Steps to Advanced

Some keyword research is surface-level, fire and forget type stuff. If you just need to see relative volume levels, then a basic keyword research tool is all you need. If, however, you want to really dive deep and get the full skinny on your keywords, I'd recommend having each of these data points.
There are three sources on the web that I've found to work best for comparative numbers research. These are:
Google Adwords: Keyword Tool - enter any term or phrase and get back data about both the average search volume and the volume from the previous month.MSN AdCenter: Research Keywords Tool - you need to be logged in to use this, but the data is solid and shows actual counts.Wordtracker: Keyword Tool - although the numbers Wordtracker shows are frequently less accurate than the two above, they are reasonably decent for estimating comparative search volume. Unfortunately, due to the declining share of Wordtracker's data sources (the Infospace owned search engines - Metacrawler, Dogpile, DoGreatGood, etc.), niche and long tail term volume estimates can be way off.

Here's why I don't use Yahoo!:

From there, rather than build a spreadsheet just showing raw numbers, I like to work in comparative sizes (the real numbers rarely prove accurate anyway). Thus, rather than having a graph of data like this:
I can have one like this:
Note how, in this view, I'm showing the relative volume percentage of the demand for keyword "SEO" made up by "seo services" and "seo tools." This graph tells me that while Google thinks "seo tools" and "seo services" are tiny fractions of the volume that comes in for the broad term, "SEO," Microsoft & Wordtracker both say these phrases make up a more substantive percentage. Since keyword targeting is really about choosing one keyword over another and much less about trying to estimate exact traffic, the latter system makes much more sense to me.
When are your queries in highest demand? Knowing the answer can help you predict when competition may ramp up and additional SEO efforts are needed as well as provide insight into your market overall (if demand has been dropping steadily over the last few years, you might want to target some different terms, or even shift product focus). Two sources of data are solid on this front:
Google Trends for Keywords

MSN AdCenter Labs: Keyword Forecast Tool

In order to get a full understanding of the competitive landscape, it's essential to know who's ranking for the terms you're targeting. A basic query is a great start, but I like to append those with a bit of extra data, as I've visualized below:

Those three are my favorite pieces of link data to append, not because they alone are predictive of rankings, but because the range so perfectly illustrates what's necessary, on both the URL and domain level to be competitive. Nick's been pushing hard to get this functionality automatically included with the SEOmoz Toolbar, so hopefully we can make that happen in the next few months.
The fresh web (aka social media sphere) can help to show how often keywords are appearing in content and conversation in blogs, forums, feeds and more. It's particularly valuable for identifying emerging trends which may not yet have search volume (but will if the conversational content acceleration continues). There's a few tools I like on this front:
Facebook Lexicon

There appears to be some correlation between "party tonight" on Friday and "hangover" on Saturday
Twist: See Trends in Twitter

Blogscape

Google News Trends

I'd love to see some of those 19th century SEO tools!
The real value (and reason for spending time in these sectors) is to:
A) Identify patterns or trends indicating a keyword/product/concept is on the rise/fallB) Find content that in the past has attracted large amounts of attention around these keywords (an excellent starting point for viral content development)C) Locate portals on the web or in social communities where your topic may be hot, and opportunities for promotion or links exist
They're not universally valuable for every part of keyword research, and you shouldn't trust the volumes to predict keyword demand (some things get written about more than they get searched), but a good SEO leaves no opportunity un-investigated.
It's wise to be aware of where and how your keywords can cross over into vertical search results. The best way to do this currently is, unfortunately, manually. You'll want to:
Search for your target terms at the major search enginesIdentify any vertical results that appears in the top 10-20 listingsEmploy strategies to reach into the applicable verticals
The most common and highest value are typically:
LocalProductNewsImagesBlogVideo
What are the goals of the individuals searching for your targeted keywords? What phase of the decision process are they in? Answering these questions can give you an excellent idea of the potential ROI from drawing in traffic on a given term/phrase. Many times the highest volume keywords are not bringing in the best traffic.
Some good resources on this front include:

Your goal should be to narrow down the potential tasks a visitor who has just performed the query wants to accomplish. This can dramatically boost your site's performance when coupled with delivery of those paths upon arrival.
The best way to determine the relevance between a keyword and the content/service/product you offer is to test. Run a PPC campaign or dig into your analytics and choose only those visitors that have come via the search query. Pull out data like browse rate, time spent on site, conversions, etc.

The majority of visits who come into SEOmoz for the keyword "SEO Blog" stick around to read at least a couple of pages
Relevance is highly actionable data because it does such a good job predicting which keywords are going to bring valuable traffic. While branded terms often perform highly (and are typically easy to rank well on), longer tail and more specific queries also have this tendency to be more relevant (and, again, are easier to achieve).
Even if you're not planning on bidding for keywords through paid search campaigns, it's wise to know what the competition is doing and how much value they're getting from it (and what they're willing to pay). A few good resources for this information include:
MSN AdCenter's Keyword Estimate

I really like what AdCenter does with this spiffy graph - showing the cost and estimated clicks in an easy-to-read graphic. Just remember that MSN is the engine with the fewest advertisers, which often means pricing is less aggressive than on Google or Yahoo!
Google AdWords Traffic Estimator
I'm a bit less fond of Google's standard take on the data, but their pricing is the gold standard, as AdWords has the highest number of advertisers and the most traffic by far.

SEMRush
A solid tool with a lot of uses, particularly for competitive keyword analysis, SEMRush shows some decent numbers around the average CPC and competition levels for most keywords at the head of the demand curve.

Take the cost-per-click data and competition levels into account when you're considering things like relevance, potential conversion rates and visitor value. Most companies aren't dumb - if they're bidding high dollar values for potential visits, they're converting those visits into dollars and that means you can both learn from them and find strategies to outperform.
Related queries is an easy metric to understand - you want to know what other terms searchers who used these keywords also employed. It's a no-brainer to then add these to your list of potential keyword targets. Many good sources for this data exist:
Google shows related searches in both their AdWords Tool and through web search (you'll want to click the "show options" link at the top followed by the "related searches" link in the sidebar)Bing, Microsoft's new engine, shows related searches by default in their web search interfaceYahoo! Search has their "also try" list and clicking "more" will give you an interface just below the search box that finds lots of great, relevant keywordsThe aforementioned SEMRush shows great data on this (though you'll need to sift through as there can be a lot of junk) if you're a paying memberCompete.com's Search Analytics has good information by query and website, though you'll need to subscribe to their service to get the full value
Get the related queries, dig into the data about them and target those that have enough volume and relevance to help you get increase valuable traffic from SEO.
Last, and probably least in most cases, it's wise to do some research into the legalities surrounding the keywords you'd like to target. Using trademarked terms and phrases on your site can cause attorney trouble, and no one likes that. The place to start, at least in the United States, is here - USPTO Trademark Electronic Search System.
Whew... That's a lot of work for keyword research - now you can see why some firms charge hundreds of dollars per hour for this type of deep dive. Put these recommendations to good use, though, and you'll have an impressive set of terms to target - and that can be a serious competitive advantage.
I've undoubtedly left out a few metrics and, as always, appreciate any ideas or suggestions you've got on this topic.
VisitsPageviewsAvg. Time on PageDirect TrafficSearch TrafficReferral TrafficYikes, looks like something went wrong. Please try again later.
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An Introduction to Using Free Tools

I often find that keyword research is an overlooked part of the SEO process. Many SEOs will tend to stick with using Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool and as a result, they will most likely be targeting the exact same keywords as the competition. The ultimate goal with keyword research is to find those juicy, low-hanging fruit - the long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are sometimes defined as keyword phrases containing multiple words of four or more. However, this is not how I like to define them. For me, the long-tail keywords are those that have lower volumes of traffic and are less competitive to rank for. In other words, they may contain multiple words or they could contain as few as two words.
Anyway, I wanted to share my method of conducting keyword research in order to hopefully give some insights into the process. For this example, I am going to use the ‘greetings card’ industry in the UK. All the tools I will be using are freely available to everyone. So let’s get started!
I always like to start my research with a basic Google search using my most obvious industry keyword. This will give an idea of who my competitors are and who the big players in the industry are. So, a basic search for [greetings cards] in Google.co.uk produces the following results:

Two of the top four results (funkypigeon.com and moonpig.com) are well known brands that advertise regularly on television. However, the top 2 results are perhaps lesser-known competitors.
Now that you have an idea of who the big players are, it's time to see if we can find out what keywords they are targeting. Let’s take a look at greetingscards.co.uk. When we look at the home page, there doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of text, so let’s turn to using a keyword density tool. SEOBook has a pretty good keyword density tool but I’m going to use the tool from David Naylor Search Marketing. The reason I prefer to use this tool is because it has more options to customize your results and can provide phrases of four or more words in length. When we use the keyword density tool we are provided with the following list:

As you can see, it is a pretty comprehensive list of keyword ideas that we can also use. However, where did all these words come from, considering there was very little text on the homepage? A quick look at the source code reveals the answer. They are still using the Keyword Meta Tag and have stuffed it with around 30 keywords. This is exactly why you shouldn’t still be using the redundant tag as it just gives your competitor insights into the keywords you are targeting.
Übersuggest is a great tool that extracts all the Google autocomplete words for a base keyword. It is really simple to use. All you have to do is put your base keyword in the search box, select a language and country then hit suggest. For [greetings cards] we are presented with the following list of 352 suggestions:

The tool also makes it really easy to select all the keywords so that you can easily copy and paste them into Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool later.
For this next stage, I like to use a tool called mergewords (mergewords.com) to further advance our list. Before you use this tool you will need to think carefully about how to arrange the words in the three columns to get the right combination of words. Once you have done this, you can start filling the boxes with words. For greetings cards, I used the following combination:

This resulted in 468 keyword possibilities.
Having followed these steps, we now have a list of over 800 keywords. However, some of these may be duplicates and some may be unsuitable for other reasons. This is how I start the filtering process. First I input all of the keywords into an excel spreadsheet, then I use the ‘remove duplicates’ tool. I'm using Excel 2011 for Mac, which has a 'remove duplicates' function in the Ribbon's Data tab:

If you are using Excel 2007 or later then you should also be able to easily find this function. However, if you are using an earlier version of Excel, there are still ways to easily remove duplicates. MrExcel.com lists a variety of methods you can use to remove duplicates in both Excel 2003 and 2007.
Twenty-nine duplicates were removed, leaving me with a list of 851 keywords. The next step is to manually go through the list and remove any unsuitable keywords such as those containing brand terms. Unfortunately, there is no suitable way to automate this (that I know of) and you will have to go through the list manually.
After going through the list manually and removing unsuitable keywords, we are now left with 741 keywords.
Now we have a list of 741 keywords, it’s time to use Google’s keyword tool to start refining the list and find out information such as search volumes, competition and local search trends. When using the tool, remember to have all the parameters set correctly. So, make sure you set the tool to [Exact] match types in the correct location (UK in this case) and tick the box to only show ideas closely related to your search. To set the tool to show [Exact] match, just navigate to the left sidebar and select the check-box next to [Exact]. You may have to unselect the check-box for Broad match if it is selected:

After inputting the 741 keywords into the keyword tool, we further refine the list by removing any unsuitable words we may have missed from the previous manual check and remove any keywords with local search volumes of less than 10. This leaves us with a more manageable list of 126 keywords, which we can download as a CSV file. However, we are not quite done with Google’s keyword tool just yet.
We are now going to start adding some more keywords to the list by inserting our refined list of 126 keywords into the keyword tool. Once we have done this you should get around 800 keyword suggestions from Google:

The first thing we should do is to save all the keywords from our original list of 126, to our new list. Next, we can arrange the list of suggestions by competition from lowest to highest. Once this is done, we can now start adding all the keywords with low to medium competition and local monthly search volumes greater than 10. These are our 'juicy' low-hanging fruit keywords.
The final stage is to add all the important keywords from the suggestions that we may have missed previously. Depending on how many keywords you have added from this final stage, you should have a final list of around 280 keywords. To see the list I have created you can visit the blog at my site Crimson Penguin and download it for free!
Two of my favorite tools for keyword research that often get overlooked are Google Trends and Google Insights. However, Google has recently combined the two into a new look Google Trends. This is a great tool for finding valuable insights into your niche keywords and can often help you to make decisions about which specific keywords you should target. Let’s take a look at our example of the greetings card industry:

As you can see from the graph in the top, very slight changes in the keywords can produce drastically different results. Pluralising [birthday card] to [birthday cards] results in twice as much interest over the past 12 months.
Hopefully, I’ve shown you some useful tools and techniques that you can start to use in your own keyword research projects. Armed with this knowledge, I hope you can start to find more valuable long-tail keywords for your clients.
Adam is a professional SEO and owner/founder of Crimson Penguin SEO Services based in Essex. He also works for a leading SEO agency in London. You can connect with Adam on Twitter or Google+



View the original article here

An Introduction to Using Free Tools

I often find that keyword research is an overlooked part of the SEO process. Many SEOs will tend to stick with using Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool and as a result, they will most likely be targeting the exact same keywords as the competition. The ultimate goal with keyword research is to find those juicy, low-hanging fruit - the long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are sometimes defined as keyword phrases containing multiple words of four or more. However, this is not how I like to define them. For me, the long-tail keywords are those that have lower volumes of traffic and are less competitive to rank for. In other words, they may contain multiple words or they could contain as few as two words.
Anyway, I wanted to share my method of conducting keyword research in order to hopefully give some insights into the process. For this example, I am going to use the ‘greetings card’ industry in the UK. All the tools I will be using are freely available to everyone. So let’s get started!
I always like to start my research with a basic Google search using my most obvious industry keyword. This will give an idea of who my competitors are and who the big players in the industry are. So, a basic search for [greetings cards] in Google.co.uk produces the following results:

Two of the top four results (funkypigeon.com and moonpig.com) are well known brands that advertise regularly on television. However, the top 2 results are perhaps lesser-known competitors.
Now that you have an idea of who the big players are, it's time to see if we can find out what keywords they are targeting. Let’s take a look at greetingscards.co.uk. When we look at the home page, there doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of text, so let’s turn to using a keyword density tool. SEOBook has a pretty good keyword density tool but I’m going to use the tool from David Naylor Search Marketing. The reason I prefer to use this tool is because it has more options to customize your results and can provide phrases of four or more words in length. When we use the keyword density tool we are provided with the following list:

As you can see, it is a pretty comprehensive list of keyword ideas that we can also use. However, where did all these words come from, considering there was very little text on the homepage? A quick look at the source code reveals the answer. They are still using the Keyword Meta Tag and have stuffed it with around 30 keywords. This is exactly why you shouldn’t still be using the redundant tag as it just gives your competitor insights into the keywords you are targeting.
Übersuggest is a great tool that extracts all the Google autocomplete words for a base keyword. It is really simple to use. All you have to do is put your base keyword in the search box, select a language and country then hit suggest. For [greetings cards] we are presented with the following list of 352 suggestions:

The tool also makes it really easy to select all the keywords so that you can easily copy and paste them into Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool later.
For this next stage, I like to use a tool called mergewords (mergewords.com) to further advance our list. Before you use this tool you will need to think carefully about how to arrange the words in the three columns to get the right combination of words. Once you have done this, you can start filling the boxes with words. For greetings cards, I used the following combination:

This resulted in 468 keyword possibilities.
Having followed these steps, we now have a list of over 800 keywords. However, some of these may be duplicates and some may be unsuitable for other reasons. This is how I start the filtering process. First I input all of the keywords into an excel spreadsheet, then I use the ‘remove duplicates’ tool. I'm using Excel 2011 for Mac, which has a 'remove duplicates' function in the Ribbon's Data tab:

If you are using Excel 2007 or later then you should also be able to easily find this function. However, if you are using an earlier version of Excel, there are still ways to easily remove duplicates. MrExcel.com lists a variety of methods you can use to remove duplicates in both Excel 2003 and 2007.
Twenty-nine duplicates were removed, leaving me with a list of 851 keywords. The next step is to manually go through the list and remove any unsuitable keywords such as those containing brand terms. Unfortunately, there is no suitable way to automate this (that I know of) and you will have to go through the list manually.
After going through the list manually and removing unsuitable keywords, we are now left with 741 keywords.
Now we have a list of 741 keywords, it’s time to use Google’s keyword tool to start refining the list and find out information such as search volumes, competition and local search trends. When using the tool, remember to have all the parameters set correctly. So, make sure you set the tool to [Exact] match types in the correct location (UK in this case) and tick the box to only show ideas closely related to your search. To set the tool to show [Exact] match, just navigate to the left sidebar and select the check-box next to [Exact]. You may have to unselect the check-box for Broad match if it is selected:

After inputting the 741 keywords into the keyword tool, we further refine the list by removing any unsuitable words we may have missed from the previous manual check and remove any keywords with local search volumes of less than 10. This leaves us with a more manageable list of 126 keywords, which we can download as a CSV file. However, we are not quite done with Google’s keyword tool just yet.
We are now going to start adding some more keywords to the list by inserting our refined list of 126 keywords into the keyword tool. Once we have done this you should get around 800 keyword suggestions from Google:

The first thing we should do is to save all the keywords from our original list of 126, to our new list. Next, we can arrange the list of suggestions by competition from lowest to highest. Once this is done, we can now start adding all the keywords with low to medium competition and local monthly search volumes greater than 10. These are our 'juicy' low-hanging fruit keywords.
The final stage is to add all the important keywords from the suggestions that we may have missed previously. Depending on how many keywords you have added from this final stage, you should have a final list of around 280 keywords. To see the list I have created you can visit the blog at my site Crimson Penguin and download it for free!
Two of my favorite tools for keyword research that often get overlooked are Google Trends and Google Insights. However, Google has recently combined the two into a new look Google Trends. This is a great tool for finding valuable insights into your niche keywords and can often help you to make decisions about which specific keywords you should target. Let’s take a look at our example of the greetings card industry:

As you can see from the graph in the top, very slight changes in the keywords can produce drastically different results. Pluralising [birthday card] to [birthday cards] results in twice as much interest over the past 12 months.
Hopefully, I’ve shown you some useful tools and techniques that you can start to use in your own keyword research projects. Armed with this knowledge, I hope you can start to find more valuable long-tail keywords for your clients.
Adam is a professional SEO and owner/founder of Crimson Penguin SEO Services based in Essex. He also works for a leading SEO agency in London. You can connect with Adam on Twitter or Google+

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How to Improve Your Rankings with Semantic Keyword Research

From Google’s Panda, Search Plus Your World and Venice updates, in the last year alone the SEO landscape has changed. And while that means your SEO strategy will change, too, there is one thing that remains the same…keywords
.
Keywords remain important to your content and link strategies.
But there is one change coming down the Google pipeline that will change keywords…semantic search technology and the human element.
Basically, semantic search is technology that tries to determine what users mean when they type in a certain keyword.
They explore the semantics
of those words…or the meaning behind them.
For example, if someone typed in “laptop” do they mean:
That they want to buy a laptop?Have one repaired?Upgraded?Are they even talking about a computer, but something entirely different?
In the real world most people don’t search with one keyword…additional keywords give additional clues
.
Even then search engines aren’t always right. Google guesses because all it has to go on are the keywords you enter into their engine.
Semantic search will look at how those words relate to each other and look for clues on how you entered them…location being crucial
.
Say you used Google search on your smart phone to find “laptop repair.” Semantic search will recognize your location via your GPS on your phone and deliver you “laptop repair” results based on location
.
In other words, results related to “laptop repair + [your city].”
In your SEO campaigns semantic search means you will have to identify the right keywords based upon user intent in the real world…and then create content around those terms
.
This is where the semantic keyword research comes in.
In the world of keyword research you simply sought out the keywords with the highest search volume. The meaning between your list of keywords and the content you created was equal. There was a one to one relationship.
“SEO strategy tools” meant “SEO strategy tools.”
In the semantic keyword world, you build a database of keywords that are full of meaning...”SEO strategy tools” could be used in four different contexts.
Your job is to figure out how.                                                  
Having a database of semantic keywords to create high-converting blog posts is one advantage…but there are other benefits, like improved CTR and PPC optimization as Wordstream explained:
Higher click-through rate – Whether it’s in your emails, landing pages, text ads or blog posts, highly-targeted semantic keywords will improve your CTR. When all these elements of the conversion funnel are aligned semantically…your results will go through the roof.Lower minimum bids – Higher relevance and targeted action with your content due to semantic keyword enhancements will lead to lower minimum bids on your PPC campaigns.Higher quality score – When you achieve high relevance around your semantic keywords…the search engines will reward your content with a high quality score that leads to better rankings.
Employing a semantic keyword plan is crucial. But how do you come up with those keywords? Here are five approaches to use…including
recommended tools.
Google’s advanced search results provide a quick way to generate some semantic keywords. Just type in a query like “laptop discount codes” and click “Show search tools”:

Then click “related searches”…

…and then you’ll see all of the semantic terms for “laptop discount codes”:

As you can see from the results above, when searchers think of “laptop discount codes” they are thinking in specific terms of a brand for the most part.
In other words, the term “laptop” was changed into a brand…giving you semantic options
.
And don’t forget to use Google Instant for further ideas on keywords:

By the way, all those keywords are completely different than what you got in the “related search.”
Now let’s look at a reverse case of semantic keyword use. In this case we’ll look up the term “laptop repair”:

“Laptop repair” is synonymous to screen repair, brand laptop repair and even different ways of looking at repair like “troubleshooting.”
And this is where it gets interesting. Look at the Google Instant version of “laptop repair” and you see this:

You get all the options related to location.
Keep in mind that your job isn’t simply to scoop up all of these up. You have to decide what people are thinking when they search with these terms. In some cases it will be obvious…in others it won’t be so obvious
.
That’s what semantic keyword research is all about.
You can refine your results with Google Insights for Search where you can narrow keywords down via categories, for instance.

If you want to find out how some searchers think about keywords, examine how tags are used at social bookmarking sites like Delicious.
Here’s a search on their database for my blog QuickSprout:

As you can see, there are a total of 578 posts that have been bookmarked in Delicious.
To examine the tags that people use to bookmark that content…in a sense, seeing how people are viewing the content and giving you an inside track to their mind…look at how people created “Stacks,” “Links” and “Related Tags.”
You can perform the same process on new social bookmarking sites like Diigo, Pinterest and Licorize.
Again, it’s important to think through how to use these keywords and not just scoop them up.
Using social media monitoring tools to track the mentions of your brand is pretty common and an effective way to stay on top of the competition and
conversation.
Using these same tools for semantic keyword research is just as effective to build a cloud of keywords around a particular sentiment.
For example, in Social Mention search a keyword you type in. Here I used “Virgin Atlantic.”

Then you can get a quick look at the top keywords being used around the brand.
Other social mention tools you can use to help you build a cloud of semantic keywords are TweetDeck, Raven Tool’s Social Monitor and Technorati.
A great strategy to keep in front of the public and at the top of search engines is to optimize your semantic keywords around a trending topic.
This means you have to keep your eyes on high-volume topics. Here are the tools to do that:
Google Trends – This is the obvious place you should check first.Ice Rocket – Search the latest buzz on blogs through this search engine dedicated to blogs. While you will see what’s hot on the blogosphere…one thing you won’t see is any older posts.Trendrr TV – And if you want to keep on top of what’s hot on TV, then Trendrr is the place you need to look.TweetVolume – While it’s offline for the moment, sign up to be the first to use this powerful tool to see popular keywords and trends on Twitter.
When it comes to researching on the social web, the first place I always look for keyword ideas is TwitterSearch.
The way to use it is to look up a keyword like “SEO strategies.” Then look at what people are tweeting about that keyword phrase:

What you want to find is how people are using that term. So look at the words surrounding
the keyword…and then decide how to use it to build your own semantic keywords.
OpenBook – This site will let you see what people are sharing on Facebook. And just like Twitter Search, look at the context on how the keyword is used to determine query intent:

There are dozens of tools out there you can use to build a semantic keyword cloud. Hopefully you understand the approach that I’m recommending so that you can then apply these principles to other tools.
Keep in mind that as much as semantic keyword research is about finding actual
keywords you can use in your SEO campaigns…it’s just as much about building a complete profile of your target customer. And the better you can understand your target customer the better your campaign results will be!

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Keyword Research A Comprehensive Guide

Keyword research

is a fundamental part of online marketing of all kinds, and is especially relevant for freelance writers, online publishers, and bloggers. Compelling content is favored by search engines, but if you don’t use the words people are actually interested in and actively searching for, you’re missing a lot of traffic.

But the value of keywords goes well beyond SEO copywriting. In fact, close your eyes for a moment and imagine a world where search engines don’t deliver traffic at all.

Would keyword research still be valuable? You bet.

Keyword research, at its essence, is market

research. It tells you what people are interested in, and in what relative numbers. Better yet, it reveals the actual language people are using when they think about those topics, which provides you with insight on how to converse with them via your blog.

That information is worth its weight in gold, if you know what to do with it. And that’s what this 5-part tutorial is all about.

Oh, and don’t forget to open your eyes back up. Because search engines do

deliver lots of targeted traffic, and that’s the bonus round for smart keyword researchers.

These two ebooks are no dry, academic exercise that leaves you with more questions than answers. Instead, they walk you through choosing profitable content topics by exploring how keyword research provides valuable insights into the way your prospective audience thinks and discusses the topics that matter to them.

Ready to get started? First, a word of warning… these free guides are pretty hefty, so make sure you have time for a bit of serious (but fun) reading.

Keyword Research: It’s Not What You ThinkHow to Choose a Popular NicheHow to Find Topics That Score BigKeyword Research Can Help You Make More MoneyA Primer on Keyword Research Tools

A 6-Step Content Marketing Research ProcessBecome a Content Marketing Secret Agent with Competitive IntelligenceA 3-Step Process for Painless Keyword ResearchHow to Find the Keywords that Work for Your Content Marketing GoalsCase Study: How Keyword Research Works in the Wild

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YouTube Keyword Research Tips and Tricks Susan Gilbert

Most keyword research takes place through Google. But did you know you can also hone in on these inside YouTube as well? Here a few tips and tricks to get started, which will help you generate more traffic for your videos.
Is Keyword Research on YouTube the Same as Google?
The Google Adwords keyword tool gives you search volume for Google specifically. YouTube (owned by Google) comes in as the second largest search engine on the Internet today and the search terms remain very similar to Google’s. But while people generally search for text on Google, YouTube searches are based on videos only. This changes the game a bit.
“How To Find The Right Keywords For Your YouTube Videos”

How To Do Keyword Search For YouTube
• Use YouTube’s Built-In Keyword Suggest tool – As you enter the keyword in the search box, YouTube provides suggestions to choose from. Although this is not in-depth, it’s a great starting point in your research.

• YouTube Keyword tool – This is another built-in feature, which can be found here. Enter phrases, YouTube IDID, URLRL, or the demographic. Keep in mind that most people will use longer phrases when searching in YouTube. The added bonus of this type of search are the demographics, which can include male, female, age, region, and topics of interest.

• Comments – Currently YouTube’s Comment Search tool is not functioning, however; you can still search on Google using this formula:
“keyword(s)” site:www.youtube.com/all_comments
A list of comments for your topic is displayed with links directly to the YouTube videos.
• Google and YouTube Analytics – Once you have optimized and set up your blog post and video take advantage of both Google and YouTube’s power analytics to find out which keywords are working and to discover others you may not have considered yet. For YouTube in particular you can also learn more about your viewers. How many are subscribing, unsubscribing? What times of the day are they watching your videos? And so on.

• Google AdWords for Video – This is a paid service, but well worth checking out if your business is posting a lot of video. When you create a video ad on Google, you’ll be able to tap into potential clients on YouTube and on the Internet. The service is less costly than Google AdWords and setup is fairly simple. Running a video ad is another great way to find the right keywords. Learn more about it here.

One you have found the right keywords for your YouTube video it will be important to use them not only in your headline, but also in your description. That way search engines will be able to find and rank your video correctly, which of course leads to more viewers and prospects!
Let me know what methods you have used to research keywords for your video along with the results you experienced.  I’d love to hear from you.
Share this article with the following Tweetables:
• Get your YouTube video found in search with these tips – Click to Tweet
• Are you using the right keywords for your YouTube videos? – Click to Tweet
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• YouTube keyword research does not have to be difficult – Click to Tweet

Susan loves being an entrepreneur, online marketing, yorkshire terriers and historical fiction! New here? Like Susan Gilbert on Facebook to stay up to date with new posts and win prizes in our fun, games, competitions and giveaways.

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Keyword Research Mistakes You Might be Making

Keyword research is an all too often under-appreciated aspect of SEO.
I've written a few keyword research posts here on SEOmoz and that's because I believe it to be the blueprint of any successful SEO campaign.
Here are some of the more common mistakes that I see people make with their keyword research.
#1 – You're being Unrealistic
"It is better to have a bigger slice of a few smaller pies rather than not getting even a slither of a much bigger pie."
Keyword research appears to be a very straightforward task. You fire up your keyword research tool of choice and find the keywords that relate to your industry with the highest search volumes. Sadly, that's not the way to do it if you want to see real results.
To many businesses, high-competition keywords are simply out of reach – at least in the short and medium term. Part of good keyword research is about being realistic and selecting appropriate keywords for targeting that take into account the site's age, current authority and any future optimisation that will take place.
Targeting one word keywords is quite often unrealistic but it may also prove unprofitable – someone searching for 'Toshiba l670 laptop' is likely to be much further along in the purchasing process that someone who searches for 'laptops' – think about which searcher is likely to have their credit card out already.
There's nothing wrong with targeting generic keywords, I'm simply saying that if your campaign has limited budget and you need results in the short to medium term then targeting less trafficked, less competitive keywords is a much better way to utilise resources.
Lower traffic but lower competition keywords might not seem as exciting to target but if your website can dominate these areas fairly quickly then you are going to see far more traffic from the search engines than failing to effectively target a much more competitive term.
#2 – You're looking at broad match instead of exact match
A seemingly simple mistake but one which many people continue to make...
Search volume is of course a very important metric when it comes to keyword research but all too often people make the mistake of looking at broad search volumes rather than the exact match figure when using tools like Google's Keyword Tool.
There can be a huge difference between broad match and exact match search traffic for example:
There are 135,000 broad match searches each month in the UK for 'dog kennels' but only 14,800 exact match searches for the same keyword. Still, this wouldn't prove particularly problematic as this is obviously still a keyword worth targeting – it would knock traffic and ROI projections way off kilter if you do these kinds of things though.
The real problem comes when you choose to target a keyword like 'ladies leather handbags' which has a broad match search volume of 2,400 but an exact match search volume of only 260 – failing to base your research on exact match data might mean you think you are targeting a reasonably well-trafficked keyword when in actual fact, once you've factored in data inaccuracies, you could be looking at a very low search volume keyword indeed.
It is widely accepted that Google's Keyword Tool isn't entirely accurate when it comes to search volumes but using exact match gives you the best data available when assessing how viable a keyword is to target.
#3 – You're targeting plural instead of singular
It is very common to see a website targeting the plural version of a keyword but in most cases, it is the singular version of a keyword that people are searching for.
I see this most often on eCommerce websites where the site owner optimises category pages and because they sell more than one product, they naturally focus on the pluralised keywords for example "tablet PCs" which actually gets 91% less searches than "tablet PC".
I will readily admit that Google is much better at determining that a singular and plural version of a keyword are one and the same, but in many cases there are still differences in the search results. Failing to target the singular keyword can be the difference between your search listing being highlighted in the SERPs (=higher clickthrough) and it can also mean your website appears lower (even slightly) than marginally better targeted pages – that could be the difference between making a sale and not.
#4 – You're ignoring conversion
This one could easily turn into a rant for me because so often I come up against clients who want to rank for [insert trophy keyword] when in actual fact they'd do better (financially) targeting a different keyword or set of keywords. I try to explain that a keyword that brings in traffic is wasted bandwidth if that traffic doesn't convert. You don't hire my company to get traffic for traffic's sake...you presumably hire us to help you ultimately make more sales.
The online world is competitive and it's only going to get more competitive, therefore making the most of every penny being invested is vital.
This makes conversion and language analysis a vital part of keyword research. The human mind is the only software capable of performing a good quality 'conversion audit' of a keyword list because whilst there are programmes out there that can filter and sort keywords to make your life easier, there's no real substitute for industry experience and SEO knowledge.
There are some very basic indicators for example prefixes such as 'buy' might be a clear indicator that the traffic from this keyword is going to convert.
A keyword conversion audit is more complex than that however since each situation and market is individual. I find existing data to be a very useful way to determine which keywords are likely to convert well. If you have goal tracking setup with Google Analytics, you can easily determine the highest converting keywords your site currently gets traffic from, try to identify patterns in your highest converting keywords and then translate and apply this knowledge to other areas of keyword research.
#5 – You're selecting keywords that are out of context
This is yet more rationale to further humanise the keyword research process because most keyword tools struggle to compute words and their meaning in the way a human would.
For example, a searcher looking for 'storage' could be looking for a self-storage centre, boxes and other storage furniture for the home or even professional storage solutions for a warehouse or office.
Opportunities for confused targeting are abundant which is why it is essential the keywords you decide to target are highly-relevant and laser-focused towards what your business offers.
A good way to do this is to search manually for the keywords in Google and see the kinds of results that come up, you will likely be able to get a feel for whether the keyword is applicable to the product or service you intended to target.
#6 – You're failing to conduct keyword reviews
It is accepted that SEO is an on-going process but rarely are target keywords reviewed and audited. If a marketplace is shifting over time then you would also expect customer search behaviour to develop and evolve over time too – this makes regular keyword reviews essential.
In most markets, I find an annual review is perfectly adequate. Any time period shorter than this and there is a risk that targeting becomes a bit chaotic with efforts focused on new keywords before results on old keywords have been achieved or evaluated.
That being said, in some competitive and very fast moving markets a more regular keyword review may be required.
The aim of a keyword review is to:
Weed out poor performing keywordsIdentify opportunities and areas for growthShape your SEO strategy for the future
To do a strategic and actionable keyword review you can use this adapted version of the Boston Matrix that I like to use.
Large brands use the Boston Matrix to assess the health of their product portfolio and to identify where to concentrate their resources.
You can do the same thing for your keyword portfolio.
Sort your keywords into four categories in order to better shape your search strategy for the future.
Question marks – these are keywords in areas where growth is likely but at present you're not getting the performance you'd expect. These are very often untapped keyword opportunities and you should plan how you are going to improve performance on these kinds of keywords.Stars – high-performance keywords and loads of room for growth – find ways to capitalise on growth. My advice is to focus your resources of gaining results in these areas for maximum ROI in a short period of time.Dogs – the poor performing keywords with little or no chance of growth – bin these in favour of other keywords, reallocate any resources to other areas.Cash cows – the high performing keywords that show little opportunity for growth – look for ways to enhance and maintain performance whilst identifying patterns and translating this learning to other areas or verticals.
What mistakes do you see happening in the keyword research process? Please share them in the comments section below...
By James Agate, founder of Skyrocket SEO and a regular SEO contributor to leading blogs and publications across the web.

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Manual Keyword Research Technique SEO Techniques

In search engine optimization keyword research is very important part. Because it is very difficult to find out right keywords for a website. Most of the search occurred on keyword basis and maximum visitors only visit first two pages of search result. For this reason keyword research is very important for a website. Normally web-spider use a complex algorithm to find-out keywords from a content or website. Now think this article is about Manual Keyword Research Technique. Naturally this term "keyword Research" will be repeated many times in this article. For this reason the phrase will be top keyword of this article. But only one keyword is not suitable for your website for getting huge traffic. You need to find-out a list of keywords for your website.
Firstly you need to think about your site and its content. Then think some keywords (minimum more than 100 keywords) that matching your site and its content. Note-down all keywords in a page. Consider both single word and phrase for your keyword list (phrase is better than single word). After completing your keyword list keep it in any place from out of your eyes. After 2 or 3 days when you totally forget your keywords of that list then take the list to see it again. Now it is a fresh list of lots of keywords. Check the list carefully and mark the keyword which is suitable or express your site and its content clearly and rightly. Remove the unnecessary keywords from the list. After doing this you will get your targeted keywords for your site. Now it is your magic number for getting targeted traffic in your site. Firstly choose 20 keywords from the list which express your site accurately. Keep three(3) keywords in a single page in your article. It may be two single words and a phrase for getting good result. Now wait two or three weeks for indexing your contents. Search your keywords separately in search engines. Check the first and second page result that your site’s link is present or not. If you find then it is done but if you do not find-out your site’s link then compare the search result-site’s content with your site’s content. Try to find-out difference (URL structure, article size, written style etc) and reasons that why does the keyword not working? After doing this you will get a proper idea. Then update your content and recheck again. You need to continue this keyword research for better result.
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How to Improve Your Rankings with Semantic ;Keyword Research

From Google’s Panda, Search Plus Your World and Venice updates, in the last year alone the SEO landscape has changed. And while that means your SEO strategy will change, too, there is one thing that remains the same…keywords
.
Keywords remain important to your content and link strategies.
But there is one change coming down the Google pipeline that will change keywords…semantic search technology and the human element.
Basically, semantic search is technology that tries to determine what users mean when they type in a certain keyword.
They explore the semantics
of those words…or the meaning behind them.
For example, if someone typed in “laptop” do they mean:
That they want to buy a laptop?Have one repaired?Upgraded?Are they even talking about a computer, but something entirely different?
In the real world most people don’t search with one keyword…additional keywords give additional clues
.
Even then search engines aren’t always right. Google guesses because all it has to go on are the keywords you enter into their engine.
Semantic search will look at how those words relate to each other and look for clues on how you entered them…location being crucial
.
Say you used Google search on your smart phone to find “laptop repair.” Semantic search will recognize your location via your GPS on your phone and deliver you “laptop repair” results based on location
.
In other words, results related to “laptop repair + [your city].”
In your SEO campaigns semantic search means you will have to identify the right keywords based upon user intent in the real world…and then create content around those terms
.
This is where the semantic keyword research comes in.
In the world of keyword research you simply sought out the keywords with the highest search volume. The meaning between your list of keywords and the content you created was equal. There was a one to one relationship.
“SEO strategy tools” meant “SEO strategy tools.”
In the semantic keyword world, you build a database of keywords that are full of meaning...”SEO strategy tools” could be used in four different contexts.
Your job is to figure out how.                                                  
Having a database of semantic keywords to create high-converting blog posts is one advantage…but there are other benefits, like improved CTR and PPC optimization as Wordstream explained:
Higher click-through rate – Whether it’s in your emails, landing pages, text ads or blog posts, highly-targeted semantic keywords will improve your CTR. When all these elements of the conversion funnel are aligned semantically…your results will go through the roof.Lower minimum bids – Higher relevance and targeted action with your content due to semantic keyword enhancements will lead to lower minimum bids on your PPC campaigns.Higher quality score – When you achieve high relevance around your semantic keywords…the search engines will reward your content with a high quality score that leads to better rankings.
Employing a semantic keyword plan is crucial. But how do you come up with those keywords? Here are five approaches to use…including
recommended tools.
Google’s advanced search results provide a quick way to generate some semantic keywords. Just type in a query like “laptop discount codes” and click “Show search tools”:

Then click “related searches”…

…and then you’ll see all of the semantic terms for “laptop discount codes”:

As you can see from the results above, when searchers think of “laptop discount codes” they are thinking in specific terms of a brand for the most part.
In other words, the term “laptop” was changed into a brand…giving you semantic options
.
And don’t forget to use Google Instant for further ideas on keywords:

By the way, all those keywords are completely different than what you got in the “related search.”
Now let’s look at a reverse case of semantic keyword use. In this case we’ll look up the term “laptop repair”:

“Laptop repair” is synonymous to screen repair, brand laptop repair and even different ways of looking at repair like “troubleshooting.”
And this is where it gets interesting. Look at the Google Instant version of “laptop repair” and you see this:

You get all the options related to location.
Keep in mind that your job isn’t simply to scoop up all of these up. You have to decide what people are thinking when they search with these terms. In some cases it will be obvious…in others it won’t be so obvious
That’s what semantic keyword research is all about.
You can refine your results with Google Insights for Search where you can narrow keywords down via categories, for instance.

If you want to find out how some searchers think about keywords, examine how tags are used at social bookmarking sites like Delicious.
Here’s a search on their database for my blog QuickSprout:

As you can see, there are a total of 578 posts that have been bookmarked in Delicious.
To examine the tags that people use to bookmark that content…in a sense, seeing how people are viewing the content and giving you an inside track to their mind…look at how people created “Stacks,” “Links” and “Related Tags.”
You can perform the same process on new social bookmarking sites like Diigo, Pinterest and Licorize.
Again, it’s important to think through how to use these keywords and not just scoop them up.
Using social media monitoring tools to track the mentions of your brand is pretty common and an effective way to stay on top of the competition and
conversation.
Using these same tools for semantic keyword research is just as effective to build a cloud of keywords around a particular sentiment.
For example, in Social Mention search a keyword you type in. Here I used “Virgin Atlantic.”

Then you can get a quick look at the top keywords being used around the brand.
Other social mention tools you can use to help you build a cloud of semantic keywords are TweetDeck, Raven Tool’s Social Monitor and Technorati.
A great strategy to keep in front of the public and at the top of search engines is to optimize your semantic keywords around a trending topic.
This means you have to keep your eyes on high-volume topics. Here are the tools to do that:
Google Trends – This is the obvious place you should check first.Ice Rocket – Search the latest buzz on blogs through this search engine dedicated to blogs. While you will see what’s hot on the blogosphere…one thing you won’t see is any older posts.Trendrr TV – And if you want to keep on top of what’s hot on TV, then Trendrr is the place you need to look.TweetVolume – While it’s offline for the moment, sign up to be the first to use this powerful tool to see popular keywords and trends on Twitter.
When it comes to researching on the social web, the first place I always look for keyword ideas is TwitterSearch.
The way to use it is to look up a keyword like “SEO strategies.” Then look at what people are tweeting about that keyword phrase:

What you want to find is how people are using that term. So look at the words surrounding
the keyword…and then decide how to use it to build your own semantic keywords.
OpenBook – This site will let you see what people are sharing on Facebook. And just like Twitter Search, look at the context on how the keyword is used to determine query intent:

There are dozens of tools out there you can use to build a semantic keyword cloud. Hopefully you understand the approach that I’m recommending so that you can then apply these principles to other tools.
Keep in mind that as much as semantic keyword research is about finding actual
keywords you can use in your SEO campaigns…it’s just as much about building a complete profile of your target customer. And the better you can understand your target customer the better your campaign results will be!
What other tools do you use to create semantic keyword groups?
About the author:
Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics, an analytics provider that helps companies make better business decisions.
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