"My Way" to Keyword Research. Anything to Add?
- PPC/SEM |
Hello warriors,
I'm keen on sharing how I do a keyword research "my way", in hopes that new and experienced marketers can all benefit from this. So here it is:
Before we start
We need to ask ourselves what the purpose of this keyword research is. Do we need for PCC, onpage SEO, content marketing, video, selling products / services, or something else?
For the sake of this tutorial, I shall use an example with the most mainstream of all situations - selling products, let's say "SYSPRO". So, how do we sell our stuff over the internet? We start with research, of course.
Often times, a single sale is profitable enough to be worth advertising. Therefore, we turn to Google AdWords Search and Display networks, Bing ads, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on.
Scratch that! I need keyword research for my copy to dominate organic results.
Whatever the case, the best way to start is to...just start. I tend to keep my methods stored in a file step-by-stem, cuz I forget things sometimes. We all do.Here are the contents of my document:
Keyword Research Guide
Let's begin
To start, I gotta find out just what the heck is it that I'm selling and how does the sale work.
SYSPRO is an enterprise ERP software product, that is generally sold by reselling via partners of SYSPRO, so we have a little twist to the game there. OK, no worries, let's dive in.
I tend to start by cross-multiplying general keywords in Google AdWords that describe an action, a product and usually some sort of definition, like this:
buy
purchase
get
download
obtain
how to buy
how to purchase
how to get
how to download
how to obtain
how to buy a
how to purchase a
how to get a
how to download a
how to obtain a
ways to buy
ways to purchase
ways to get
ways to download
ways to obtain
ways to buy a
ways to purchase a
ways to get a
ways to download a
ways to obtain a
x
syspro
syspro erp
erp syspro
x
software
license
licensing
subscription
product
From the AdWords report, I take only the following information:
Keyword - Avg. Monthly Searches - Competition - Suggested bid
Of course, use your common sense to write down and test any keywords that you might think of. Now is the time.
Next I tend to use Firefox to run a Google Unpersonalized search using the tiny box on the upper right of the browser. Running a search for every single damn keyword is stupid, I stick to just the broader ones. Google, as well as Bing and other search engines, will give you "related searches" or "suggested searches". See if you can discover some keywords from that.
Next I use Google / Bing Instant. Whenever you write something in the search box, the search engines will automatically try to finish your sentence in an attempt to figure out what you want to search for. This feed is based on what the majority of users have searched for in relation to your query. You might get a few ideas from there as well. A little trick I learned for Google in particular, is to use an underscore in front or after my search term, which forces Google to finish that sentence based on what is popularly searched for in relation to your own query.
Next I run my search term / product through Google Trends, which spits out some trendy search terms from time to time.
Lastly, I try and run my most general keywords through the beauty that is Übersuggest.org. I almost always discover something new from it, but I use it last, nevertheless, just to be sure I didn't miss anything trendy.
On another note, if I already have a running website, Webmaster Tools and Analytics can shed me in on how people found out about my website / product. Also, I always perform a competitor research hand-in-hand with my keyword research, just to see what my competitors are using as selected keywords. Remember, you don't have to be the best to win in the PPC world, just one step above everyone else. By reading this guide, hopefully you'll get 10 steps ahead of everyone, no matter what you promote.
Allways test your selected keywords in other search engines as well. While Google holds around 33% of the world's search traffic, their evil roots aren't planted everywhere. For instance, in Russia, Google are one big nobody. Russians stick to Yandex. I myself test Google, Bing, Yandex, Yahoo and Youtube(in certain occasions).
There, now you have a fat file with lots of data
What I usually do next is to sort my data in either a pivot table or just an ordinary table in Excel. The order of the columns is as follows:
| Keyword | Avg. Monthly Searches | Competition Reading(from 0.01 to 1) | Competition Reading(with words, 0-0.33 - low, 0.33-0.66 - medium, 0.66-1 - high) | Suggested Bid
Select all data and centralize it. Next, go to Data => Order. Order by Avg. Monthly Searches - value - largest to smaller; Then by Competition Reading. Ctrl + S to save everything and VOILA.
Hope I helped some of you with this short guide. Please, feel free to correct me or add something to the guide in case I missed it. We're all fighting the same war. Soldier on!
I'm keen on sharing how I do a keyword research "my way", in hopes that new and experienced marketers can all benefit from this. So here it is:
Before we start
We need to ask ourselves what the purpose of this keyword research is. Do we need for PCC, onpage SEO, content marketing, video, selling products / services, or something else?
For the sake of this tutorial, I shall use an example with the most mainstream of all situations - selling products, let's say "SYSPRO". So, how do we sell our stuff over the internet? We start with research, of course.
- Ask ourselves, roughly how much will I profit from a single sale?
- How popular is my product / niche, how and where do people search for it?
- Etc.
Often times, a single sale is profitable enough to be worth advertising. Therefore, we turn to Google AdWords Search and Display networks, Bing ads, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on.
Scratch that! I need keyword research for my copy to dominate organic results.
Whatever the case, the best way to start is to...just start. I tend to keep my methods stored in a file step-by-stem, cuz I forget things sometimes. We all do.Here are the contents of my document:
Keyword Research Guide
- Use the search engine’s tools. For example, Google has their own AdWords Keyword research tool. However, it does not spill out all the data. It will sometimes lie on purpose, since this is AdWords, especially if you have an AdWords account linked and running. The monopoly wants your money and they make it using impression data
- Search terms autocomplete (aka. Google Instant). If you type a search term in the search box, Google and other search engines will give you autocomplete terms based on what’s predicted as popular related to that term. Also, recently there is a new cheat around the autocomplete. If you type an underscore “_” prefix anywhere around the keyword, it will spill out even more suggested searches based on popularity. That’s because Google automatically takes your search for an exact match keyword.
- Your own common sense
- Related searches. Google in particular will give you related search terms at the bottom of the SERP
- Analytics’ data. You can find data on search terms that lead to people clicking on your website. You can also find the medium / referrer and other useful data
- Google Trends will give you a rough idea on what’s hot and historical data. This alone can lead to falsifications, so use it in combination with other methods
- Competitors data. Once identified, competitors can tell you a lot about their own use of keywords. After all, if you have no competitors, there won’t be anyone to outrank, right?
- Other search engines. We need to understand what people are looking for, in order to correctly target our own KWs use. Simply use other search engines for the same primary KWs that define your page. That includes Youtube
- Keyword suggestion tools. There are a few keyword tools that might suggest keyword opportunities based on competition. I tend to use Übersuggest.org for the most part
Let's begin
To start, I gotta find out just what the heck is it that I'm selling and how does the sale work.
SYSPRO is an enterprise ERP software product, that is generally sold by reselling via partners of SYSPRO, so we have a little twist to the game there. OK, no worries, let's dive in.
I tend to start by cross-multiplying general keywords in Google AdWords that describe an action, a product and usually some sort of definition, like this:
buy
purchase
get
download
obtain
how to buy
how to purchase
how to get
how to download
how to obtain
how to buy a
how to purchase a
how to get a
how to download a
how to obtain a
ways to buy
ways to purchase
ways to get
ways to download
ways to obtain
ways to buy a
ways to purchase a
ways to get a
ways to download a
ways to obtain a
x
syspro
syspro erp
erp syspro
x
software
license
licensing
subscription
product
- First multiply 2 x 3
- Then 1 x 2
- Then 1 x 2 x 3
- Then just simply search 2(the generic keywords) for Search Volume
From the AdWords report, I take only the following information:
Keyword - Avg. Monthly Searches - Competition - Suggested bid
Of course, use your common sense to write down and test any keywords that you might think of. Now is the time.
Next I tend to use Firefox to run a Google Unpersonalized search using the tiny box on the upper right of the browser. Running a search for every single damn keyword is stupid, I stick to just the broader ones. Google, as well as Bing and other search engines, will give you "related searches" or "suggested searches". See if you can discover some keywords from that.
Next I use Google / Bing Instant. Whenever you write something in the search box, the search engines will automatically try to finish your sentence in an attempt to figure out what you want to search for. This feed is based on what the majority of users have searched for in relation to your query. You might get a few ideas from there as well. A little trick I learned for Google in particular, is to use an underscore in front or after my search term, which forces Google to finish that sentence based on what is popularly searched for in relation to your own query.
Next I run my search term / product through Google Trends, which spits out some trendy search terms from time to time.
Lastly, I try and run my most general keywords through the beauty that is Übersuggest.org. I almost always discover something new from it, but I use it last, nevertheless, just to be sure I didn't miss anything trendy.
On another note, if I already have a running website, Webmaster Tools and Analytics can shed me in on how people found out about my website / product. Also, I always perform a competitor research hand-in-hand with my keyword research, just to see what my competitors are using as selected keywords. Remember, you don't have to be the best to win in the PPC world, just one step above everyone else. By reading this guide, hopefully you'll get 10 steps ahead of everyone, no matter what you promote.
Allways test your selected keywords in other search engines as well. While Google holds around 33% of the world's search traffic, their evil roots aren't planted everywhere. For instance, in Russia, Google are one big nobody. Russians stick to Yandex. I myself test Google, Bing, Yandex, Yahoo and Youtube(in certain occasions).
There, now you have a fat file with lots of data
What I usually do next is to sort my data in either a pivot table or just an ordinary table in Excel. The order of the columns is as follows:
| Keyword | Avg. Monthly Searches | Competition Reading(from 0.01 to 1) | Competition Reading(with words, 0-0.33 - low, 0.33-0.66 - medium, 0.66-1 - high) | Suggested Bid
Select all data and centralize it. Next, go to Data => Order. Order by Avg. Monthly Searches - value - largest to smaller; Then by Competition Reading. Ctrl + S to save everything and VOILA.
Hope I helped some of you with this short guide. Please, feel free to correct me or add something to the guide in case I missed it. We're all fighting the same war. Soldier on!
