Why Keywords Have Less and Less To Do With Search (Engines)

Admit it; when someone says 'keyword research' you think of Google, SEO, and AdWords, right?

That's fine, but it doesn't stop there. In fact,  keyword research starts with these things, but it doesn't end there. Just because you've found ten long tail keyword phrases that ought to pull in 1,000 high quality, converting customers to your web site, it's not the end of the story.

It will be useful to create content around those keyword phrases, yes.

But they're also useful for so many other parts of the online marketing process:

• Twitter hash tags;
• Category labels;
• Email subject headings;
• etc.

What keyword research shows is what's on people's minds. Since you're targeting your market with the research activities (or ought to be!) the keyword phrases tell you what's on your customers' minds.

That's important - and an illustration of exactly how important it is can be found on a recent 4 Hour Work Week blog entry (How to Create a $4,000 Per Month Muse), under the heading for Day 2.

(If you go over there to read the article, that's fine, but make sure you come back!)

On Day 2 of the 5 day mentorship program, Noah Kagan points out that in contacting your market, you should deliver your message through multiple channels:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Email
• Twitter

Reasons for this are diverse, but it could just be that people get busy and like to be reminded that they've received an email, been contacted on LinkedIn or Facebook, and so on.

Sage advice. But what about the keyword research?

It's important because it ensures that your message is consistent, and that you are using keywords that are likely something that your prospect was already thinking about - after all, they came from the market.

There's an added bonus - some of these contact methods (i.e. Twitter) become publicly searchable. When that happens, if you're using keywords, the Tweet (or whatever) will be found, and interested parties can find you, and that's what marketing (even search engine marketing) is all about.

Should I Buy a Keyword Research Tool or Service?

This is a perennial question - and with the recent changes at Google, with upwards of 87% of incoming search traffic now encrypted - people are starting to ask my opinion on this subject yet again.

Allow me to quickly recap this for you : in the past, we saw incoming data in services like Analytics and StatCounter, as well as Squidoo, Blogger and HubPages stats that let us see where the traffic came from. We got the exact URL (address) which meant that for search engines, we got the actual query.

The aforementioned services needed to do a bit of URL bashing to get them out, but they were (and for Yahoo!, some local Google's and other search engines, they still are) available to turn into business intelligence.

That business intelligence was which keywords brought which visitors to what page. Tracking their paths afterwards through the site allowed us to make logical links between the keywords and eventual sales.

That was the foundation of keyword research for many, many tools. Remove the search terms, and they are left with... nothing.

Almost.

They still get query data from the 20% of searches (in some markets!) that aren't done on Google, but that's little help in many cases.

What's more help is that Google still lets us have some keyword data via AdWords - and in particular the Adwords Keyword Planner - which has now been taken advantage of by many tools.

Which brings us to the answer : Yes. Buy a tool. Invest in a service. Pay for keyword research.

However, be aware that there are no tools that have a special relationship with Google, there are no shortcuts, no silver bullets. You are paying for a tool to perform the same tasks that you could, using freely available tools, but much, much more quickly.

Some have the ability to link certain bits of data together and make recommendations, and allow calculations to be done that draw logical conclusions, but the basic data can be replicated with a bit of hard work.

Personally, I only use one tool (Market Samurai, feel free to do a Google search for it) alongside the free stats services, as well as some techniques that I explain in the Keyword Cracker Inner Circle material, but in the end it all boils down to what you do with them.

So, tools are good, but applied keyword intelligence is better!

What Encrypting Search Terms Means for Keyword Research - The Death of SEO As We Know It?

So, Google (in the name of end to end security) now encrypts all our searches. I'm going to jump straight in and get all technical so that you understand what it means for Keyword Cracker, as well as anyone else involved in SEO.

It's not pretty, I warn you.

Anyone who has, as their remit, the responsibility to match keyword terms to landing pages will, as of this Google update, be unable to fulfill that responsibility as a basic Google user. Other search engines, making up a smaller proportion of traffic are, for now, differentiating by not adopting the same practice but may well follow suit.

That said, here's the science. In order to tell you what keyword terms have been used to find your page, services (like Google's own Blogger platform, Squidoo, Analytics, StatCounter etc.) check the referring URL, and extract keywords from the query that was used to get the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

Removing that by encrypting the URL, means that those terms are lost forever. That's it. There's no room for anyone to say "Yes, but..." and come up with a technical solution based on search.

SEO that relies on knowing what keyword terms brought in a visitor, and what they did next, will fail.

No longer can you say that 'how to defrag my hard drive' is the keyword phrase to target, because it results in a 15% conversion, based on the visitor path (visitor flow) through your site. You just won't know, because Google won't tell you.

It also means you can't keyword fish. Remember that technique? Putting up pages on high value / high traffic sites like Squidoo in order to capture keyword phrases? Doesn't work any more.

In-site search is still going to throw up some good results, but that doesn't mean that every landing page should be a Google-esque search form, just in case you had that in mind. By all means promote your in-site search boxes, though, to make it easier for visitors to find the good stuff, just avoid asking 'What did you come here for today' like some over-effusive shop assistant.

'Cos it probably might not work.

Also, promote your tag clouds, and - even better - get the tag cloud involved in the sales funnel so you can see what's on your visitor's minds. That way, at least you're getting some intelligence that is based on triggers, even if you have to set them in advance.

There's also another swathe of businesses that have just lost out, too - those custom 404 companies that couple expired domain names with knowing what query produced the listing in order to redirect to paying customers web sites.

They're sunk. They can only send the visitor at random, and hope. They've lost their ability to target, along with everyone else.

Now, the good news is that the AdWords data is still available, so we can still spy on what people think are 'good' search terms. We can also hope that Google has maintained a link between AdWords, AdSense and their search data, so that we will be able to research, and infer, search term (keywords) intelligence.

So, the Keyword Cracker isn't dead. Keyword Research isn't a lost cause. SEO hasn't fallen over the edge of a cliff.

But the rules have changed, and we will be forced to work smarter, better, and create higher quality content than ever before as a result. That can only be a good thing for the people who are most important in this discussion - the customers.

Keyword Fishing : Tip for Keyword Research and Analysis

Money Fishing (via SXC)

Keyword Fishing is a technique that is designed to take all of the content that is being created and extract keywords from it that relate to your keyword research project.

It is powerful because it takes its cue from actual keyword data and content producers reactions to that data.

The first thing that you can do is turn Google's AdWords lens on yourself and analyze your own content in the quest for new keyword trends.

If you look low down the list of suggested keywords for your content (using the Google Keyword Planner, for example) you will usually find some long-tail keyword phrases that throw up new keyword pairs that you haven't though of.

There is always the danger that this is a self-referential technique, though, with search lists become more and more narrow as the keyword gene pool is exhausted. To avoid this, it pays to expand the content set to fresh sources of keyword inspiration.

Choosing a Keyword Fishing Source

Whether you want to get a fresh keyword perspective on your niche, or are doing some deep research for an SEO client, it is important to pick sources that reflect the content consumers. These are usually (and in keyword research and keyword cracker terms, exclusively) search users.

So, to get a good feel for their opinion, it is important to use consumer generated content to generate lists of keywords that diligent filtering can pare down to a set of useful phrases.

Such content includes:

• other people's blogs;
• comments pages from (open) forums;
• consumer reviews;
• services like Yahoo Answers.

There are more, but these should be a good starting point.

Other good sources include Google News results, Bing News results (which now includes Twitter/Facebook) according to C|Net, and even Twitter feeds, providing that the correct filtering has been applied.

How Keyword Fishing Works

Actually doing the fishing is extremely easy. Once the source URL has been identified (and it can be a base URL, or a landing page) an appropriate analysis tool is used to extract the keywords. There are several paid tools out there like SEM Rush and Keyword Spy, but beginners can just use the Google Keyword Planner.

(Keyword Planner has replaced the old AdWords Keyword Tool, and I still have mixed feelings about it!)

The first step is to put the URL into the Google Keyword Planner, in the box labelled 'Your Landing

Google Keyword Planner Options (screenshot)

Page', as shown in the image on the left.

It's important to note that this can be any URL, and that the other two boxes should remain empty unless you have a very good reason to fill them out.

You can use your usual targeting and result list customization options, remembering that your mileage will vary if you limit the result set too much.

After clicking the Get Ideas button, you will be presented with the usual list from which you can pick the keyword phrases that best match your current needs.

How you choose to filter to get the best keywords for your purpose depends whether your focus is traffic, traffic acquisition cost (against value) or ratio of buyers to browsers.

Serve Your Customers First : Tips for Organic SEO

Before we get into the whole "keyword research as an organic SEO technique" discussion, I suggest you take a moment and think about what you are trying to achieve.

As R L Adams notes in The SEO White Book: "Today, to rank high, Google needs to trust you." The author then goes on to point out that Google's trust is influenced by three key components:

• age - how long has your domain been online?
• authority - who else that Google already trusts thinks you are great?
• content - is the content actually relevant and useful?

Organic SEO is only really concerned with the last of these - the content. However, your authority measure will be affected by the way that you link back to your top level domain (or whatever you're trying to attract customer attention towards) and the keywords that you use in promoting it to their readers.

This last assumes that you are attempting to increase authority using researched backlinking from a higher-authority site identified by its Google PageRank, and is not in the scope of this article.

What is in scope is the organic keyword research that leads to the content used for promotion, be it on-site or off-site. And key to that process is the mantra : Serve Your Customers First.

Author Avinash Kaushik echoes this sentiment in Web Analytics 2.0 : "...if you know the source of your traffic, you can strongly infer what kinds of people are coming to your web site..."

Kaushik then goes on to reinforce this idea by pointing out that "[organic traffic] accounts for an outsized percentage of its [website traffic] multiple conversions." The book sees PPC and organic SEO as two sides of the same coin, and I tend to agree that if you have both you will reap the rewards.

However, much can be achieved by deploying organic SEO on its own, as long as you start with your customers. To do that, you'll need to dig into the traffic stats, and uncover the actual search terms that are bringing traffic to the site.

You'll begin to note that there are certain combinations of keyword phrase with action phrases that lead to sales, whereas there are some common 'research only' phrases that might bring traffic, but with a very low conversion rate.

One of the easiest ways to start making organic SEO pay its way is by using keyword research to identify keyword phrases that are already bringing in traffic, and capture an additional portion of that segment of the market that are also ready to buy.

If you can leverage your keyword research to achieve that, then you will be able to boost sales, reduce your traffic acquisition costs, and help promote your authority to Google. All of which ought to push you yo the top of the pile, ready to serve your customers better with higher quality content and relevant product offerings.

The Future of Organic SEO

I logged into my Google AdWords account the other day, and got a bit of a shock - it seems that Google is retiring their External Keyword Tool, and haven't really provisioned a replacement.

I mean, there's the Kayword Planner, but that really isn't as easy to use or as powerful as the Keyword Tool was.

Now, this article isn't going to tell you what to use instead, because there aren't really any good free replacements. If you liked the Google AdWords Keyword Tool (External) then you're going to have to put your hand in your pocket and pay for Wordtracker, or similar.

They're not paying me to say that - I mean it - but bear with me a moment, because ... it may not matter!

Recently, Wordtracker's own Mike Mindel was asked his opinion of the withdrawal of Google's tool by Brent Hodgson from Keyword Blueprint. Mindel's reply reinforced the Wordtracker line that Google's toolchain is strongly oriented towards PPC, and is, at best, inadequate for organic keyword research anyway.

And there's the rub - SEO and keyword research are as important as they ever were, but the approach needs to change. In my opinion, Mindel is only half right. Wordtracker and tools like it are only half of the answer.

It's nice to see what people are searching for, but the context shouldn't be weighted towards the volume of search requests for a two, three or four word phrase. It should be weighted towards the content that they end up looking at when they deploy those keywords in a search.

Let's trust Google to return the best quality results, while we use tools to see what keyword phrases led them to those results.

The new face of SEO is going to be (if it isn't already) geared towards creating quality content first, and then looking at the numbers later. And guess what? Google's got a tool for that; it's called Google Analytics, and my take is that a combination of content testing, post-publication tracking, and analysis of Google Analytics reports is likely to be more productive for organic SEO than the AdWords tool ever was.

Either that, or HitBox (a web counter and analytics tool from the 1990's) is going to make a comeback.