How to do keyword research in 2013

1. ‘With digital channels fast becoming the main route
to market for Interflora it is essential that we chose a
marketing partner that we can rely on to deliver for
our business and respond to an ever changing
landscape. We found that and more in Croud.’
Michael Barringer, Marketing Director Interflora

2. Croud Services…
Paid Search
Natural Search
Social
Account management
Link Development
Social Strategy
Audits
On-Page
Facebook Ads
Project work
Off-Page
Twitter Ads
Consultancy and
Strategy
Content Marketing
LinkedIn Ads
Analytics
Mobile
Web Development

3. Croud’s Global Reach…
Locally relevant, globally consistent

4. Put simply…

5. Supported By CroudControl
Proprietary dashboard
Manages all resources
You see
•
•
•
•
What is conducted on your account
When we do it
The results of what we’ve done
What we plan to do
Also delivers real-time reporting
Enables direct client login for
campaign updates – e.g.
forthcoming promotion…
http://vimeo.com/47990847

6. How to do keyword
research in 2013

7. Keyword Research:
The Backbone of SEO
• Its Impertant to be thorough
• Invest adequate time (we could spend
more than 40 hours per project)
• Listen to your customers
• Use PPC, SEO KW Tools & Customers
Behaviour
• The effort you put in, you get back in
tenfold of $$

8. KW Research Process

11. • Repeat this KW Research Flow Process
as many times as you need.
Source: http://www.seobook.com/keyword-research-strategy-flowchart

12. Keyword Brainstorm
• Keyword Ideas: Seed words
– Ask your staff in a quick email survey
– Check your websites “Internal Search”
keywords

13. Keyword Brainstorm
• Keyword Ideas:
– Google Analytics & Webmaster Tools

14. Keyword Brainstorm
• Keyword Ideas:
– Competitors: SEMRush
– HTML Code, Youtube Video Tags

15. Keyword Brainstorm
• Keyword Ideas:
– Niche Topic Forums: Sub-Categorisation
– Google Search:
– "visitors found this page by searching for“ -seo
– site:com.au “Your Keyword” forum -seo
– “Incoming search terms” “Your Keyword” -seo

16. Keyword Brainstorm
• Keyword Ideas:
– Books “Table of Contents” (Google Books,
Amazon)

17. Keyword Brainstorm
• Keyword Ideas:
– Google Trends:
– Google Related Searches:

18. Keyword Brainstorm
• Keyword Ideas:
– Ubersuggest.org, Scrapebox, SEOChat –
Suggest Tool, Soovle:

19. OK, I got 10,000 KWs…Now What?

20. Keywords
• If your website is commercial (offering products or services),
go with keywords that seem to have the most commercial
intent based on the currently ranking websites. If your website
is informational (blogs come to mind), go with keywords that
have the most informational intent.
• Look for a “sweet spot” of high search volume in conjunction
with low difficulty / competition.
• Look at keywords with high search volume with top
competitors that have lower domain authority and backlinks.
• If your website is already ranking on the first page, but not in
the top 5 spots (or beneath other search result areas such as
images, local results, etc.) and the keyword has good search
volume, focus on getting those keywords and phrases to
move up.

21. SEO & PPC
•
•
•
•
Keyword targets can be selected from historic PPC results and data from
Google Analytics.
Close integration between SEO and PPC ensures a consistent and
complimentary approach to search engine marketing, taking advantage of
the main benefits of both techniques.
Conversion data from paid
search combined with natural
search techniques can result in
reduced PPC costs as rankings
and traffic improve. Good ad
copy can also be used as title
tag and meta descriptions.
Assess PPC data in order to
build a cost effective and
impactful link building strategy.
PPC
- Tactical
- Media costs
SEO
Keywords
- Longevity
targets - Implementation costs

22. Search Traffic Tools
•
•
•
•
•
Google Adwords: PPC Campaigns
Webmaster Tools & Analytics
“New” Google KW Tool: [Exact] match
Bing - Excel Plugin
Paid KW Tools: Wordstream, Keyword
Discovery or WordTracker
Other:
• Google or Social Trend Tools: Trendistic
• SEMRush: Competitor Intelligence
• (SEO)Moz: KW Difficulty Score
Non-English: http://moz.com/blog/40-plus-tools-to-advance-your-international-seo-process

23. KW Data
• Wordstream and Keyword Discovery both seemed to
track stability with Google data for the top terms, but
diverged thereafter.
• Wordstream tended to over-report relative traffic of mid
and long-tail keywords
• Keyword Discovery had the most similar trendline to
actual Google results of those providers that use their
own data sets. However, they also had the lowest
keyword coverage.
• WordTracker's trendline was actually nearly horizontal,
indicating an under-reporting of head terms and overreporting of tail terms.

24. KW Data
• Keyword Ideas:
– Google Adwords Tool
• Discover additional keywords. Use the report to
discover potential keywords to add to your AdWords
accounts by looking for queries where you only appear
in organic search with no associated ads.
• Optimize presence on high value queries. Use the report
to improve your presence in paid results and monitor
your high value queries for organic results.
• Measure changes holistically. As you test website
improvements or AdWords changes to bids, budgets, or
keywords, you can more easily report the impact across
paid, organic, and combined traffic.
http://www.ppchero.com/ppc-seo-unite-with-the-new-paid-organic-report-in-adwords/

25. Keywords Selection
Main Pages
• Keywords: KWs length of 2+ words
• SEO Traffic: More than 2800 [exact]
match
• Phrase to Broad: 35%
• CPC= more than $1
• (SEO)Moz Difficulty Score: Lower than
66%

26. New Website:
Niche Selection
•
•
•
•
•
•
Domain: 3000 [exact] match
Relatively Low competition
Earning Potential
50 Post Test: Can you write it
Huge Resource & High Quality Content
Can you make a difference

27. SERP Competition
“gluten free cake recipes” = 1,600
“easy recipes” = 5,400

28. SERP Competition
• New website/page:
– Average SERP MozRank: Lower Than 2.5
– Backlinks to URL/Page: Lower the Better
– Competitors Website/Page not fully
Optimised
“kids birthday cakes” = 3,600 (CPC: $0.24 Comp: Medium)

29. OK, Now I got 1,000 KWs…What’s Next?

30. Strategy
• Branding or Conversion Focused
Strategy:
– Conversion: This strategy is what most of us are after. We want our
keywords to draw traffic to our website or landing page, and then we
want that traffic to convert by making a purchase or otherwise doing
something specific like filling out a contact form, picking up the phone, or
downloading something. In this case, long-tail or more specific keywords
will likely work best for you.
– Branding: The branding strategy is just that. You value impressions over
new leads or conversions. Whether or not people come to our website
isn't as important as being seen as a player for that keyword. In this case,
broad search terms are likely going to work best for you.
– Hybrid: You can of course bring both of these strategies together and
have 90 percent of your keywords dedicated to a conversion strategy.
Then the other 10 percent are dedicated to branding and impressions.
You would want to segment your keywords accordingly for each
campaign.

31. Strategy
• Define how will you measure success
– Weed out poor performing keywords
– Identify opportunities and areas for
growth
– Shape your SEO strategy for the future

32. Strategy
New vs. Returning
• All: Organic (Landing Page/KW)

33. Strategy
• New:
• Returning:

34. Strategy
• Use social media to help provide
context for user intent
• Use a keyword research brief to share
for unified messaging

35. Strategy
KW Mapping & Silo’s
• Mapping keywords to the right landing
pages
– Target only 1-2 Main Keywords per URL

36. Strategy
• Choose keywords based on more than
just high search traffic:
– Business/landing page relevance
– Competition
– Specificity
– Intent (informational, navigational,
transactional)
– Search volume

37. KW Placement

38. Monitoring
• Keyword
– Question marks – these are keywords in areas where growth is likely but at
present you're not getting the performance you'd expect. These are very
often untapped keyword opportunities and you should plan how you are
going to improve performance on these kinds of keywords.
– Stars – high-performance keywords and loads of room for growth – find
ways to capitalise on growth. My advice is to focus your resources of
gaining results in these areas for maximum ROI in a short period of time.
– Dogs – the poor performing keywords with little or no chance of growth –
bin these in favour of other keywords, reallocate any resources to other
areas.
– Cash cows – the high performing keywords that show little opportunity for
growth – look for ways to enhance and maintain performance whilst
identifying patterns and translating this learning to other areas or verticals.

39. Biggest KW Mistakes
• Selecting Keywords That Don't Reflect How
People Actually Search
• Failing to Perform Competitive Keyword
Analysis
• Not Focusing on Profitable Terms
• Having an Uneven Distribution of Keyword
Difficulty
• Not Knowing Your Geography or Local Search
• Not Monitoring Search Trends
• Failing to Maintain and Adjust Over Time

40. About Me:
Pieter S Verasdonck+
twitter.com/psverasdonck
au.linkedin.com/in/psverasdonck
croud.com.au/our-experts/
Pieter.Verasdonck@croud.com.au
Previous Presentations:
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