Do Keywords Really Matter?

It seems a bit odd to sit down at the keyboard and write an article on the Keyword Cracker blog which questions whether keywords matter at all, but it's important to look at SEO techniques from every angle.


And that's what keyword research is - an SEO technique.


Generally, keyword research reveals:

• what people are looking for in conjunction with certain key words;
• what specific keywords have brought traffic to a site;
• trends within the browsing community.

Specifically, as a SEO technique, web masters use keyword research to try and find out how to drive traffic to a site that concentrates on a specific niche.


So, it's a traffic acquisition technique, and as such it's not the thing web masters can do to get visitors to their site.


Traffic Acquisition Techniques


Assuming we know that the site is of use, and interest, to the web browsing community as a whole, we don't need keyword research to tell us what to build.


Traffic can come from search engines, and I'd be foolish not to (a) acknowledge and (b) point out that in many cases, Google provides the lion's share of traffic to many web sites that I write for.


But it's neither the only source, nor necessarily the most profitable.


In fact, looking over my Google Analytics statistics, I note several things:

• search engine visitors tend to result in more bounced visits;
• search engine visitors tend to result in lower pages viewed, per visit;
• search engine visitors tend to spend less average time on the site.

So, it's not just about the traffic, but what the visitors that make up that flow of traffic do when they get there.


My most engaged visitors come from other traffic acquisition techniques, such as:

• Twitter, via SocialOomph;
• Twitter, via su.pr (a StumbleUpon service);
• Directly, via word of mouth;
• Directly, via Yahoo! Answers;
• Directly, via Forum posts.

I've yet to test which the most engaged are, but rest assured my findings will make their way onto the Traffic Acquisition blog, and the method on the Test, Track, Traffic blog.


Where does this leave keywords, and keyword research?


Use it to research trends. Use it to estimate interest in a topic, and use it to generate some traffic by way of a test.


Keep an eye on the statistics, see where visitors come from, and what they spend their time doing, and then work what continues to work.


But don't rely on search engines to deliver the lion's share of your customers, even if they do deliver the lion's share of your visitors!

Why the Geographic Source of Traffic Matters to Online Marketers

A lot of filtering options are available in Google Analytics, but one that is often overlooked is the ability to sort, filter, and order by geographic location.
This can be applied in a number of ways:

• Country
• City
• Continent
• Region

It's certainly interesting, but is it useful? In fact it's more than that. Knowing the geographic source for keyword (and content) traffic can be vital to making a sale.


For Whom is the Geographic Source Important?


While knowing where the traffic comes from can be important for any online marketer, it is of particular importance to affiliates. Let's use Amazon as an example.


The web sites Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk stock different products, with different prices, ship to different locations and have different affiliate schemes.


If visitors to a specific page come from one geographic reason, and are confronted by products, spellings, and terminology that they are not familiar with, then there is a risk that the sale will be lost.


More than that, they may not even be able to buy the product and have it shipped, or they may be directed to another web site. Either way, the sale is lost to the affiliate.


Targeting pages (content) to specific geographic markets based on specific keyword trends for that geographic location enables marketers to promote the right products, using the correct affiliate account, to the right visitors.


In addition, brands and brand names may also be different. This helps keyword targeting to specific brands; the more niche the better, as people often type specific brand and model names into search engines.


Finally, once the geographic segment is known, and content has been created to fit each demographic, the online marketing strategy can follow it. For example, Twitter can be used to schedule tweets designed to be released at times that are appropriate for the target market.


All of the above needs some research, which is where Google Analytics comes in.


Segmenting Search Traffic by Location


The best way to view this relationship is to select a relatively small time window (say one week to one month) and then access the Demographics filter from the left hand main menu in Google Analytics.


The Location filter can be found under the Audience tab on the main menu.


The Demographics option needs to be selected, and then Location clicked.

Selecting the Location Filter from the
 Left Hand Menu in Google Analytics

As can be seen in the screen shot, the map will then light up with different shades of green indicating the global results returned for each location.


The actual lcoations that return these visitors are then listed below the map, in the usual results pane in the Google Analytics system.


The usual column headings can be found here - page views, time spent, bounce rate and so on - but this is only half the story.


To get the keywords, it is also necessary to add them as a Secondary Dimension.


To do this, the 'Secondary dimension' button is clicked.


From the resulting menu, the Traffic Sources option needs to be selected.


Underneath that, are a number of options, but for keyword research, the Keyword option is the most useful.

Selecting the Keyword Secondary Filter
from the Results Toolbar in Analytics

Having selected the Primary and Secondary Dimensions, the user then needs to sort the keyword list  based on the metric that most interests them.


One interesting metric is likely to be the Bounce Rate, as a high Bounce Rate could indicate that the geographic targeting needs to be adjusted.


This can be spotted by the presence of two identical keyword phrases, each with different source locations. If one has a Bounce Rate that is significantly higher than the other, then that may indicate that different content should be created for that specific keyword.


This is just one of the ways in which geographic tools in Analytics can be used to hone the marketing message, and is a very interesting and valuable aspect of keyword research.

Using Google Analytics and The Google AdWords Keyword Tool Together

As the largest search provider, Google is uniquely placed to help online marketers, content providers, entrepreneurs and business owners research their online market niches. They have even placed the tools to do so at our disposal, so why not make the most of their generosity?

The technical side of Analytics and using AdWords for SEO (search engine optimization) often challenges people who would rather be writing, selling, or out there doing business.

This short article should help to dispel some of those fears, and help the reader get to grips with using these powerful tools to propel online earnings to new heights.

Google Analytics Organic Search

The secret to online success is often said to be traffic. It's like footfall in the real world – a retail outlet on a busy high street is expected to do better than one in a less frequented side street.

However, as in the world of bricks and mortar retailing, online customers will also travel a bit further than the high street if you offer them something special. At the same time, mere visibility is no guarantee of success.

Google Analytics provides a lot of information, but for the purpose of keyword research, only one page is of special interest : the Organic Search page.

It's found on the left hand menu, under Traffic Sources->Sources->Search->Organic. Once a project has been selected, and the right page located, the user is presented with a spreadsheet style page containing several columns.

We're interested in the following:

• Keyword
• Visits
• Pages/Visit
• Average Visit Duration
• Bounce Rate

In essence, we want to find those keywords for which visitors are viewing multiple pages, and spending time on the site, with a low bounce rate. This may only generate five keyword phrases that we can honestly mark down as being of interest, but they're the online equivalent of a warm lead.

That is, they are people who have raised their hand, and volunteered to go the extra mile to find your page. This implies that there may be others who just missed out, stuck to the high street, and found one of your competitors.

These people might have used slightly different keyword combinations which returned pages higher up the search engines indexes (Search Engine Result Pages, or SERPs) than yours; so, how do we find them?

The AdWords Keyword Tool

The AdWords Keywords Tool provides a way to estimate the potential comparative search volumes over a set of generated keywords.

For each keyword or phrase it is given, the tool will look through a database of actual online searches, and match relevant keywords to the initial phrase, and return both the competition for that phrase (in AdWords terms) and the potential search volume that it could capture.

There are a whole raft of filters, and some are useful in certain situations, but for now we just want to get a feel for the market, and so we look at:

• keyword phrase
• competition index
• global search volumes

Analyzing each keyword phrase from the Analytics tool in turn, we want to select a reasonably limited number of phrases and so can afford to be quite selective. Different markets have different thresholds, but a good rule of thumb is to target 'Low' competition keywords with 10k – 100k global search volume figures.

Anything larger than this will be terribly hard to capture, and indicates that the keyword phrase might not be niche enough to be certain of providing a stream of qualified leads.

The keyword phrases can be written into your content as blog posts or article prompts and used to generate traffic towards your web properties. As long as you remember to keep applying the process to discover new keyword phrases, you'll never run short of inspiration or targeted traffic again.

Traffic Research With Google Analytics

Many online publishing platforms have either switched their statistics packages to Google Analytics, or have introduced ways for users to link their Analytics accounts to the publishing platform.


Suite101, for example, no longer retains any statistics or tracking (including keywords) on-site, having moved everyone to their own Analytics accounts some months ago. Squidoo, another large online publishing platform, have followed a similar path, but retain some basic on-site reporting.


Google Analytics itself has evolved (as has the Google AdSense Keyword Research Tool, another firm favorite) and in doing so has become more modern, more minimalist, and considerably more useful.


Google Analytics Reporting Tool


Anyone with a Google account can have access to Analytics. Anyone with a blog, Squidoo Lenses, a web page, or other online publishing platform needs to use Analytics to have any chance of leveraging their online presence.


It's misunderstood, however, by people who look only at the organic keywords as a way to gauge where they should be concentrating their publishing efforts.


Simply targeting the most searched-for keyword phrase that has delivered visitors is slightly missing the point. Yes, it's important, but so is tracking and measuring other statistics.


Using Google Analytics Organic Search Results


The aforementioned report can be found in the menu on the left hand side, under Search->Organic Search. It produces a list of the most frequently used keywords that have delivered visitors to the site, along with the number, and two other vital bits of data:

• the time spent on the site;
• the number of pages viewed (per visitor).

So, why are these important?

Firstly, the time spent is important for sites like Squidoo and Suite101, where advertising provides an important source of revenue.

The number of pages viewed is especially important for Suite101, as it shows which pages (articles) are keeping interest up, and, more importantly why.

Making the most of these two statistics requires that the whole list be exported to CSV, or a similar format, and then some clever sorting applied in a Google Docs spreadsheet.

There are a number of interesting formulae that can be used to weight these, but each reader is likely to want something different from the results, and so they should use their own experience to help filter out the best keyword phrases to target.

A final note - use the keywords to guide content, but don't write around them. Otherwise, you'll only ever have the same list coming back, and it's far better to introduce variety and try to capture fresh traffic.

CPC PPC and Traffic Acquisition Explained

Using Google Resources for Keyword Research and Know Your Numbers

Why you should always be able to calculate the cost of acquiring traffic, the anticipated income, and the market price of keywords for your product niche, or risk leaving money on the table!

Someone asked me the other day why so much time is spent concentrating on PPC, CPC and the cost of traffic. It's easy - if you don't know your numbers in business, whatever the business, you're doomed to failure from the start. Whether you're talking about keyword research, AdSense/AdWords or other pay per click advertising, or just looking to buy some bulk traffic or ezine adverts, the only way to know that it will be profitable is to know the numbers. Chiefly, it is in the infopreneur/affiliate marketer's interest to know:

• the cost of traffic acquisition
• the conversion rate
• the income per action

In other words, it is necessary to have a good handle on how much the campaign will cost, what proportion of the resulting leads will become customers, and how much each anticipated action is going to make. It is only when in possession of these three indicators that the calculation as to whether a campaign is worth the time and money can be performed. Before making any sense of these numbers, it is necessary to understand a few terms.

PPC

This acronym refers to a specific model used to acquire traffic, Pay Per Click. It is the model used by Google AdWords, amongst others, whereby the advertiser pays a fee for each visitor directed to their site via an advert that they supply. From the point of view of an online entrepreneur, the model is very powerful in allowing adverts to be tested for a relatively small fee.

What is more important is the amount of control that the advertiser has over the budget. For example, the PPC provider (be it Google or another) will let the advertiser know up front how much each click will cost (see CPC, below). Added to that, the advertiser can also pick a budget for the campaign that fits their needs, and know how many guaranteed site visits that will bring.

It is a very, very, powerful, and flexible, traffic acquisition model indeed.

CPC

CPC is the Cost Per Click. It is the amount that an advertiser has to pay, per click, to receive a single visitor. Depending on the traffic source (paid inclusion, context sensitive advert, email advert, site advert, etc.) this can vary greatly. A reasonable indicator (for reasons explained below) of CPC is the Google AdWords cost.

This can range from $0.05 (five cents) right up to $10 and more. For a single click. This is a very important metric, as it allows the site owner to calculate the expected profit of a campaign, based on the cost of traffic acquisition.

The profit is equal to the selling price, multiplied by the conversion rate, multiplied by the number of visitors, minus the CPC multiplied by the number of visitors. So, if a site owner sells a $37 eBook, from a sales page converting at 10% (0.1), then the profit from a 100 visitor campaign, with a $0.05 CPC would be:

profit = (($37 x 0.1) x 100) - (0.05 x 100)
profit = $370 - $5
profit = $365

Simply turning this equation around allows the site owner to calculate the highest CPC that they will tolerate, for their product price and conversion rate.

Google AdSense and Google AdWords

A final word, since this is a keyword research blog, on AdWords and AdSense.

Google AdWords works by allowing site owners to bid on keywords. The more bidders there are, the higher the CPC. Then, the Google AdSense system is used to display adverts on pages which seem to match the keywords in content and context. The owner of the site running the advert then gets paid a (small) portion of the CPC.

So, when researching keywords, it often pays to look at the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and check the CPC. It's a great indicator of keyword value, be it for an AdSense affiliate, or an AdWords advertiser.

Specifically, the AdSense and Keyword Research Guide gives direct instructions from both sides of the marketing fence.

Until next time,
Guy

Keyword Research Mistake That's Costing You $$$

Most people who use keyword research make the same basic mistake. They think they're doing everything right, but they inevitably leave one aspect to one side. In their admirable quest to provide quality content (good) in a popular niche (excellent), they neglect to take the extra step...

...and look for "Buyers Keywords".

A buyers keyword is one that indicates that the visitor is in a buying frame of mind. They know what they want, and are ready to buy it from the site that can offer it. It's a niche long tail keyword phrase with real earning power.

Learn how to research keyword phrases that really pull in the orders (or AdSense clicks!) in the Keyword Cracker eBook. I'll give you a clue : 'nokia n65 leather case' is, and 'cell phones' isn't.

Have a great weekend.
Guy