Andre W. Klein
Additionally, when using the keywords in Google Adwords campaigns, then we MUST also consider what negative we should add to your Adwords campaign. This is especially important if we want to achieve a high CTR (Click-Through-Rate) and consequently, pay lower bidding prices on the mid-long term.
This post and video demo covers the Keyword research process with the “internal” Google Adwords Keywords Tool, and the most important aspects of SEO optimizing our website for the keywords found. The process is valid also for the external, public version, of Google’s keyword tool, but be aware of the limitations described below and in the video.
The video is best viewed in HD (720p) and with full screen (see at the bottom-right of the video screen).
[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjVjdySj7Co[/tube]
Google Keywords Tool – Keyword Research Tutorial for Adwords and SEO
Outline of the Keyword Research PROCESS with the Adwords Keyword Tool
0. Set Interface Language
1. Base/Root Keywords and Search Options
2. Initial Keyword Ideas – Closely Related and Brainstorm
3. Download Initial Keyword List and Review
4. Review (downloaded) keyword list for:
- new keyword ideas
- refine base keyword list
- negative keywords
5. Execute your search again, but don’t add too many (positive) keywords at the same time, as this may also restrict the results too much!
NOTE: In this example we do this only once, but in reality it is an iterative process!
6. Review Final Keyword List
Evaluate, based on business value, search volume and CPC. For terms with high volume & CPC consider long-tail search terms. Add columns for:
- Relevance (1 = best, na = not applicable)
- Match type: The default for most keywords initially will be “broad” match. This will be refined as we see how the keywords perform in the campaign.
- Be careful with keywords that should have no “broad” match type i.e. “backup router” is not the same as “router backup” – use phrase match
- Adgroup assignment for each keyword
- Comments, especially for keywords with low relevance we want to track why they weren’t chosen
Note: For later reference, keep your search criteria in an additional sheet of your Excel workbook
7. Online Demo Keyword Research with Google Adwords’ Keyword sTool – Example 3g backup router
- The example and demo are presented using the Adwords account keyword tool… https://adwords.google.com/
- You can do the same with Google’s external keyword tool, but be aware that Google returns only a maximum of 100 keywords, instead of the 800 you get when your sign in to your account. Creating an Adwords account is quick and costs only $5
- Google External Keywords Tool: “https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal”
But…proper keyword research does not end here! Once we’ve reached the point of having a pre-selection of suitable search terms, the next steps depend on whether we will be using them in our search result display ads (Google Adwords, Yahoo/Bing, etc.), or if we are aiming at getting free traffic by SEO optimizing your web.
If you are selling directly (online) or indirectly (backend sales), for both cases we want to check whether our keywords have a strong “commercial intent factor”; in other words, if we get traffic from this keywords, how high is the probability of attracting “buyers” to our site? We don’t want to pay for clicks or waste time on optimizing your web site for terms that only attract the curious ones, merrily searching for information, do we? Naturally, all this changes, if what you need is simply as much traffic as possible, i.e. if you monetize your web with banner or Adsense ads.
Let’s look at a simple example for evaluating the commercial intent: “mobile routers” has a low commercial intent, while “mobile router review” is already pretty “warm”, but “mobile router prices” is already a very “hot” search term.
Microsoft closed down their public commercial intent tool some time ago, but I have included the link, in case the make it public again. There are a number of SEO/PPC tools that include this kind of functionality, and I have tested a few; most of them where pretty poor. I use Market Samurai, a well-known keyword tool (and much more) specifically designed for Internet Marketers.
Market Samurai could also be used for the initial keyword research descried above, but the approach I described works better for me, as it is more efficient and quicker. I use Market Samurai from this point on to further analyze my “final” keyword list. Market Samurai provides very valuable information for each keyword and covers all your needs for PPC/SEO keyword research. It’s beyond the scope of this post to go into more in detail, but you can find more information on Market Samurai on this site: http://marketsamurai-review-videos.com/.
Back to where we were before, for PPC we are covered with doing the commercial intent analysis. Any further analysis will be based on how the terms are performing in the ads, against our fellow advertising competitors.
For SEO optimization there are another few important steps to perform. We need to know who our competitors for each keyword are, and how strong their web pages are positioned. There are a number of variables we want to look at, and I could write a book on only this part, but let’s name here just a few, so you get a basic idea:
- How many competing pages are there? Searching in Google will give you the numbers. Lots of so called “SEO gurus” tell you not to waste your time in trying to compete if there are more than X competing pages. In my “humble” opinion, this is complete nonsense! I can count hundreds of cases where I managed to get on page one of Google’s search results, competing against millions of pages, with only doing a proper site (not only page) optimization and building a few quality backlinks. Therefore, I would not take these numbers too seriously and focus on the first 10 competing sites, because this is where we want to be.
- How good is the competitor’s on-site optimization? Here we have a closer look into the Meta tags Title, Description and Keywords and the content itself.
- How many (quality) incoming links (backlinks) do they have, and where do they come from? Will I be able to get links from those, sites too?
- If it is an “aged” domain, it will be tougher to beat.
- Are they really competition to me? I.e., Wikipedia may not be. I’ve seen loads of cases where the first spots were taken by sites like this, so getting on #5-10 would be the best we want to (and most likely will) achieve.
Ok, let’s wrap it up! Never ever forget to do a thorough keyword research before creating an online ad campaign or dedicating time to SEO optimizing your site! As we have seen, it’s not complicated or difficult, as some people want us to think; it only requires a little of our time, and following the process you should quickly see results.
