Search Engine Optimization

Customer: “I want to download the Internet. Do I need a bigger hard disk?”Download the Internet here

Last time we mentioned the use of keyword research for marketing. Not for SEO or PPC, but research into intentions covered within keywords.

The tactic was to take a keyword and add a question to see actual results being searched(more here):

• What
• Why
• Where
• How
• Who
• Is

I’d like to add more:

• Which
• When
• Does
• Did
• Are
• Whose

We use Google Keyword Tool, WordTracker(SEO Book) and Keyword Discovery for our keyword marketing research.

Keyword Discovery(KWD) refuses to recognize questions in front of the keywords. With KWD we take a different approach and search for long tail. Long tail gives even longer tails allowing you to find potential concerns & questions. Do not place too much faith in KWD though – it has very noisy database for keyword marketing research.

After you mine questions generated by Google and Word Tracker(SEO Book) you can start relating them. You will find that a lot of questions essentially mean the same thing. Pile up keywords that imply to the same question and leave them there. It will help you with linguistics in the long run, as different visitors use different languages.

For example: “what drives credit card rates” & “where do credit card rates come from” – both mean the same thing, but are phrased differently.

For a writer, this means a chance to identify and input both versions into to the copy, not for the sake of SEO, but rather to trigger linguistic recognition and relate to the reader, since people use different words to communicate.

After you pile up keywords into groups, you will start seeing that different keywords are very closely related to each other, implying that searchers using those keyword will:

• Get to the next stage in search and ask those questions.
• Expect to see it, have an intention of finding it.
• Will get back to refine search.
• Mean the same intent, but with different language/means.

For example:

Keyword Marketing Research Scenario:

“what drives credit card rates” – person wants to know what drives the rates so he can predict them in the future, by looking at the cause.

“credit card rate history” – Look at the history to either see if he is getting a good deal or compare different vendors. He may also be looking at history to try and predict future rates

“credit card rates predictions” – this one is obvious.

As you can see keywords can be somewhat related. We can group them closely together, but not combine. This will help us with the copy and website flow.

So far the analysis of keyword list is based largely on assumptions. The next step is to head out to discussion boards.

Forums & Keywords for Marketing Research

Forums are great for mining questions and concerns. For every 10 customers there’s 1 that will head to forums and ask the question( ok i just made that up, but you get the point). Though their personal story might be different, there’s a high chance they care about the same thing as other people who did not bother posting.

Key here is to identify questions customers have and relate them to the keywords. If keyword and forum questions are related, this means people have Googled it and asked on forums. Forums give you bigger advantage, since you to see details of those questions and a little stories behind it. Don’t get too detailed. We’re after general stuff.

We usually copy & paste it to the keyword list, helping us to drill into the target deeper.

All of the research is based on the topic that you or we do not know too deep. Deep research will help us to write content that people can relate to and build a long term website structure that does a good job at getting people to take action.

Good luck with your keyword marketing research.

Google announced today It will be splitting Perfomics into 2 separate companies: Affiliate Marketing and Search Marketing, while selling off Search Marketing division to a 3rd party company. Earlier Danny Sullivan asked Google in an open letter to do so and they have reacted few weeks later.

Search Engine Land covers.

Google Blog:

“It’s clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business. Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google’s mission and core to the trust we ask from our users. For this reason, we plan to sell the Performics search marketing business to a third party. We believe this will allow us to maintain objectivity and the search marketing business to continue to grow and innovate and serve its customers. While we have not yet identified a buyer, we’ve received preliminary interest from a number of our current partners. Search Marketing will continue to run as a separate entity until the division is sold.”

We also did a column on the topic, not too pleased with the fact that Google will be a search engine marketing firm.

Quick reaction is an indicator to Google’s sync with the community, good job.