non-commercial. - Jim Lanzone, Ask.com |
| 11:33 | aviwilensky: Keywords indicate where people are in the buying process. Problem recognition, information search, select alternatives, evaluation of alternatives, and finally purchase decision. |
| 11:34 | aviwilensky: 3 types of searches: Navigational - looking for a URL, Informational - the 80%, transactional - use terms like "buy", "download". |
| 11:34 | aviwilensky: Competitive Analysis: Who is competing against you in SERPs? May not be real competitors in real world but compete in the results. Great opportunity to cross link. |
| 11:35 | aviwilensky: Look at PPC ads, sites that are ranking, optimization of their sites, look at what keywords they are buying (need tools), look at their backlink profiles. Pay attention to title tags and how well their sites are optimized. |
| 11:36 | aviwilensky: Lot's of competitive intelligence tools. Hitwise - uses data from ISPs, shows top sites for search terms. Can compare traffic sources for competitors. |
| 11:36 | aviwilensky: Comscore: Similar to Hitwise, data collected from 2 million users. |
| 11:37 | aviwilensky: Hitwise Search Term Gap: Compares 2 sites and what sites rank on different terms. You vs. competitor. |
| 11:37 | aviwilensky: Comscore's similar tool: The marketer tool. Comscore gets very granular. |
| 11:38 | aviwilensky: Test keyword performance early! Use PPC to test candidate KW's. Gives quick quantitative feedback on the KW's performance WHILE controlling costs. |
| 11:41 | aviwilensky: Track performance down to the keyword level! |
| 11:43 | aviwilensky: A few final tips: Don't for a single keyword. Longer phrases often convert better. Look at popularity as traffic potential. Review keyword competition. Use a variety of tools and use them in combination. No keyword tool is perfect! |
| 11:43 | aviwilensky: Look at trends in keyword usage! Must has changed in the last year! |
| 11:44 | aviwilensky: Relook at keywords every year and see how economy effects them. |
| 11:45 | aviwilensky: Remember: It's not about the keywords you want to be found on. It's about the keywords the end user uses to find you. |
| 11:46 | aviwilensky: in Sum: The success of of your search campaign depends on good keywords. Keyword selection takes time and is an ongoing activity. It's iterative. Never ever done! PPC - may be heavy on negative keywords! Don't use popularity as the only criteria! Get feedback and if term isnt working, change it! |
| 11:50 | 
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