What is [Not Provided] and why should we care?

SEOs were piling into the conference room to see Scott Krager of serps.com and Duran Inci of Optimum7, talk about the thing that’s bothering us all most at the moment, apart from the pesky penguins. [Not Provided] is a problem (for SEOs), because Google is hiding the keyword data that Google users are using when searching whilst logged into their Google+/profile account. Once signed in, Google users are automatically logged into a secure browsing function (https://). You may have noticed, in your analytics, that a large percentage of your traffic comes from keywords that you are unable to see. It’s frustrating! How do we know which keywords we need to work more/less on?

According to Scott, we are going to continue to see less and less keyword data. So we need to get used to the idea. Rolled out in March 2011, SEOs across the globe have questioned why Google have implemented this new ‘privacy update’, saying that it could have been designed to make Google more money. Is it possible that Google will, one day, charge money to get access to this data? It’s hard not to be weary at a time when Google is launching their ‘Premium Google Analytic’ packages, which also comes with a premium price tag.

A spontaneous talk with Google’s very own Pierre Far

As Scott and Duran challenged and questioned Google’s motivation to provide the [Not Provided] results, Pierre Far, one of Google’s leading analysts, made a surprising but welcome appearance. He proceeded to give us what felt like a good telling off for talking dirty about Google. Pierre was very defensive and told us all firmly that Google’s ‘privacy function’ was not just an excuse to cover up some other ‘evil’ plan, but was a genuine attempt to improve the user experience. Surprise surprise, another Googler telling us that everything they do is with the best interest of the user in mind. It was clear that Pierre genuinely believes in the privacy function of Google products, and told us all in his booming voice, that he was very proud to work for the first search engine to take its users’ privacy so seriously. In another defensive pitch, Pierre noted that far more keyword data is available than we realise, and that we should pay greater attention to our webmaster tools. He even tried to downplay the effect of [Not Provided] data, saying that not all industries will be affected by the update. This, however,  was quickly, and aggressively dismissed by the majority of SEOs in the room.

Perhaps us SEOs are just becoming a little over sensitive to Google’s updates, perhaps we’re scared that they are going to make it impossible for us to provide our services and earn our bread. As if to echo my own thoughts, a member of the audience asked the question; “It all sounds really great, and I know we need to be willing to change, but are we all screwed?”

Scott Krager, quickly apologised for bringing the tone of the session down, and being ‘depressing’. He explained that we are not screwed, and that NOW is actually a very exciting time to be an SEO. Finally, Google are enforcing their rules and levelling the playing field. Spammy SEO is finally being punished by updates like Panda and Penguin. The rules remain the same as they’ve always been and promote quality content, easy usability, authentic links and generally ‘being nice’. We all know the rules, now is the time to play by them. Admittedly, the [Not Provided] mystery was not really ‘solved’, instead, it seems we are told “It is happening, deal with it”.

Where do we go from here?

In an attempt to lift our spirits, Scott gave us some advice on what we can do before 100% of our keyword data is [Not Provided].

• Track as much keyword data now, while we still can.
• Capture goal conversion rates by keyword.
• Record (Not Provided) goal conversion rates.
• What are the data sources that can’t be taken away?
• Continue to compare today to yesterday, this week to last week. Etc
• Calculate [Not Provided] at URL level to estimate lost referral numbers.
• Find keywords in the Google Webmaster tools at page level.
• Compare to page level keywords in Google analytics.

Scott also encouraged us to be transparent with our clients/bosses. We may not be able to show all of the keywords that are providing traffic, but shouldn’t be afraid to show how much traffic is being generated by [Not Provided] keywords. Scarily, Scott suggested that we should assume that ALL keyword referral data will be gone in the next 12 months. I guess it’s a case of “Failing to prepare, is preparing to fail.”

Takeaways

• Track your goals and conversions by keyword NOW before it goes away.
• Compare Google webmaster tools safe level queries to Google analytics page level.
• PPC for Keyword research is the bomb!

Scott basically confirmed what we have all been trying to ignore. As he put it, Google aren’t all of a sudden going to change their minds and return to their old ways of sharing ALL keyword data. This is the way things are, we have to deal with what we’ve got. Be the opposite of [Not Provided], share everything, be completely transparent. Control what you can. Measure what you can. What more can we do?

Posted in Featured, Search Marketing Expo | Tags: Google Analytics, Not Provided, SMX London 2012

Yet Another Way to Reclaim Your (not provided) Data

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A new approach to (not provided), which might further help undo the damage SSL search has done to your keyword reports.

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Firefox adopting Secure Search will Allow Snake Oil SEOs to Thrive

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The more and more visible doesnt serve a client well and it becomes too easy to incorporate not provided into non brand reporting

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SMX New York 2011: Day 1: Best of SMX Advanced Track: Hard Core Local SEO Tactics

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Coverage of SMX New York 2011 is provided by our guest author Jackie Hole. The third session of the day in the Advanced Track was hosted by: Matt McGee Search Engine Land Mike Ramsey Nifty Marketing Will Scott Search Influence Speaker #1 Mike Ramsey The Nifty Report The nifty report isread more

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SSL Search Goes Global, Will SPYW Follow?

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Google is rolling out SSL Search world wide in the next few weeks. What does that mean?

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Article source: http://www.stateofsearch.com/london-smx-life-in-a-not-provided-world/

VM Web Marketing

Keywords promise SEMs pin-point accuracy as to who they’re marketing to, how much they’re willing to pay to get a click from that person, and what ad they want to show them. 
However, as any SEM will tell you: keywords actually suck. Here are five reasons why:

1.    Keywords don’t scale. Growing an SEM campaign typically
requires adding more keywords, and adding keywords requires hiring more SEMs, or demanding SEMs work longer hours. Every keyword demands the same amount of work to get live.  Without doing the
additional work for each additional keyword, relevance of ad groups, ads, and landing pages will start to suffer, artificially depressing ROAS.

2.   
Keywords don’t map cleanly to products. One keyword can market multiple products in your catalog (e.g., “blue jeans”).  Conversely, many keywords can be used to market one
product (“Calvin” “Klein” “blue” “jeans”).  Keeping track of which keywords map to which products is a complex, ongoing problem for online
retailers.

3.    Keywords are organized in a completely different way from how a business is organized.  Google and Microsoft force SEMs to organize their
keywords into three tiers: 1) Account, 2) Campaign, and 3) Ad Group, even though few retailers organize their product catalogs or stores in a three-tier hierarchy. This makes it difficult for SEMs to
see trends that might span different ad groups. For example, a certain designer or style might be popular and converting better, but this could be difficult to see. Furthermore, it might be difficult
to implement certain promotions. An ad for “2-for-1 women’s Levi’s Special” would need to be manually added to (and eventually removed from) every ad group with women’s Levi’s keywords.

4.    Keywords leave marketers in a Catch-22.  Marketers find it difficult to make money on high-volume head keywords because they are more competitive and, as
such, more expensive. Conversely, it’s hard to manage low-volume tail keywords because their workload grows proportionately with the number of keywords in their campaign.  The marginal
benefit of adding more tail keywords to a campaign doesn’t outweigh the marginal cost of managing those tail keywords, despite the fact that the long tail keywords tend to provide better results.

5.    The more products you have in your catalog, the more potential keywords you can bid on.  As a result, it’s difficult for retailers to
market their entire product catalog — especially with long-tail keywords — leaving a lot of search advertising opportunity untapped. This is particularly difficult for retailers with catalogs that
change frequently.

Unfortunately, instead of tackling these issues head-on, many SEMs have developed a laundry list of coping mechanisms — such as depending primarily on high volume head
terms, overuse of broad match, or letting ad groups become too large — to deal with an unwieldy number of keywords. These shortcuts are band aids and inevitably prevent search campaigns from scaling
for real growth.

There are existing assets that retailers can and should use to discover new keywords and create more relevant ads. Product catalogs, on-site search
query logs, and broad match query reports for Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter, for example, can help increase exact match keywords to serve more relevant ads to consumers.

However, the
only way to really make keywords suck less is to take a step back and focus not on the keywords themselves, but their underlying intent. Here’s how it works. Let’s say I sell Nike men’s
basketball shoes.  Instead of manually creating a list of thousands of keywords, grouping them, and writing relevant ads for each of these ad groups, I can manage just one intent — “Nike men’s
basketball shoes.” With available technology, it’s actually possible to generate nearly every traffic-producing keyword related to Nike men’s basketball shoes, group them by similarity, and
easily publish highly relevant ads to each group.

Keywords have helped the paid search industry grow to where it is today.  However, keywords are also the primary impediment for the paid
search industry to achieve its full potential.  The sooner the paid search industry can move away from keywords alone and provide advertisers with a less complex and more scalable unit of
purchase -– like intent -– the faster the entire industry will grow.  And the less keywords will suck.

Article source: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/175071/why-keywords-suck.html

VM Web Marketing

Panda, Penguin, and The Algorithm Sandwich

After Penguin 1.0 was released, Google also explained that a Panda update was rolled out a few days before Penguin (on 4/19).  Then, to make matters even more confusing, Google rolled out a Panda refresh on 4/27.  To quickly recap, Panda rolled out on 4/19, then Penguin on 4/24, and then a Panda refresh on 4/27.  Yes, that’s essentially an algo sandwich special, with a side of insanity.  As you can imagine, webmasters that aren’t extremely familiar with SEO could very easily think they were hit by Penguin (since that was the primary topic during the time period).

The Danger of Not Knowing

Since Penguin and Panda target two different issues, it’s extremely important to know the exact algorithm update that hit your website.  Panda targets low quality content, thin content, duplicate content, etc., while Penguin targets webspam (and at this point it’s heavily targeting unnatural inbound links).  So, if you incorrectly believe you were hit by Penguin and start addressing links, then you would be wasting your time…  On the flip side, if you incorrectly believe you were hit by Panda and start addressing low quality content, then you could also be wasting your time.

And to make matters worse, both Penguin and Panda will be rolled out periodically.  That means you won’t know if your latest refinements actually made a difference until Pandas and Penguins come knocking on your door again.  And that is exactly why I wrote this post today.  I’ve had several people mistakenly believe they were hit by Penguin, when it was Panda (or vice versa).  And some were already making changes, based on the wrong assessment.  So, don’t prune your links if you were hit by Panda, and don’t gut content if you were hit by Penguin. Know what hit you, and then act.

Working in Google Analytics

1) Check Your Dates

The first thing you should do is launch Google Analytics and drill into Google Organic reporting.  Set the timeframe to April 1st through May 15th.  More on why May is important in a minute.  This will give you a good view of traffic by day during the various algorithm updates.  Remember, Panda was on 4/19, Penguin was on 4/24, and then a Panda refresh rolled out on 4/27.

In the graphs below, you can clearly see that one site was hit by Penguin while the other has been hit by Panda (twice).

A Website Hit by Panda Twice:

A Website Hit by Penguin:

Note: I explained above that you should set your final date to May 15th for a reason.  There has been a lot of chatter recently about another possible Google update.  I first received calls from webmasters on Saturday May, 12th about traffic fluctuations beginning on Friday, May 11th.  Some actually had their traffic bounce back after getting hit by Panda.  Barry Schwartz covered this on Search Engine Roundtable and Google said it was not a Penguin update or a Panda update.  One thing is for sure… there was some type of update.

2) Meeting Panda on a Weekend – Dimension by Keyword and Compare to Past

Now that you know which algorithm update hit you, you can start to determine the keywords that dropped.  Penguin rolled out on a Tuesday, while Panda rolled out on a Thursday, and then followed with a refresh on a Friday!  Since many sites see a natural dip late in the week and on weekends, it’s important to start understanding normal visitor trending, and which keywords potentially were hit.

First, within Google Organic, set the primary dimension to “Keyword”.  This will show you all of the keywords leading to your site from Google Organic during the timeframe.

Next, compare the dates after you were hit by Panda or Penguin with a previous timeframe to compare traffic by keyword.  To do this, click the date in the upper right hand corner of the interface and select a timeframe.  If you were hit by Penguin, select 4/24 to 5/15.  If you were hit by Panda, select 4/19 to 5/15.  Then click the checkbox for “compare to past”.  The default comparison will be the number of days immediately prior to the range you selected.  You can change that by selecting new dates to compare, if needed.

You will now be presented with all of the keywords leading traffic to the site, along with the percentage of increase and decrease (compared to the previous timeframe).  How awesome is that?  See a keyword drop by 75%, it probably got hit.  Then you can dimension that keyword by “Landing Page” to see which webpage got hit.  Spend some time here… the insights you glean could be incredibly valuable to your recovery efforts.

The Not So Obvious – Google Webmaster Tools and Filters

Although a lot of webmasters are familiar with Google Analytics, I find there are still many who don’t have Google Webmaster Tools set up.  As I mentioned in my post about Avoiding SEO Disaster During a Website Redesign, it’s essential to have GWT set up for your domains.  There is a wealth of information directly from Google… including messages from the Search Giant about the SEO health of your sites.  And yes, Google Webmaster Tools can help you determine which algorithm update hit your site.

1) Search Query Data

There is a tab in Google Webmaster Tools titled “Traffic” that holds a link for “Search Queries”.  This tab reveals the impressions and clicks for queries that returned your webpages in the search results.  Yes, you can see impression data and click data directly from Google properties.  While Google Analytics relies upon a click to your site, this data shows you how many impressions your content is receiving for queries on Google.  For our purposes, we can see the surge or dip in impressions and clicks as the various algorithm updates rolled out.

As you can imagine, this is a great way to see the impact of a certain algorithm update.  The default view is 30 days back, but you can now select a greater time range (up to 90 days).  Again, let’s check April 1st to May 15th to view impressions and clicks.

A Sample Search Queries Report in Google Webmaster Tools (Unaffected Website):

At this point, you can start to identify impression and click issues. If you were hit by Penguin, then you might see a steep drop-off on 4/24, and then lower levels beyond.  If you were hit by Panda, then you might see a steep drop-off on 4/19, and then again on 4/27 (if you were hit by both updates). Here is data I exported from Google Webmaster Tools for a site hit by Panda twice.

2) Focus on the Problem – Filter by Web

During my analysis of sites hit by Penguin and Panda, I noticed something interesting in Google Webmaster Tools.  For certain sites, using the filters available helped some webmasters hone in on their problem.  There is a “filters” button in the upper left-hand corner of the Search Queries report.  This lets you filter your results based on a number of criteria.  For our purposes, let’s filter by Google property.  Click the dropdown that’s labeled “Search” and choose “Web”.  That will filter your data by web-only searches, and will exclude Images, Video, Mobile, etc.

After doing this, you might see a more pronounced drop during 4/19, 4/24, and 4/27.  It will also enable you to view keywords that dropped from web search without mixing other Google properties in, which can skew the results.  For example, I analyzed several sites that actually received more impressions from Google Images after being hit by Penguin and Panda! Go figure… Removing that data provided a clearer view of the problem.

3) Export Your Data

Although Google Webmaster Tools recently rolled out an update enabling you to view up to 90 days of search query data, you can’t go back further… That means you should export the current data in order to archive it, work with it, and analyze it.  You will notice two buttons labeled “Download this table” and “Download chart data” under the trending graph.  Export your data now.

Summary – You Must Know the Problem in Order to Address It

Based on how Google rolled out Penguin and Panda recently, I’m finding it’s common for webmasters to be confused about which algorithm update hit their websites.  Penguin 1.0 and the latest Panda updates were so close that it’s easy to believe you were hit by one, when in fact, it could have been the other.  Use the techniques I listed in this post to help you determine which update really hit your site.  Then form a plan of attack knowing which cute animal you are dealing with.  Good luck.

Article source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/penguin-or-panda-how-to-determine-which-google-algorithm-update-impacted-your-website/43751/

VM Web Marketing

With so much focus these days on the next best thing — generating the most compelling creative or discovering the next diamond-in-the-rough keyword — search marketers often ignore the keyword gaps that slowly accumulate over time.

Maintaining publisher and match type keyword parity is one of the most important campaign management strategies available to a search marketer. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most difficult strategies to scale and implement successfully. Sifting through hundreds of thousands of keywords and toggling between multiple publishers to identify keyword disparities can prove to be a daunting task.

Today, we’ll discuss several best practices for maintaining keyword parity across match types and publishers. We’ll also help identify where potential keyword gaps reside in your account and provide the necessary tools for filling them.

Publisher Parity

Imagine you’ve just added a new keyword into your Google account that’s expected to acquire more revenue for your business. Now two weeks, 100 clicks and 10 conversions later, your keyword is a hit. In the fog of excitement, you’ve decided to research additional keyword expansion opportunities, neglecting to explore the full potential of your newly discovered revenue driver.

Adding your new, proven keyword into your Bing accounts has slipped your mind. As day-to-day optimization strategies take your account forward, this and other keyword gaps continue to accumulate. Unfortunately, many search marketers fail to maintain keyword parity across publishers, even when the failure to do so can result in missed revenue opportunities.

Locating publisher keyword gaps can prove to be a daunting task. Implementing tracking prior to tackling keyword expansion addresses the parity issue at its core. (Third-party solutions, like Marin Software, can help track and report on these keywords at scale.) Take detailed notes on when, where and why these keywords were added to an account. These notes are essential to assessing performance and critical for locating revenue driving keywords to copy across publishers.

In order to retroactively assess publisher parity, download a keyword performance report and apply an Excel pivot table to compare publisher keyword sets by key performance indicators.

Once you’ve identified the gaps, add these keywords to the appropriate publisher on a weekly or monthly basis. Remember to set competitive bids, generate compelling creative and deploy proper negative keywords.  Missing out on an important negative keyword when achieving parity can result in reduced effectiveness for the keywords you add.

Match Type Parity

Ensuring match type parity by adding keywords across all three match types is a common best practice. This can be approached in two different directions—expanding from broad to phrase to exact match type or from exact to phrase to broad match type.

Copying successful exact and phrase match keywords to broad match type is a quick and easy approach for reaching a broader audience and discovering new keyword opportunities. However, the resulting increase in traffic doesn’t always correspond to an increase in performance. Be cautious when expanding keywords to broad match type and aggressively mine for negative keywords.

Improving keyword efficiency often requires the expansion of broad match keywords to phrase and exact match type. This strategy is an effective means of segmenting keyword performance. Keep in mind that broad match keywords already capture the traffic for its phrase and exact match counterparts. Consequently, cost and conversion metrics are attributed to a single keyword.

Maintaining match type parity is a simple way of segmenting keyword performance by match type, allowing for the implementation of match type specific bids, creative or both.

Match Type Silos

Consider this common scenario. A keyword on Google is active across all three match types. However, the broad match bid is set higher than the phrase and exact match bids.

As a result, the broad match keyword cannibalizes impressions and clicks that might best be served on and captured by the phrase and exact match keyword. This undesired behavior creates a reporting and optimization nightmare; performance data for the phrase and exact match queries is attributed to the broad match keyword.

To properly expand keywords across broad, phrase and exact match types, and segment performance based on match type, match type silos must be deployed. To implement match type silos, start by creating a separate group for each keyword match type. Within the broad match group, add the phrase match negative keyword. Within the phrase match group, add the exact match negative keyword.

Match type silos are not only easy to implement, but ensure that publishers properly match your keywords to user search queries. Furthermore, the segmentation of keywords by match type provides greater visibility into performance, resulting in a more effective reporting and bidding strategy.

As you work through keyword expansion opportunities, be mindful of keyword gaps and maintain publisher and match type parity. Once you’ve filled these gaps, remember to optimize. Setting appropriate keyword bids, generating relevant creative and researching negative keywords are just a few strategies to in mind.

What has and hasn’t worked for your campaigns when it comes to maintaining parity across publishers and match types? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: Enterprise SEM

Article source: http://searchengineland.com/accelerating-revenue-growth-with-keyword-parity-121540

VM Web Marketing

Put some effort into making your site appeal to this audience, taking note of the nationalities of your past customers.

We’re a tour operator who provides guided walks and hikes in Sydney’s national parks. We recently engaged an SEO specialist to help with keyword research before relaunching our website www.royalcoastwalks.com.au

However with time, Google Analytics and basic Adwords testing, we can see that our selected keywords are not resonating with our target market.

Our guests are 50/50 international and domestic. We chose to focus only on the Australian market for keyword targeting. We are satisfied with the consultant’s work and the exhaustive process of selecting suitable keywords.

Unlike Americans, Australians are not searching for terms similar to “guided walking tours”. So we dismissed our most accurate keyword phrase. We’ve tried to qualify generic terms, like “walking” with a geographic term, like “Sydney”. Unfortunately, unlike Tasmania and Victoria, Sydney is not (yet!) known for it’s stunning walking tracks so again, very limited traffic.

Maybe “adventure tours”? Adwords testing quickly showed that up to two days walking in Sydney is not a potential customer’s idea of adventure. And then of course we had the great “walking / hiking / bushwalking / trekking” debate. Seeing as we wanted to talk to Australia, we included “bushwalking”, only to discover that despite being one of the highest click-thru rates, it is also the poorest performing conversion and bounce rate, leaving us to assume that Australian’s don’t equate “bushwalking” with a paid experience.

Our most success still comes from TripAdvisor – people who are looking for Sydney tours (not specifically walking) and are excited about getting outdoors. This leaves us staring down the barrel of “things to do in Sydney” or “Sydney day tours” – highly competitive phrases both organically and paid, with non-qualified leads for our niche experience.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

I find your website most appealing; your walks look very interesting and the pricing looks reasonable. Your website Google ranking of four is also quite good so you appear to be doing a lot of things right with bringing people to your site.

I thing you are right that you are dealing with a perception problem in pitching your service to the market: People do not think about bushwalking when they are planning a trip to Sydney, nor do they think of Sydney when they are planning a hiking holiday. And unfortunately people make decisions based on their perceptions rather than on reality.  Changing people’s perceptions is never easy and it can often take quite a lot of dedication, money and time.

You ask for some suggestions so here are some ideas that have occurred to me:

As 50% of your clients are from overseas I would put some effort into making your site appeal to this audience, taking note of the nationalities of your past customers. For example, for North America I would make sure that you are not using terms on your site that Americans could be unfamiliar with, eg. ‘bushwalking’, ‘goody bag’, ‘tucker’. Make sure you include the American spellings and terms in your keywords, where appropriate. Submit your site to google.com and consider getting a .com domain as well.

No doubt, many of your past clients are from non-English speaking countries.  You might consider doing foreign-language versions of your site – or at least do landing pages. You can enlist foreign students from nearby universities to help you here. Some of these students might also be interested to become guides on your tours. Submit these sites (or landing pages) to the Google search engines for these countries.

As you are dealing with a perception problem, I would also put a lot of effort into blogs and social media – I note you are already quite active here. Be aware that the social media that is popular in Australia will not be the same overseas, so adapt your campaign to suit the country you are targeting.

It may also be the case that the perception problem is not nearly so great overseas; for example many Germans may not find the idea of hiking around Sydney to be strange at all.

Finally, whilst internet and social media will play important roles in your overall promotional strategy, you should not be ignoring more conventional means such as for example pitching yourselves to tour organisers and travel agents.

Please note that this information may be regarded as general advice. Accordingly, you should consider the appropriateness of any advice with regards to your own objectives and financial situation before acting on it.

Guy Ward is a business and engineering consultant and a business mentor with Small Business Mentoring Services. SBMS is a not-for-profit association offering SMEs guidance and advice. www.sbms.org.au

Got a problem? Looking to take your business to the next level? Or just want some expert advice on how to run your business?

MySmallBusiness has gathered a panel of experts to answer readers questions about running their small business.

Ask about anything from payroll to Christmas parties, HR to IR, technology to outsourcing.

If you really want to get on with running your business, then leave the problems to us and Ask Our Experts!

Login below to send us your question.

Article source: http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/smallbiz-experts/how-do-i-appeal-to-different-types-of-clients-20120517-1ys6k.html

VM Web Marketing

Here is a list of competitive research tools. There are tools to research your competition’s keywords, linking strategies, traffic metrics, and more. There are both free and paid tools. If you have any other favorite resources to research your competitors, be sure to add them in the comments below.

Free Tools

Alexa. Search Alexa by keyword or category for traffic trends on competing sites. Get rank, related keywords, and site analytics for free.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Plug in a URL and get the keyword ideas Google thinks the page should be advertising for, as well as the monthly keyword volume estimates.

Google Trends for Websites. This Google tool gives you traffic estimates, related websites, and related keywords. Compare trends between multiple sites. Data is only available for higher traffic sites.

Archive.org. This site provides free access on how old a website is and what it looked like in the past.

Google Traffic Estimator. Enter a website and get estimates on the number of AdWords ad clicks and bid prices for the top ad position.

SearchStatus. SearchStatus lets you view a site’s Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Compete.com ranking, SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank, Alexa related links and backward links.

DomainTools. Search “Whois” domain ownership data. Or get reverse Whois information, if you know domain owners and want to know which sites they own.

Article source: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3542-23-Tools-to-Research-Your-Competition

VM Web Marketing

I believe that categorizing keywords into the finest groupings that make semantic sense is the right way to do it; often I’ll have a category with 2, 10, or perhaps 30 keywords at the most. Later, when some of the categories are turned into actual campaigns, this tight organization and relevance will tend to pay off with higher quality scores.

Since Google Adwords takes into account the relevance of keywords to the creative, obviously grouping very diverse keywords will result in low relevance, so this is why relatively fine categorization is important.

Often, however, I find myself with too many keywords to handle; even as little as 5,000 keywords broken down into 300 categories, for instance, is still not a very manageable set.

In these cases, I like to take the keyword categories and bundle the categories themselves into a *secondary* category that represents the “funnel” stage that the keyword category belongs to.

Marketers are told to think of a customer as being in one of various “funnel” stages at any given time, and even if you’re not systematic about it, you probably already think of brand terms as being “lower funnel” and research-type terms as being “upper funnel”.

Most readers are doubtless familiar with models such as “Attention-Interest-Desire-Action”, and other 4, 5, and 6 stage funnels which are pretty standard fare for marketers.

After performing my initial keyword categorization (sort of into micro-categories), I like to categorize the categories themselves into a total of *ten* funnel stages I’ve developed, which are organized around a “problem/solution” mental model.

In Figure 1, I’ve shown individual keywords belonging to each funnel stage for a variety of B-to-C funnels. Later, Figure 2 presents some B-to-B  examples.

These keywords presented could be actual keywords, but I think they are more appropriately thought of as representing *categories* of keywords:

Figure 1 – Business to Consumer Search Funnel Stages

Ten stages may seem like a lot of detail, but organizing keyword categories into these stages:

1. Forces you to really try to understand searcher’s intent.
2. Gives you a sense of where the holes in your keyword research are from a funnel perspective.
3. Resonates with clients or management and is a great way to discuss and understand a business.

For example, after going through this exercise with one client, to my great surprise, they told me that stage 2 (“Suspicion There May Be a Problem“) was almost the sole focus of their existing marketing.

Their strategy is to pull in searchers looking for help identifying their problem, establishing them early as a trusted brand in the eyes of the searcher.  This client has found that organic and offline conversions then naturally follow. Although very much a one-trick pony approach which I would not recommend for most businesses, it works great in their market.

Below is another version of the funnel with examples that are more B-to-B oriented, for those interested in that perspective;  we’ll now run through the funnel stages, explain the thinking behind each of them, and discuss which stages you should consider addressing in your marketing mix.

Figure 2 – Business to Business Search Funnel Stages

Activity Funnel Relates To

This is a very general field of activity, and will often not be a focus of marketing efforts since the customer may not actually be experiencing a problem yet.

However, display advertising that targets field-focused websites or is demographically targeted may be a useful vehicle from a branding perspective in this stage.

Suspicion That There May Be A Problem

This funnel is focused around the mental model of problem-solving; other mental models may make for useful funnels as well, but I’ve found “problems” to be universally applicable.

In this stage, there may be symptoms described but the customer does not understand the nature of the problem, or perhaps they don’t even understand that the symptoms are a problem at all.

It’s a critical stage where you can have great influence on the direction a potential customer will take; we’ll touch on this more later.

Problem Identified

This is an interesting bucket because you may have some latent versus blatant needs that you can separate out; different types of problems may actually fork off into different funnels.

Looking For Solution Alternatives

In this stage, the prospect is trying to understand the variety of approaches available to them. There are many ways to lose weight for instance; diet, exercise, portions, surgery, and so on.

This is fairly early in the research phase and can be ripe fruit for thought leadership content (great for the SEO channel as well). If you’re really lucky and you’re the only solution to a problem (perhaps you’re in a new market) then this stage may barely even exist and prospects may jump directly from stage 3 to stage 5.

Solution Space Has Been Chosen

In this stage, the prospect has decided on a particular approach for solving the problem (for instance, “dieting” to solve a weight problem).

Complicating Issues

This stage perhaps belongs alongside the funnel, but I usually place it in the middle of the research phase. Many people with problems have complicating issues; diabetes (if they are interested in weight loss), a wheelchair-bound spouse (if they are interested in travel), and so on.

Addressing these complicating issues can be a great way of differentiating your product or service and reducing friction for a final sale.

Researching A Specific Solution

Now the prospect is getting *very* specific about a particular member of the solution space (“Low-Carb Diets” in the case of a Weight Loss/Dieting funnel for instance).

Researching A Specific Brand

At this stage, the prospect is getting very serious and is educating themselves about specific providers.

Remember, brand terms are well known in the industry to convert at a higher rate as generic terms (twice the rate on average in my experience), so addressing this funnel stage should be a critical component of any online marketing effort.

Conversion Imminent

Terms that include phrases like “coupon code”, “pricing”, “cheap”, are akin to flashing red lights with a siren screaming “transaction about to occur!!!”

Spending a lot of time building out variations in this funnel section is usually well rewarded. Google Suggest is a great place to fund ways that potential customers are raising their hands in these ways.

Post Conversion

Often, a neglected funnel stage, this is where you will find customers searching for things like “repairs”, “replacement parts”, “add-ons”, “upgrades”, “warranties”, and “support”.

You may or may not have offerings that address concerns in this funnel stage, but it’s important to think about them.

If you’re a travel company, trip insurance may not be something your customers will actively seek out often, and paid search campaigns targeting that concept may not be worthwhile.

If, however, your paid search keyword research turns up the concept, and you then prompt your company to then put together some sort of revenue-sharing deal with a trip insurance provider to integrate their product into your cart, I would say the time spent researching funnel stage #10 was well worth it.

Which Stages Should You Target?

As most articles you’ve read on this topic probably state, you should target all of them. This is not very helpful advice though – often in marketing we have to prioritize our efforts.

If I absolutely had to prioritize the top ones to focus on initially, I would say #9, #8, #5, and #2 in that order.

Funnel Stages #8 and #9, “RESEARCHING A SPECIFIC BRAND” and “CONVERSION IMMINENT” are self-evidently critical; how are you going to leverage this great funnel if you don’t catch potential customer at the end of it?

I am, however, a big believer in avoiding cannibalization from organic search conversions, so my preference is to consider targeting competitor brand terms  before I would work on cannibalizing my own.

Funnel Stage #5, “SOLUTION SPACE HAS BEEN CHOSEN” is square in the middle of the research phase, and catches customers who are partially educated on the problem and are still early enough in the funnel to nudge in your direction.

Funnel Stage #2, “SUSPICION THERE MAY BE A PROBLEM” is important because it’s an opportunity for you to disturb the prospect’s equilibrium, a critical step in any sales process.

Much like Don Draper stated in his famous “Carousel” pitch about the term “new”, with problem defining keywords, you “create an itch, and simply put your product in there as a sort of ‘calamine lotion’”. Funnel step #2 is essentially the “itch” stage.

This stage, where the potential customer suspects but does not yet fully understand that they may have a problem, is a powerful leverage point for influencing searchers in your direction. Think of searchers as meteors, heading for earth – a slight nudge much earlier in their trajectory can have as much influence as a strong shove later in the funnel.

Conclusion

Very fine categorization of keywords can be helpful in ascertaining customer intent, organizing your efforts, and suggesting actual paid search campaigns you might run.

I have found these ten funnel stages in particular are a convenient and useful way for me to organize very large numbers of refined categories of keywords, derive insights from them, and create campaigns targeting various phases of the sales funnel.

If anyone has any other useful mental models for constructing a funnel besides the “problem/solution” approach I’ve presented here, or any thoughts on which funnel stages to prioritize and how – by all means, comment below.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: How To: SEM | Keywords Content | Search Marketing: Search Term Research

Article source: http://searchengineland.com/how-to-use-the-keyword-funnel-to-understand-searcher-intent-121463

VM Web Marketing

Our method favors working smart and requires a bit of elbow grease! In this blog you will learn a more in depth strategy for picking keywords to get you ranking quicker and generating more traffic back to your site.

Why the Importance of Focus in your Keyword List?

Optify did a great study in 2011 that found the click through rate (CTR) for the top 20 positions in the Google search rankings. While this data is approximate as it may differ based on the search term, and intent we find it is still and valid. Because of this I prefer to use the median CTR’s as many people search for specific terms in an effort to source a specific site which creates a lot of upward bias on the average CTR. Plus, it is also nice to err on the conservative side.

The study Optify found that the top position gets a median CTR of 25%.  The second position gets you a CTR of 9.1% all the way down to the tenth position which gets you a CTR of 1.5%.  It is around the fifteenth position where the graph starts to trail off at 0.7% CTR. This is great benchmark data!

The aim is to not necessarily achieve the top position; instead it is to get the maximum CTR with the least amount of resources (ie. targeted links, and effort via guest blog posting) as possible.

The Basic First Step: Keyword Research via Google AdWords

Yes, the first step in this strategy is to find keywords using Google Adwords.  The main objective here is to find a good number of low competition, decent volume keywords – these often lie in the long tail, phrase keywords.

It is important to look at all of Google’s suggestions and go several hundred keywords deep if needed to do so.

Remember your competitors are looking at the same keywords you are. If you longer and harder, you just might find a few hidden gems as we certainly have!  To go as far as you can, keep typing in different keywords to try to find as many variations as possible. One of our favorites is to pull out the ‘related searches’ option within the Google search results page for each of your primary keywords to find a few new ideas.

Tip: If you have keyword data for this list from an AdWords campaign – you will be one step ahead if you were able to calculate some actionable data on which keywords pull best!

As you can see by the image below just typing in a single keyword such as SEO returns 800 keyword suggestions – some of which are targeted to our companies location.

Enter SEOMoz

Now that you have your laundry list of several hundred keywords, the next step is to import them into SEOMoz (there are other sites out there that have similar features we just preferMoz.)

Within SEOMoz, check out the Keyword Analysis feature – here you can input all of your keywords in at once and then export the results to excel.

When you have your list ported over to excel sort them by keyword difficulty. By sorting in this manner, you can quickly get your keyword list of several hundred possibilities down to about a hundred focused, and realistic options.

From here you can then use the Keyword Analysis feature in SEOMoz to determine the top ten positions for any given keyword by just clicking the keyword in the list.

Working Smart and Focused

You might have gotten ahead of me and realized there is one bit of information we are still missing, and that is…

How many blog posts do I need to get me to the first page, the second position or the top position?

In other words – what kind of ROI might one expect from their effort. 

To figure this out, we are going to use another SEOMoz tool called opensiteexplorer.org.

Hop on over to the link above, but before you get started, please make sure you add additional columns in your excel worksheets for the top 10 results for each keywords.

Once that is done, start off by running reports for the top position and the tenth position for each keyword.  This will let you know if it is getting to the top position or even to the top page is a reasonable endeavour for the short term.

Click on the tab called anchor text and find your keyword.  The column that matters is the linking root domains containing anchor text.  This is the number you should record in your excel chart, this is approximately, the minimum number of separate guest blogs you will have to write with the keyword linking back to your site just to tie them.

If getting to the top page requires more work than you are willing/able to put in – eliminate the keyword from your list.

Finding the Gems

In following this process you will uncover a number of awesome keywords with low competition, and thus keywords which require less effort to rank for.

It is worth noting that the above process follow by obtaining high value links are not the only factor that gets you ranking – Page/Domain Authority, Rank and Trust (or whatever metrics you like to use) and a number of other variables also need to be taken into consideration.

The good news, from what we have found – most of these variables can be identified within openexplorer.org making your life/our lives easier to break down specific tasks which lead up to our various SEO goals.

Excelerama

I hope you are not afraid of a little excel match because this step will require some simple multiplication and division.

In your excel worksheet you should have a column called global monthly searches (use local monthly searches if your business or intent is local); multiply this column by the click through rate (CTR) to determine how many click throughs on average each position is expected to receive.

For example, if the given keyword you are searching for receives 4,000 global monthly searches. The first position should expect to receive 1000 visits (4000 x 25%), and the second position 364 visits (4000 x 9.1%) and so on.

Now you must take the clicks and divide by the number of root domains containing anchor text for each keyword in each position.  So if you found out earlier that the first keyword position has 10 linking root domains with 4000 global monthly searches you would divide 1000 by 10 which is 100.  This number determines how many clicks each blog post is worth (clicks / blog post ratio); of course you will not realize the click through yield until all of the blog posts are done.

If you do this for all of the keywords – the keywords with the highest clicks / blog post ratio are the keyword(s) you should initially optimize the respective pages on your site for and start building links for.

Concluding, that the work never ends!

Once you successfully obtain the desired number of links plus your bonus buffer, you should start seeing some results as the crawlers crawl your site. So, remember to monitor the keywords with a rank tracker, as well as your analytics package – it is important to make sure the keywords you chose resonate with your audience by looking at things like your bounce rate etc.

After all, there is no point in ranking for keywords that your target audience do not connect with – it is better to direct your blogging efforts that result in more desired traffic so users stay on your site longer, look at more pages and achieve the objective you want of them.  Remember this is not a one shot deal; you will have to continue writing blogs to stay ahead of your competitors.

Article source: http://www.business2community.com/seo/strategically-choose-keywords-for-white-hat-seo-0179005

VM Web Marketing

Now, when I say “proper keyword optimization,” I don’t mean, “pick a single target keyword and cram it into your web content as many times as you can.”  That ship has sailed.

Instead, as we move into the future of algorithm improvements and enhanced spam detection, it will become even more important to approach keyword research in a holistic way.  And to do that, we must recognize the semantic nature of the search engines’ indexing behaviors.

“Semantics” refers to the meaning or interpretation of a word or phrase.

Take the word “fan,” for example.  If you typed this single word into Google’s search bar, how would the engine know whether you’re looking for consumer reviews of the latest box fans on the market, career information for your favorite movie star or some other piece of information related to one of the many possible uses of the word “fan”?

Well, ideally, you’d enter some additional supporting language into your query – for example, “Taylor Swift fan club” or “industrial fan reviews.”  But this is where the search engines’ semantic indexing capabilities enter the picture…

Clearly, if you type the words, “industrial fan reviews,” into Google, the search giant won’t just return results that include this specific phrase.  If Google stuck that closely to the text a user entered into the search bar, it’d often wind up displaying either poor quality results – or none at all.  Instead, Google and the other search engines use their semantic indexing capabilities to pull results from related SERPs they believe are substantially related.

In the case of our “industrial fan reviews” example, Google might also return results incorporating the phrases “industrial fan comparison,” “industrial fan guide” or “commercial fan review” – among others.  As you might expect, in order to increase the likelihood that our site will be shown in the SERPs for our main keyword, it will be to our advantage to incorporate these related phrases as well – giving the search engine spiders a better grasp on what our content relates to and how it should be both indexed and displayed.

So, to take advantage of the search engines’ semantic indexing behaviors, we first need to come up with a list of semantic keywords.  Here’s how to do it…

Tip #1 – Assemble a List of “Level 1” Core Keywords

The first step in generating a good list of semantic keywords is to build a list of closely-related phrases – which we’ll call our “Level 1” core keywords.  Basically, these keywords represent variations on our target phrase that don’t stray too far from its initial meaning.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to use Google’s “Related Searches” feature.  To do this, navigate to Google.com, enter your target keyword phrase into the search bar and complete the search.  Then, once the results have displayed, select “Related searches” from the left-hand sidebar to display a selection of related keyword phrases.

The advantage to carrying out your semantic keyword research to generate your Level 1 keywords in this way is that, because Google has listed these phrases as being “related,” we know that the search engine views them as closely related from a semantic indexing standpoint – making them a powerful starting point for our keyword research.

Tip #2 – Expand Your List to Include Thematically-Related “Level 2” Keywords

Now that we have our core list of semantic keywords, it’s time to expand our reach even further, to capture thematically-related, supporting keywords.  These “Level 2” keywords won’t be specifically related to our target keyword, but they will be tied to its concept.

Following our industrial fan example, we can assume that someone who is searching for reviews on this particular type of equipment is doing so because of a heating and cooling need – whether it’s a machine shop that’s too warm, a damp area that needs drying or some other use.  By brainstorming the reasons search users might have for entering our particular target keyword into the engines, we can compile a whole new list of keywords related to our main phrase.

In this example, any of the following keyword phrases could lead a user to eventually search for “industrial fan reviews”:

• How to cool shop
• Overheated shop
• Cooling machinery
• Industrial cooling solution
• How to dry large area
• Large scale drying

By incorporating these thematically-related keywords into our site content, we can increase the chances that our sites will rank highly in the SERPs – not just for our target keywords, but for the preemptive searches that will allow us to capture ideal users at an earlier stage in the process.

Tip #3 – Generate “Level 3” Stem Keywords That Answer Searcher Questions

Finally, we need to address one more element with our semantic keyword researching – and that’s queries or issues that may arise *after* users have explored content based on our main keyword phrase.

Following with our industrial fan example, suppose our combination of targeting Level 1 and Level 2 semantic keywords has led a visitor to our site after searching for the phrase, “industrial fan reviews” and seeing our site in the SERPs.  What type of information might this user need next?

Any of the following keyword options represent potential “Level 3” stem keywords that could be addressed in our content as well in order to improve both the user experience and our natural search visibility:

• Buy industrial fan
• Where to buy commercial fans
• How to purchase shop fans
• Industrial fan set up
• Build a commercial fan
• How to use industrial fan

Tip #4 – Outline Articles Using Tips From All Levels

By this point in your semantic keyword research, you should have a comprehensive list of potential target phrases covering a range of related topics.  The next step is to put these items together as you outline future articles for your site.

To do this, start with one Level 1 keyword phrase, and then pull 1-2 keywords from your Level 2 and Level 3 lists.  For example:

• Industrial fan guide
• How to cool shop
• Overheated shop
• Buy industrial fan

With these four keyword phrases together, you could easily write an article titled “The Complete Industrial Fan Guide” that covers both how to use industrial fans to cool an overheated machine shop and how to buy fans specifically for this purpose.  Touching on all of these different points will improve the search engines’ understanding of your site, as well as open you up to potential SERPs exposure for a much wider variety of keyword phrases.

Tip #5 – Write for Humans First, Search Engines Second

One final tip for incorporating semantically-related keywords into your website’s content…  Building these varied phrases into your web articles should help eliminate the stilted, unpleasant content that results from trying to stuff a single target keyword into your text a certain number of times.

However, it’s still important to focus on using your new keyword lists to write content that’s as appealing to your readers as it is to the search engines.  If Google’s recent crackdowns on webspam are any indication of its future intentions, it’s safe to say that the best long-term strategy is to use semantic keywords to enhance the value of your copy – without letting its optimization eclipse the quality of the information you deliver to your website visitors.

Image Credit: Pupes / Shutterstock

Article source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/5-tips-for-conducting-semantic-keyword-research/43538/

VM Web Marketing

In order to understand the impact your SEO efforts have on your business, you first need to make sure you are collecting the right data and attributing it to the right sources. This is why it’s important to use visitor intelligence to analyze your SEO performance and ensure your SEO efforts are producing the right results.

How your data is structured is critical to enable accurate analysis and reporting. It will allow you to build five advanced, but simple, SEO analyses that you can perform with visitor intelligence.

Laying the Groundwork – Choosing the Right Systems

Almost every SEO solution will give you search volumes, keyword ranks and even traffic volumes, but are these the metrics that matter to you?

Most B2B marketers care about leads and opportunities, while every business cares about revenue. What are your KPI’s (key performance indicators) and more importantly, what are they being measured by? Is it leads, opportunities, ROI, annual revenue or LTV (life time value)? Whatever it is, make sure your SEO plan has a clear path focusing on how to bring you there.

When you select a marketing software solution, make sure it can provide you with the metrics that align with your company’s goals. This doesn’t have to be a native feature of the software, as it can be delivered through integrations, but you do want to make sure it’s possible. Otherwise, you will spend hours every month building Excel spreadsheets and trying to align data from different source to connect the dots.

The right system will provide a comprehensive solution, giving you the ability to report and analyze your data in one place. It might take some upfront work to set up the systems and customize them to your liking, but every minute you spend upfront will save you hours of work later.

Building Your Analyses – Start from the End Work Your Way Back

It’s often easier to plan and build your analysis if you first look at the final product – the recommendations.

It might sound counterintuitive to think about analysis from the recommendation aspect, since you run an analysis to come up with a recommendation, but most studies start with a hypothesis, so a simple SEO analysis should follow the same logic. This exercise will also help you rationalize some of the metrics and KPI’s you initially thought were important, and uncover a few you might have overlooked.

Start by writing down what type of recommendations you’d like to be able to state after you conclude your analysis. For example, “The Keyword ‘Online Marketing’ drove 300 leads in April but only 3 opportunities (1 percent conversion rate) at a total over $30,000 annual contract value.”

Using this recommendation, you know that the data points you want to have in your analysis are leads, opportunities and revenue. Those will give you the ability to calculate ratios and conversion rates. You also know that you want to be able to look at them as they relate to a specific keyword and to a specific time frame.

After you have the list of data points you want to collect, think about naming convention. A lot of analyses and data models fall apart due to the most mundane reasons; naming is a major one. Make sure you keep a legend or a coding directory that will help anyone make sense out of your naming convention.

Analysis 1 – Funnel/Goal

This is the most important analysis you should do after connecting SEO, visitor intelligence and sales data. At the heart of this analysis is the question “what keyword drove the most revenue for my business?”

You want to be able to look at all your referring keywords and directly connect them to revenue. To do this you will need your SEO, traffic and sales data to reside in the same system.

Looking at your marketing-sales funnel from the perspective of referring keywords will pinpoint any issues you might be having with your marketing-sales process.

If your top-of-the-funnel numbers are healthy (traffic, leads, conversion rates) but something breaks between leads and opportunities, you might have an issue with your inside sales team or with your messaging.

If you’re driving enough traffic but visitors are not converting, you might have issues with your website performance and need to look at your landing pages.

If you’ve set your marketing solution provides more SEO data than just referring keyword, you can apply this analysis to that metric as well – search engines, geo-location, browsers, devices, you name it.

Analysis 2 – Audience 

Visitor intelligence data lets you analyze elements of your audience per keyword, search engine, geo-location and other SEO metrics. Are your keywords driving the right audience?

Look at company size, industry, titles, and other visitor profiles your system collects to determine if your SEO efforts are driving your target audience or if you need to readjust your target keyword list.

If your marketing solution provides lead scoring, you can use it to assign a single score to a keyword based on the average lead score of all the leads/visitors that came from that keyword. You can use that single score to rank your target keywords and evaluate their effectiveness.

Analysis 3 – Engagement 

Page views, time on site, number of visits, and other behavioral data that your marketing solution collects from your visitors and leads will allow you to analyze how your SEO results translate into engagement.

Similarly to the Audience Analysis, if your marketing solution offers lead scoring, you can use it to assign a single score to keywords based on the engagement levels they exhibit and rank you keywords to reveal the most engaging keywords. Combine this with the audience analysis to learn if your most engaging keywords are also driving the right audience and vice versa.

Analysis 4 – ROI 

This is a simple analysis to measure the return (in revenue) on a referring keyword or any other SEO metric you want to measure (keyword group, search engine, geo-location, etc.). You can apply this analysis to organic or paid traffic, but in essence it will tell you if you’re targeting and ranking for the right keywords and where you should concentrate your efforts.

Analysis 5 – Correlation 

This is the most sophisticated analysis out of the five. It will be based on all the above analyses and will also give you the most insight into your visits and leads. This will be most likely done in Excel or a different statistics software, but you need to make sure that the marketing software you use allows you to export the data or has an API you can use.

The basic concept is to examine a keyword group by ranking its various terms for each of the above analyses in addition to their rank on the SERP, and then run a correlation analysis to learn about the relationships between each attribution. You might learn that this keyword group has a low correlation between engagement and ROI, which means that you need to optimize for faster conversion and quick touch.

Summary

For the marketing-scientist, visitor and lead intelligence provides an analysis paradise, but be aware of the infamous analysis-paralysis. At the end of the day, remember what’s important for your business and optimize for it.

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2174328/5-Advanced-But-Simple-SEO-Analyses-You-Should-Perform-With-Visitor-Intelligence

VM Web Marketing