Keyword Research Process Tips

Value: [rating=4] Our commentary: Keyword research is a little bit like marmite: some love it, a lot hate it. However tools have made the whole research & analysis of keywords a much easier task and to help we have a compilation of other keyword analysis tools for assessing customer demand for products. However, we don't mention Google Suggest... The blog post below is a great little guide to making the most of Google Suggest using spreadsheets and other tools. Suggest is a tool which can make keyword research a lot of fun and more interesting! It makes the whole experience much more human which a lot of the automated tools obviously don't and they often leave you with the tiresome job of removing irrelevant keywords. This method and tool really helps with focussing on your keywords and building your tail orientated terms Marketing implications: If you are just starting your…

Update to keyword ranking tool May 2010

Google has now updated this tool for showing keyword positions in response to user feedback renaming it the "Search Query" tool. The main changes are: Average position now shown to avoid need for drilldown You can "Star" the target keyphrases most relevant to you to monitor on a separate tab

Original post Wow, this is amazingly useful for reviewing the effectiveness of your SEO AND your marketing messages within the Google SERPs. On April 14 Google has introduced a new facility within Google Webmaster Tools to help search marketers review click through rates within the natural search listings. Here is an example for a "brand search" on my name:

So if you, or your agency aren't signed up to Google Webmaster Tools, then…

Tools to determine target keywords are well-established. But new tools - see Market Potential / Market Demand Tools - provide a lot more analysis of market potential or customer demand for products than the established software/systems. Many of these query the excellent Google research database available direct from Google as the Googlr Keyword Tool or Google Insights for Search. For ideas on using these analysis tools - see this series on Keyphrase analysis by James Gurd.

Most popular keyphrase analysis tools

The best known and longest established keyword tools are: Google Keyword Planner - Formerly the Google Keyword Tool Google Trends - good for geographic variation and time series UberSuggest - Excellent tool for international evaluation Word Tracker US and UK versions available Keyword Discovery US and UK versions available Google Analytics SEO: Queries tool and Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries

Market Potential / Market Demand Tools

These are the newcomers…

Google Analytics Search Ranking Filters for New URLsBrian Clifton is well known as the former Head of Web Analytics for Google EMEA and more recently as the author of what many consider the best book on Google Analytics: Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics: [amazon-product]0470253126[/amazon-product] [amazon-product region="us"]0470253126[/amazon-product] But Brian also has a strong background in search engine marketer and has consulted widely on SEO. As a fellow SEO, I was very keen to find out Brian's tips for using Google Analytics to get better results from the search engines, particularly using SEO. You can read his latest tips on Google Analytics on his Advanced Web metrics blog .

Process and KPIs for using Google Analytics to improve SEO

Q1. When you work as a consultant, please could you outline your process for using Google Analytics to improve…

This post is a summary of my presentation to the Advanced Search Term Research & Targeting session at Search Engine Strategies London, 2009. I hope to share and learn on tools and tips for keyword analysis - so please add your ideas to comments. The reality for most SEOs today who are working for agencies or clients is that they are trying to get better rankings in the natural listings for a site that has already been SEO ed, so a basic keyphrase audit and analysis will already have been completed. Which tools and process should you follow  to audit the current effectiveness of your keywords and get better results? I'd like to thank Vince Coyle, Head of Search at  Universal McCann for reviewing the types of tools and providing the summary of the UM keyword research process at the end of this post. Let's start with the main types of keyword research tools…

We all know the Long Tail is important to keyword research for search engine marketing. This recent keyword analysis by Hitwise from US data showed that top 1,000 search terms account for just 11% of traffic: Top 100 terms: 5.7% of the all search traffic Top 500 terms: 8.9% of the all search traffic Top 1,000 terms: 10.6% of the all search traffic Top 10,000 terms: 18.5% of the all search traffic We all see similar patterns in our own / client's web analytics, with the majority of individual referrals from tail keyphrases. But how can we understand the long-tail phrases we need to target and refine our existing approach?

Pattern recognition through stems and qualifiers

I have always believed that successful keyword research and copywriting for SEO is down the analysts "pattern recognition" based on finding the main stem terms and qualifers using this type of structured analysis and format: <pre-qualifier(s)> + [stem(s)] + <post-qualifier(s)> +- <cheap> +-…