Step Wice SEO

Mapping the search space for a given industry or objective is one of the important variables in keyword researching.

There are standard research techniques that can be used to determine the performance of the space.

• Step 1 – find a vehicle for starting keyword research. Many companies choose to poll their employees to determine a list of keywords that is felt to be important or relevant.

As much as this is a solid way to begin, one of the biggest traps is to use `internal’ terminology.

A better mechanism is to see what terms a competitor might be using within the search space by using either the competitive positioning tool or viewing the source of a competitor’s website and looking at their meta-tags.

An additional starting point, and for that matter one of continual usage, is the search box on any website that provides one (e-commerce sites especially).

• Step 2 – expand or stem the list of initial keywords. Use the suggestion tools or software mechanisms to find as many variations of terms, plus the number of searches, as possible.

This will give a feel for the keywords within an industry and the way the searchers look for information relevant to a website’s content.

• Step 3 – cross-check a sample of the keywords with the intuitive engines. Start the process by sorting the keywords by number of searches.

 Or simply just selecting a random number to get a list of keywords, and, using an engine such as Eurekster cross-check the keywords to ensure that there aren’t other search terms which the contextual research tools missed.

 If there are new terms, add them to the list and repeat Step 2.

The second process is to analyze the keywords for costs. This is particularly important when determining budgets.

Using the costing tools, list the current CPC price of each keyword in the top positions. As many of the engines differ in models use the following rationale.

• Use Overture Bid Price tool first. Overture has the largest inventory of keywords within the pure PFP engines.

 As a result, using this tool will give a good sampling of the market conditions (such as price per keyword).

 Ensure that the CPC price for the first five terms is recorded. This will allow for an accurate depiction of the bidding strategies used by other advertisers on the same keywords.

• Use second tier engines (such as MIVA or FindWhat) second. As these engines have a far smaller inventory of words it is recommended that the top 20 per cent of terms are taken from the research performed on Overture, as these sites just won’t have such competition.

 In some instances these sites won’t have a dedicated Bid Price Tool interface, such as MIVA.

 In these cases the trick is to use the actual search function on the website as the top terms will list the current CPC price and cost to advertiser.

• Use Google’s AdWords Estimator. Google’s AdWords Estimator has made predicting AdWords traffic and costs more efficient.

Take all of the terms from Overture research and enter them into the tool; to get a handle on performance either assign or don’t assign a maximum CPC when instructed to do so for a more accurate budget prediction.

As the AdWords model isn’t a pure bidding mechanism this is as close to a position determined by price as can be achieved.

Some areas to watch out for on this tool are as follows. First the number of clicks to be receive will be in a day format; to get monthly take the number, multiply it by 365 (days in a year) and then divide by 12 (months in a year).

The second difference is that it returns clicks; this differs from Overture as its not presenting searches.

To get searches you have to estimate a CTR. A forum in WebMasterWorld suggested a CTR of 1 to 1.5 per cent, however, a study performed by ‘Find Me Faster’ cited in The Search Marketing Metrics Guide suggest the CTR by position is a strong one.

So to get a rough estimate of searches take the number of monthly searches and divide it by 1 to 1.5 per cent.

Note: to make this tool work you have to have an active Google AdWordsTM account. This account can be in any name so for Agencies or SEM companies reading a master account will do.

Keywords: keywords, terms, CPC, Overture Bid Price tool, bidding strategies, AdWords Estimator, CTR,

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