Using Google Search Insight for keyword research

Category Google, Keyword Research | 41 comments »

Hiya gang…. I just wanted to take a moment to highlight a few very interesting videos from Google on their ‘Insight’ tool. For those of you that didn’t know, Google has more than a few handy tools for conducting KW research including;

Google traffic estimator sandbox – a tool that gives estimated traffic clicks and cost for given terms on Google Adwords. This is another handy metric to have when doing KW research.

Adwords Keyword calculator – Google’s adwords estimator tool. Also handy… but still, more PPC data for cross referencing.

Google Search based KW tool – this one generates keyword and landing page ideas highly relevant and specific to your website. In doing so, the tool helps you identify additional advertising opportunities that aren’t currently being used in your AdWords ad campaigns.

 

But there’s one more…

Enter Google Insights for Search

These are all great for getting some keyword / phrase ideas and even some general search traffic numbers; but what about trends? Sure you could use Google Trends – but it is a bit lacking in this author’s opinion… 

And so you check out – Google Insights for Search tool – much like Google trends for looking at search data. It is seriously great for KW research purposes. Now this isn’t really a NEW tool, but it is one I have been turning to more and more of late with my SEO programs…

What can you do with it?

1. Historical term popularity
2. Geographic usage
3. Suggests other top terms
4. Compare multiple terms
5. See up and coming ‘Hot searches’
6. Use empty search box to see general trends

 

New videos bring business intelligence

As I was saying, this tool has been around for a while; it is simply more recently that I have included Google Insights into the main stream of my keyword research tools. In truth there is a great deal of business intelligence to be gleaned from this bad boy.

Last week Google put out a few interesting videos which are well worth watching to get an idea of the various types of BI available to you… have a watch won’t you?

Google Insights for Search: Creating Advertising Messages

Learn how to use Google Insights for Search to capitalize on search trends to create relevant advertising messages.

 

Google Insights for Search: Evaluating Brands

Learn how to use Google Insights for Search to help you identify brands competing with your product to see how your brand stacks up.

 

Google Insights for Search: Measuring Campaign Impact

Learn how to use Google Insights for Search to analyze the impact of your marketing activities on people’s ability to recall and search for your brand

 

As you can see, this particular tool has legs, now we just need to test it some more to see how accurate the data is. For that, I’d play around with some products, terms and query spaces that you’re familiar with. Does the data play out? Even most of the time? So far it’s been pretty good… so you tell me..

Until next time…

 

More reading;

Google Keyword Tool Offers Insight for Search Marketers – ClickZ
New Google Insights: Fact or Fiction? You Tell Me – Marketing Pilgrim

Google Insight for Search Tool for SEO Enthusiast – Top SEO
Google SEO research tools -  We SEO
Insight within Google Insight – Contact Dubai

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Keyword Research is not about tools

Category Keyword Research | Comments Off

It is about ones ability to craft a program. It seems more often than not I come across people that are looking for the ultimate tool that is going to tell them exactly which terms they should be targeting and what kind of traffic they can expect. This is simply not going to happen, (except maybe for Google’s SEO company – snitter).

There is simply no reliable tool nor set of tools that can tell us exactly what we need to know. Here are a few problems with conventional tools;

Traffic Data – at this point and time, none of the existing search engines are giving out the search data estimates for a given term, not to mention individual SERP placement traffic estimates. Most tools are using network activity or 3rd party data from ISPs and other locales (meta-search engines etc..). While there is some data, how reliable the estimates are is usually suspect in my experience.

Competitor Data – depending which tools you use for keyword research, a different figure is often used in calculations. Often it is simply the total results (instances) of a given search query. This is not really a tightly targeted approach as it is mere instances of the terms for that query. Such as this;

Latest travel news – Results; 28 200,000  

Now what if we tighten this up? Let’s look at a few other potential comparative data sources that will tighen up the competition numbers

With Quotations “” – Results; 121 000

With All Terms In Title – Results; 5 460

With All Terms in URL – Results 746

 As you can see, with each refinement we gain new insights when compared to other terms in your research set. I personally feel that KW research tools that are using mere instances as we’d find in a straight, non-modified search, they are flawed. If we look at concepts surrounding KEI (keyword effectiveness index) that the data used for the ‘competition’ factor, can have a huge effect on the over-all viability of a given term – thus flawed results can be had. Regardless of which metrics one uses, there is no definitive answer that works.

In the end the two main data sets that can tell us the all important golden goose are not available or definable. This means there is going to be some deeper research into the actual search results and even an intuitive factor involved in targeting the right keywords and phrases.

So what is it all about?

The first part is easy and anyone can do it; roll up your sleeves and dig in. You will have to take the potential terms for targeting and actually start digging into the Top 10-20 competitors to see how well entrenched they are and look for opportunities in there for you to gain a foothold. There really is no other way to truly gauge the competitiveness of a given prospect. We can combine that with query tightening (as explained above) and even some PPC data (money terms tend to also cost more for PPC) and you will start to see a pattern across all of your data and the money terms should emerge.

The second part is not so easy; experience. All search terms were not created equal and often a term with less total results (say 120 00 total instances) will out perform seemingly more popular terms with higher total results ( of maybe 1 200 000). This is not an uncommon occurrence and you really cannot use that as a guide. It takes many years of looking at data, targeting terms and ultimately tracking the results. You need to get a good feel for a given market and watch what terms seem to hold the most value – this is where the art form comes into play.

Keyword research tools are great for collecting data to further the research process – they are not a means to an end…

Resources;

Keyword Research and Targeting – Reliable SEO

Keyword resarch for Bloggers – Copyblogger 

 Extended list of Keyword Research Tools – Ann Smarty 

 Beginners Guide to Keyword Research – SEOmoz

 Keyword resarch and analysis – SEM Basics

 Advanced Keyword research – Hamlet Batista

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