You’re also going to want a sense of how competitive the SEO field is for a keyword so you can get a handle on just how hard you might have to fight to rank well for it.

Fortunately, there are keyword analysis tools available to help you suss out this important information.

And, also fortunately, there are not so many different high quality options to choose from, so the decision is far from overwhelming.

We’ll discuss the top two here:
• Wordtracker
• Yahoo! Search Marketing Keyword Selector Tool

Wordtracker
Wordtracker is the dominant tool for keyword research in the SEO industry. In a nutshell, it tells you how many people are searching for the terms you may want to use on your site.

It does this by monitoring and recording searches on meta search engines throughout the Web.

You can use it to get an estimate of how many searches will be performed for a given term, and it is also an excellent source of related terms and common misspellings.

Wordtracker doesn’t give an up-to-the-minute snapshot-its data reflects searches that took place a few months before you retrieve it.

Wordtracker is available at www.wordtracker.com for a fee. We know how you hate to spend money, so now is the only time we’ll tell you something like this: The Wordtracker fee is indispensable in your SEO efforts.

We suggest that you use Wordtracker today and tomorrow as the primary tool for whittling down your long keyword list into something meaningful.

If you need to be economical, Wordtracker makes it easy for you: you can purchase low-cost subscriptions in one-day or one-week increments.

Wordtracker isn’t hard to use, so we’ll leave the step-by-step instructions, if you need them, to the folks who made the tool.

You can download their user guide once you have logged into the system. There is also a FAQ and other resources on their website.

Be sure to read up on the different databases (Comprehensive, Compressed, etc.) available within the system so you can choose the best one for your needs.

Yahoo! Search Marketing Keyword Selector Tool
Buried in the interface of Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM), one of the primary providers of pay-per-click (PPC) services, is its Keyword Selector Tool. This free tool taps into data on searches performed throughout the YSM search network.

It’s sometimes hard to find the URL for this tool. Start from the YSM Resource Center homepage, http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch, and look for a link labeled Keyword Selector Tool.

If you don’t find it there, or if the URL has changed, you can always find the current link on our companion website at www.yourseoplan.com.

There are two nice things about the YSM tool: it’s free, and it’s simple. All you do to use it is enter a keyword phrase.

Up will pop a list of related terms along with your original term and the number of searches that took place throughout the YSM network over the course of a month (the data is usually a couple of months old).

However, YSM has many fewer features than Wordtracker, and because it uses PPC data, it combines terms that may not be combined by nonpaid engines.

For example, YSM sees the words clothes and clothing as being the same-this is called stemming-while any organic search engine would not.

It also does some funky things with alphabetization. So for example, if you search for the term “send in the clowns,” YSM will return information about the term “clown in send sinatra the,” with all the words in alphabetical order.

Now, you’re a smart one, and it won’t take long before you can see that a term like “clown in send sinatra the” is so ludicrously unlike the English language that nobody is really searching for it in that order.

Stemming and alphabetization limit the usefulness of the YSM tool, but it’s still a great way to spot popularity trends.

By the way, here’s a tip that can save you a bunch of time: YSM data is available within the Wordtracker tool too.

Last we looked, Wordtracker was still calling YSM’s data the Overture database (Overture was bought by Yahoo!), so be on the lookout for changes in labels here.

Switch to the Yahoo! Search Marketing (aka Overture) database within Wordtracker, or go to the Yahoo! Search Marketing site, and test-drive it with some of your favorite keywords.

No keyword research tool is perfect, and you should always double-check the data you get with your gut instincts.

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One of the most important variables to consider is that, in most instances with search engine marketing today (be it PFP, PFI or organic search), payment is only expected after a keyword has received a click.

No click, no payment. The issue is often with the cost associated with clicks: if a term is costing a lot of money then is it really working or delivering what it needs to?

The answer to this has to come from some form of tracking – only when keywords are made accountable can they be deleted from a portfolio.

Once again, the optimization of keywords is very much focused on paid search. And while adding keywords is seen as common practice, the removal or deletion of words is seldom done. For this reason there are a number of basic options for keyword deletion, as follows.

• Deletion of keywords due to cost – the correct determination of the removal of keywords because of cost should be associated with performance.

The idea is to delete keywords based upon a return principle, i.e. if the cost greater than my return threshold then I must either eliminate it or, in some instances, reduce the overall CPC.

• Deletion of key words due to performance – very similar to the technique mentioned above, the removal of keywords due to cost, this is based upon performance.

 However, depending upon the performance the singular keyword may not be associated with cost.

 For example, should a keyword portfolio contain 500 phrases that don’t perform against return metrics but only drive a single click each, is the problem about cost of keyword or performance?

 On mass, the click volume of underperforming words can be the determining factor of overall success and therefore regardless of singular cost the keywords must be screened based upon their impact as a group.

• Deletion of keywords due to relevance – keywords that don’t perform have a cost associated with them and the two reasons for deletion cited above discuss this.

However, the biggest factor for why a keyword doesn’t perform is often lack of relevance of keyword to subject matter on the website itself.

A keyword must be relevant to the site as, the more relevant it is, the better qualified the user and the higher the likelihood for success against conversion.

The important of relevance is so key that in each of the objectives chapters the deletion of keywords will be examined in greater detail and associated with the portfolio classification.

Keywords: keywords, relevance,

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Whether a strategy is looking to engage in PFP, PFI or organic search a clear and concise understanding of a website’s current position and, more importantly under which terms, is important.

There are many different types of rankings tools available; however, it is the application of these tools for researching the market space which is key to this article.

Rankings tools
Rankings tools, such as Web Position GoldTM or Advanced Web Ranking give accurate positioning reports of websites against nominated URLs.

It is important to investigate any rankings tool when making a decision to use one. In many instances the search engines recognize certain URLs or IP Addresses and isolate them as being spammers or non-searchers.

The two listed above are credible companies but there are a host of services that might result in a website being blacklisted.

Competitive positioning tools
One of the major challenges of any rankings tool is to determine rankings against appropriate keywords.

If the user isn’t sure of the terms that a searcher uses, on many occasions the keywords entered into a rankings tool may pass back better or worse results than reflects the reality.

This commonly manifests itself in the form of ‘internal’ words or terminology the company or firm uses for products and services, which are usually nothing like the words and phrases searchers use.

There are two ways to overcome this problem: the first is to use the keyword suggestion tools to get a strong list and the second is to use a competitive positioning tool to see not only one website’s rankings but a number of other sites, plus additional search terms, that one site might be ranked on that the others aren’t.

Keywords: Rankings tools, Competitive positioning tools,

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As with the keyword suggestion tools, the majority of costing tools, with the exception of WordTracker are provided free of charge by the search engines.

The following are the most useful to use and are both relevant to the UK and US markets and beyond.

• Overture Bid Tool – this tool, controlled by a code entry system (to prevent abuse from software tools), allows a marketer to type in a keyword and be presented back with all fellow advertisers, and bid amount, for that particular keyword.

 This tool provides a solid demonstration of the market conditions (price of keyword) and a snapshor of the competitive space in which a bidding strategy needs to be devised.

• Google AdWordsTM Traffic & Cost Estimator – the Google tool is different from that of Overture, as it requires a user to have an account set up before use.

The relation of the account to the research content isn’t important; therefore, a user who may have had an old account or even one used by colleagues peers or partners will provide the log-in details needed to activate the tool.

Once access is granted the system allows selected keywords to be entered into a user interface, a maximum CPC set and a country the designated advertising will be aimed at (a multiple can be selected), and will subsequently return the estimated traffic on a daily basis, average CPC, average position and daily spend levels.

This tool is, however, limited to the performance of a keyword for the advertiser researching only and doesn’t provide a snapshot of other bidders on that particular term.

This being said a combination of the results provided from tools such as the AdWordsTM Clever Wizard will demonstrate the estimated visibility based upon the number of bidders.

Keywords: search terms, Overture Bid Tool,

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• Overture Suggestion Tool – probably the most known and most used keyword research tool available to search marketers, this website allows a user to type in a search variable and see hundreds of different variation of the term.

 Each term displayed is an actual term used by a searcher within a given time period and the number of times it was searched for.

• Intuitive search engines – some search engines aren’t known necessarily in the mainstream environment as major players so in many instances these engines develop unique characteristics to find a unique selling proposition.

In some cases, engines such as Eurekster provide search results that aren’t necessarily contextually relevant but are intuitively relevant on trend-based analysis.

For instance: if the same number of users search for `attorney’ as they do for `lawyer’, Eurekster will return both of these as viable search terms.

This goes beyond the Overture Suggestion Tool as that would only return all contextually relevant terms for ‘lawyer’ or ‘attorney’.

• Google Sandbox – Google really hasn’t provided a strong tool for research and the Sandbox is the closest it gets to the quality of the tool provided by Overture.

As Google allows users to buy both singular and pluralized terms this tool is useful for not only keyword research but the multiples of variations on the terms.

 ’Other’ search engine provided keyword tools – most of the major search engines have a suggestion tool.

These terms, as much as they will provide possible variations not found in Overture or Google, are useful for determining where keyword placement might not be worth committing to, as there isn’t the inventory of the major PFP engines. For a complete list of the most useful suggestion tools check the summary of this chapter.

Additional to the suggestion tools in the public domain, there are also software packages and services available that combine a series of these tools to give a bigger-picture look at the search space.

These tools also offer user interfaces to combine the research parameters to aid in increasing efficiency by speeding up the process. The following examples are paid research tools.

• WordTracker – one of the first to market research tools, WordTracker uses information from a variety of sources and provides not only keyword viability, in the form of a KEI Score, but also opportunities for keyword expansion and providing cost information for PFP terms in engines like Overture.

• AdWordsTM Clever Wizard – This system rivals many of the research tools on the market and, as with WordTracker, allows multiple country research.

 A simple interface not only scores keywords, again with a KEI score, but gives an indication of the number of sites listed in the results page in both the PFP and Organic listings.

Keywords: tools, research tools, paid research tools,

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This is especially useful for both PFP and natural search as it gives an indication of placements for terms where a guaranteed number 1 listing, cannot be purchased (a la PFP).

As the market space for these technologies has developed, the latest versions also provide listings for competitive positioning against competitors on the same keywords as well as giving additional keywords competitors only are using.

These technologies form the basis of continual benchmarking and performance indicators and combined with site tracking and analytics mechanisms help to develop full understanding of the impact search engine marketing is having on a number of different objectives. However, the following gives some examples of rankings tools available to the marketer:

Hitwize – this company provides a wide range of rankings tools that determine the success of a website against selected search terms within the search engines.

In addition, Hitwize also provides rankings reports against competitor URLs as well as additional data sources such as demographics and industry standards. Hitwize provides this data in many countries, including the USA and UK.

Lycos Insite – Lycos provides a rankings report that lists a website’s listings against not only a selected number of phrases but over half a million monthly search queries made on its network.

This tool also allows for rankings to be performed against four competitor URLs and has a section of the report dedicated to PFP engines (such as Overture and Google AdWordsTM).

Web Position Gold – this service, offered by WebTrends, is one of the better known tools for providing rankings data and combines reporting with optimization services to provide an all round package for marketers looking to increase an organic presence.

Advanced Web Rankings – this tool provides both Mac and PC support and lists a sites ranking against up to 200 engines and selected keywords relevant to a website’s content.

Keywords: rankings, ranking tools, tools,

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As a result technologies have been developed to assist the user in the management of bidding against a larger number of keywords.

Each of-the larger bid management technologies and companies in the search industry has a direct connection (via an API) to the major search engines and the bidding process is automatically fed into the engine processes.

A user is then provided with an interface allowing for bids to be placed on keywords for any time of day or rules to be assigned to maintain a position or price throughout the day.

The latter enables companies to remain prominently placed on terms throughout the day, on as many terms as they wish, without having to allocate any resource time in the process.

The table below gives some indication of the types of bidding rules than can be applied to bid management tools.

As the market has developed, bid management tools have evolved further into tools that will achieve distinct business objectives and have, in some instances, added artificial intelligence or statistical components to watch for trends within the space and to adjust bids based upon whether they are either meeting or not meeting the business goals.

These services tend to come at a premium however, and in many instances are adopted by larger corporations.

The fact remains, however, that a bid management tool, no matter how large or small a keyword portfolio, is essential for PFP success.

The following are some of the major bid management tools available in the US and UK markets:

Bid rules (Courtesy of Inceptor Inc.)

Sample Bid Management Rules
Optimize traffic while keeping CPC at $0.25 or lower
Optimize Revenue while keeping ROI at 300 per cent
Optimize Conversions while keeping CPA at $500

AtlasOnePointTM (Formerly GoToast) this tool was one of the very first bid management tools and under the name GoToast became the tool most commonly referred to for this type of service.

It has worldwide coverage and is very strong in the UK and US.

Bid Rank – this tool is not as advanced as many of the systems online; however, it has one of the cheapest price tags and performs many of the basic bid management services needed to optimize a search campaign.

It has primary coverage in the USA but is also available in many other countries.

Bid Buddy – a UK tool, Bid Buddy is a system provided by a company called Website Promotion Services (WSPS) and is one of the more advanced systems available in the UK. The system also provides coverage worldwide for most PPC search engines.

Inceptor – At the time of writing, Inceptor Inc is releasing an entry-level bid management tool that incorporates the most advanced analysis and artificial intelligence-based bidding rules currently being used as part of an overall strategy.

The tool will cover all major PFP engines and most major markets.

Other tools are available from many of the leading SEM agencies. Companies such as Did-It have a system (Maestro) that studies data for statistical trends and bases bid management upon said research.

These tools are typically available as part of an MSP or ASP arrangement between company and client.

Keywords: bids, Bid Rank, Bid Buddy, Inceptor, tools, SEM,

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What makes them most important to search marketing is their ability to measure conversions and in many cases conversions by the singular elements of a search strategy such as search engine and keyword.

Tracking technologies come in two distinct types, those that read a website’s log files and those that run on a server-based system.

Both of these systems can use cookies to record more accurate data and in many instances run side by side.

The usage difference between each of these is largely determined by cost and ease of implementation within a firm’s technological infrastructure.

Above all forms of technology any type of tracking technology will enable any strategy to be controlled and measured for success.

As each keyword is measured against conversion points any adjustment or improvements needed in a campaign can be identified and fixed; similarly areas that are performing well can be expanded upon.

A conversion point is defined as a point within a website where success can be determined.

Examples include the ‘thank you’ page of a shopping cart process for a B2C site or the ‘contact us’ form on a B2B site.

In some instances websites have more than one conversion point; if this is the case, more than one page is identified and then activity is targeted toward that page.

The application of any form of tracking solution is determined by the desire to gain information to help with improving success.

Typically, SEM agencies will only track conversions, whereas corporations looking to learn beyond the conversion, such as click path analysis, track far more. Some examples of tracking solutions are as follows:

• WebTrends: WebTrends are the original tracking solution and specialize in giving detailed analysis of site activity.

WebTrends services range from browser-based to server-based. (www.webtrends.com)

• HitBox (WebSideStory): HitBox is one of the more popular and powerful tracking tools and provides marketers with server-based tracking. (www.websidestory. com)

• ClickTracks: ClickTracks is a browser-based, or log file-based, analysis tool that studies the logs of a website and provides reports based upon activity.

ClickTracks also offers server-based solutions and has a unique interface showing reporting superimposed over a website’s actual pages. (www.clicktracks.com)

There are a host of additional tools, specializing in search engine activity tracking such as www.conversionruler.com or www.clicklab.com.

Additionally, most of the SEM companies provide analytics and the major engines, such as Google and Overture.

Keywords: Tracking, conversions, Tracking technologies, tracking tools,

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