Keyword Research Followup
July 24, 2008 | Google, Keyword Research
In this post we will review the results of our Adwords Keyword Research Tool Trial which was a follow up to our synopsis of recent happenings and changes by the Search Engines.
To recap Adsense have recently change the figures they show - this is a massive, massive deal. Why? Well lets start from the beginning.
If you want to optimise for Rankings in the Search Engine’s then you now have 5 tools to choose from for doing Keyword Research. Google Adsense has always been the best tool. Personally I have to be honest and say a couple of years ago I didn’t always use Adsense I preferred Oveture’s tool because it gave actual figures which Adsense never did up until now. i found optimisation for Google wasn’t always effective so I switched to Adsense and Overture then stopped reporting actual live figures anway, simply Overture didn’t tell me what Google uses in the main use for keywords.
The thing is if you want to generate traffic then Google has entirely in the last few years dominated that traffic. A few years ago it was reported Google had just over half the market and nowadays it’s around the 70% mark, Yahoo currently has about 20% and Live 5%.
I can understand why anyone would have been fooled, which is no disgrace ad you’d be like me, into using Overture’s live figures. However the fact is you cannot target a market like Google’s nowadays with tools from Overture and Microsoft, ultimately users will use at least slightly different terms and if you want to dominate a market, in the case of Yahoo, you can’t do that with stats that cover less than half of the same market or, in Microsoft’s, a snippet. Ultimately you want Google rankings right? That’s what all our clients say. That’s not to say that either data from the other two or rankings for that matter are irrelevant, but Google is the top dog and the trend is Google is increasing its strangehold.
If you want to know what terms keywords are used in Google then only Google has the answer. It’s not just a fad where the whole SEO industry has got it wrong, but actually there are some authorative big hitters out there who are also not just using the wrong data, they’re telling you to use it to. No names mentioned.
So let’s look at the data. First thing to say is whatever results we gauge from this what actually most people are looking for when doing keyword research is niches, long tail SEO and gaps in particular markets. SEO is not a niche market and we’ve only pulled out figures from the top two keywords in Google. If the results are skewed, twisted, missing and in some cases plain wrong. This is going to be far more exagerated in these other, far more used, markets:
Firstly it’s confusing over what time period and what markets the data is being pulled. Hence the ratio’s, because just a brief glance and the figures are very, very different. As has been stated before and as you can see from the figures, Overture have stopped using live figures and instead use ranges. It took me some time to find out but Google is very simple you have monthly live data and an average from a year, no one else provides both except Adlabs, which you have to work out and frankly I don’t have the time to do that for every search I do. Everyone else isn’t, in fact I got sick of trying to find out the exact date ragnes so I gave up, hence the data for ratios, as it doesn’t matter about time periods because they produce the same ratio. Overture have always published monthly data though this wasn’t stated, MSN I guess would be the same, though looking at the figures they are possibly yearly to me. You have to click on those annoying ? images in Keyword Discovery (a year) and Wordtracker (130 days) to find out.
So this our first problem, we do keyword research by the bucket full to manually get relative data from all sources is quite an issue here, doing a ratio tells me something that relates to all of them, though it isn’t enough and I still don’t want to be doing that for every search . So if we start with the one search on “SEO UK” to 20 on “SEO” in Google. That sounds about right to me. Ratio of same is rubbish in Overture - the data ranges make the actual data pretty much useless, though the data they are presenting isn’t wrong. MSN goes up to 1 in 35 that’s plainly wrong to me. Now we look at the data and it could be over a longer time period. The difference between MSN and Google for month of June highlights another problem that is markets.
Before we continue with ratio’s let’s look at markets. Google and Overture is very simple you pick your markets. Most of our customers aren’t going to want to think about trading overseas, and if they are, they’re going to concentrate on specific markets. Adlabs and also for the other two this isn’t possible which for definitive data makes the figures useless. We don’t want to be optimising for Keyword based in the US, this is the huge problem for particularly Keyword Discovery. I hear from Yanks it’s a great tool. However whenever I look at the figures it’s greatly biased to me towards US market. Simple question if you look at the figure for KD is do I think only 5 people in the UK have used “SEO UK” as a keyword for the whole year. My answer is you must be kidding right?
Back to ratio’s. WT is completely on another planet compared to Google, least said about KD your better. This reinforces the fact of it’s key where the tools we use get their data from. Search Engines is simple. However what KD and WT do is buy their data from ISP’s which makes them extremely inaccurate and in KD’s case it looks like they pretty much get all their data from US ISP’s which makes it totally useless for me.
Why is Keyword Research so important? Well imagine, which is easy to do if you don’t use Google as your prime tool, if your using the wrong keywords. Doesn’t matter if the one’s you do use are all ranked number 1, doesn’t even matter if your getting a double listing. Fact is you missing out on quite a large chunk of your market, and depending on what your actually using that could be whole chunks. Personally I don’t think either KD or WD are useful for indicators of Search Terms for any sort of SEO. In fact isn’t it be better to be ranked lower for the right keywords then be ranked number one for the wrong ones. Therein is the key to understanding why Keyword Research is so so important.
Adwords Keyword Research Tool
July 23, 2008 | Google, Keyword Research, SEO
In our previous post we really wanted to talk about Adwords Keyword Research Tool and recent improvements that Google have made. What used to happen for those who don’t know is some figure between 0 and 1 which really meant you had to guesstimate the actual figure very carefully. This for most of us meant pulling some pie in the sky figure out of the air and trying to convince ourselves that it was 100%ish correct. Well they now provide actual figures. That was from our post about recent happenings and changes inSearch Engine Land.
Upon a re-read the actual big deal of it all wasn’t made out to be such a big deal. It rather got swamped by all the other going ons and I rather think that actually the amount of interest it should have genearated on the internet was minimal because of the hoo haa with the Yahoo / Microsoft deal and the Google / Yahoo deal. Personally I think this is one of most significant changes to have happened ever! Certainly in terms of changes it’s the biggest thing to come out of Google since the Dig Daddy algorithm change years ago. Simply I think Keyword Research is that important.
Folks I can’t stress how big of a deal this actually is. If your running your own SEO or you even hired a company then either you or they are going to have to the whole thing again. Why? You may be running the wrong keywords.
Note: while I check this after the event the data below tells me if your not actually one of those smarty pants that used Adsense for keyword research in the first place, like us, you definitely are using the wrong keywords. That means your not getting the traffic you could be and your not generating the revenue you should be!
So I’m going to stick my neck out on the blog and run a live trial - that is I don’t know what the figures will be because I haven’t checked them yet. The important point to remember is that pretty much everyone tells you, you must run keyword research using Overture, Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery. In my opinion these tools don’t tell you what Keywords you should be optimising for Google. So with my head in the guillotine that’s start by checking stats on “SEO” keywords starting with the top 2 phrases on Google and comparing what everyone else says.
SEO - 301,000 (average) / 246,000 (June)
SEO UK - 14,800 (average) / 18,100 (June)
Ratio - 1 in 20
Overture.
SEO - 240 - 9,193 (average)
SEO UK - 240 - 9,193 (average)
Ratio - same
MSN Adlabs
SEO - 242,571(June)
SEO UK - 6,977 (June)
Ratio - 1 in 35.
Wordtracker
SEO - 1737
SEO UK - 10
Ratio - 1 in 137
Keyword Discovery
SEO UK - 18,974
SEO UK - 5
Ratio - 1 in 3795
I don’t think i need to say anything much - I’ll leave that for another post. However the results are if you want a tool that provides authorative and precise data it’s Adwords keyword research tool.
Google’s Android
July 22, 2008 | Google
If you’ve read a post or two recently such as the Search Engine Land post, you’ll know we quite often say Google’s getting up to some quite extraordinary stuff recently, never is this more so than in developing Android which is a race (with mainly Nokia) to produce the next platform for mobile phone applications. Want to know more… well the nice folks at Google have made this video:
It’s all go go go in Search Engine Land.
July 21, 2008 | Google, Keyword Research, Live (MSN), Search Engine News, Yahoo
Everything’s kicking off in Search Engine Land and it isn’t just in the boardroom:
First we had the on-off Yahoo - Microsoft Deal.
Then we had the Yahoo - Google deal.
Microsoft has since bought Powerset
Yahoo shareholder Carl Icahn is trying to oust the whole Yahoo board that resembles all the best plots from Eastenders rolled into one which will play out on the 1st August at a shareholder meeting
Yahoo and Microsoft are placing themselves in the best position to buy AOL, which is partly owned by Google, give all the fallout of the above.
Phew! As if that isn’t enough boardroom shenanighans all three companies haven’t forgot what they normally do - Search:
Microsoft has been working on AdLabs, feedback I’ve read says the advertising platform is much improved, so much so that Companies who run PPC for clients are beginning to see Live starting to overtake Yahoo as the next best thing after Adsense.
Yahoo has recently bought analytics company Indextools to compete with Google Analytics.
Google seem remarkably good at forgetting what there best at and want to be better at everything else too but still have that incredibly annoying nack of still having their core service performing outstandingly. We’ve had amongst many things the continuing development of various software tools such as Google Docs, forays into the mobile phone market with Android, we’ve had Google launching a new virtual world called Lively, we’ve had Google webinars and…
Last but by no means least we had the change to the Adsense platform where Google are now giving actual figures on keywords research. Keyword Research is critical to every project we do and is always the first stage of any project. We’d be stuffed without it, optimising a keyword is easy, ok it’s not as easy as all that i hear you say, but the point is what do you optimise for? This is why doing research is so important. There are a number of keywords tools. As I’ve mentioned before Microsoft have launched Adlabs which is mightily impressive and at the moment looks far better than anything the other two are doing, however Live has about a 5% market share, 10% if were being generous. Ultimately doesn’t matter how great a tool is you can’t optimise something in Google (70% market) with figures from MSN. Now Google give us the figures we can do exactly that.
Previously using overture data (Yahoo PPC) was the next best thing until they stopped running actual figures live and changed it for something far less superior, they do still run figures people keep telling me, yes they do but I kindly point out they’re from Jan 07, that is they’re not live, be interesting to see what Yahoo will now do, give that the other two now run live figures.
Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery are other popular tools, however if you want to optimise for Google your better of using AdLabs given the market share. Both give out a plethora of bizarre keywords combinations that make it very difficult to actually work out what terms people are using in Google. People tell me Keyword Discovery is good but it’s so US biased that us poor folks in the UK can’t really tell how good it supposedly is, personally I doubt it!
The feedback so far is that figures are very accurate. One thing I know, it makes my life a lot easier.
Link building of the future
July 18, 2008 | Link Building, Uncategorized, page rank
In the previous posting we asked the question does traditional Link Building work? The answer is no. The question is then how do we Link Build not just for today but tomorrow?
First point to make is traditional link building is no longer that effective because it deals with the web of yesterday. In fact if we look at the why our link building experiment failed the main problem is that directories deal with creating quantity, quantity in combination with other factors works but quantity in itself is not something that provides us with success. The overwhelming problem with web directories is they actually provide a way of passing link juice or Page Rank on mass but as we saw in the experiment most of the pages on most of the directories are totally ineffective at actually getting spidered by Google, they basically fail at the first hurdle.
If we go back to some previous posts about Page Rank. Recently we’ve had Guy’s PR rant and a great quote I read from Google’s Search Evangelist Adam Lasnik on Page Rank and there’s also an older post Better Page Rank.
If we look at Adam’s great quote then he states Page Rank was relevant to the web of yesterday, he stops at there are more factors but stops short of saying Page Rank is irrelevant but if he didn’t work for Google that’s where his quote would have naturally taken him. In Guy’s rant he asked the question do Google really care? If you look at our web site the answer is no. The answer to why that is get’s back to the point that they know it’s no longer relevant. We know our Blog should be doing much better than a 0 and our site much better than a 1, our rankings in Google tell us that.
Page Rank is dead! The king is dead, long live the king! So who is the next king?
Adam says a few key things that give us and idea of what that is:
- Relevance / Quality is now important not quantity.
- In fact the goal of the query is relevance.
- Audience factors are also key.
You may have heard the term Trust Rank before. This sumises the fact that Google is instead looking for links it trusts. What does that mean? It means Google are basically looking at four factors:
The site - does Google trust the site? Again if we go back to our experiment and we call this the first Google hurdle then web directories are mostly failing at this first hurdle. You may have heard sites described as Authorative or Hubs, these are the two key factors in determining trust for a site. Authorative sites have lots of links, particularly of quality to them and Hubs are sites that have lots of links to other sites again particularly of quality. Going back to web directories how many would we say are authorative hubs?
Content is the second factor, what’s the relevance between the content of the two sites is the question Google ultimately asks on this point. It doesn’t matter in what context you see a link, you may be reading a great piece of copy on a great site but if the content suddenly turns and say oh btw I know this great site selling viagra, then every web user on the planet, including Google defines that as spam. If it’s not in context don’t put it there.
Then there’s the link itself, why is it there? Again what’s the relevance.
Lastly we have age factors, no one knows exactly what the exact factor of age and timing is in the Google algorithm. We know age like a fine red wine is good. We know if new links are suddenly disappearing that’s not good. We also know that if your getting a bunch of links at the same time from the same old site that’s not good, in fact if this in combination with other factors comes back negative, again Google consider that spam. It’s old web, one link is no longer one vote. A bunch of links from the same web site in today’s web is one vote if your lucky. Lets put it into “web 2.0″ context say there is a user on Technorati that is only liking to the same blog, no one else links to it and they don’t link to much else either, do you think Google considers that spam? Well not really because Technorati also consider that spam as well as all their users, think about this your not just hacking of Google, your hacking of Technorati and your probably most important of all hacking of the people in social networking sphere - that’s a whole lot of hacked off people! What would you assume in this sitatuin? Well if your me your a user voting for your blog, more than that your not commiting to the ideal of social networking and what you can’t do is take and not give. Given that situation do you think one user still equals one vote. Well actually in these situations Google is going to give you a negative note. That’s right Google will take away one natural vote you’ve rightfully earned. Harsh? Not really!
We’re almost forgetting what I think is the most important element of quality link building. That is if you don’t have quality content who is going to want to link to it in the first place? Quality content not only makes generating quality links a whole lot easier but actually there’s a point where that process becomes natural. Ulimately if you want to link build and you want to do it properly in todays web that means focusing on your content should be your first step.
