Advanced Keyword Research – No Shortcuts

There are so many tools available to SEM/SEO specialists today. It seems most “experts” have developed their own shortcut, or have found the best way to get keywords to optimize your site. However, it’s best to be wary of these internet marketers, most have an agenda to hawk the latest, greatest SEM tool to get you the most/best keyword lists for your particular site. What you must always remember is that there is no magic site or keyword tool that will get you the perfect set of keywords for your particular site. Like anything of great importance, doing the detailed research takes time and effort, but reaps great rewards in the end. Skipping important steps always leaves you with an incomplete project, or in this case, with the wrong set of keywords.

Practical Examples of Using the Tilde in Keyword Research

Today I would like to talk about one important step we use in developing our keyword lists at Face Forward Media. That is the use of the tilde key. Using Tilde helps open a door to Google’s thought process. Basically what the tilde key offers is a look at the relationship Google has created between search terms. It essentially acts like a synonym key. For example if I type ~internet into my search bar and look only at the bold words of the sites populated I immediately see that Google recognizes net & network as synonyms for internet. Now if I’m optimizing a site that sells hair nets or fishing nets, I may want to stay away from the keyword net. However more research is necessary before I make that call, so let’s look at a better example.

Say I’m optimizing a site for an apple orchard. I do my routine keyword research and generate my list of optimal keywords. The highest searched keyword that I find is apple with over 4 million monthly searches. Well it’s an apple orchard so common sense would tell you that apple would be a critical keyword. But let’s not skip the tilde step. When I Google ~apple, I get the synonyms: Quick Time, quick time, Mac, Windows, G4, imac, & computer. It takes five pages before I actually get to a site that has anything to do with apples as fruit. So now it appears that the use of the keyword apple will not generate the traffic that I’m looking for and is really not a good choice. Next I put in the second highest searched term which is apples. I enter ~apples and after several pages the only synonym I find is apple. Almost all the sites are fruit related. This is a much more relevant keyword for me. Now I’m on the right track to developing the best keywords for my site. I continue to enter my keyword list to ensure that all my keywords are relevant to my site. As a bonus, if I’m running a PPC campaign for my clients, using tilde generates a great list of negative keywords.

We Take Keyword Research Serious

We find that the use of the tilde key is an essential step in generating the best keyword list possible for our clients.  Anyone can generate traffic to a site, but if it’s not relevant traffic, it means nothing. At Face Forward Media we put in the necessary time and research to develop relevant keywords that get our clients the right type of traffic for their sites; providing them with the best possible internet marketing strategy that they desearve.

Advanced Keyword Research, Tilde Search

Google AdWord Quality Scores

To keep this as simple as possible were going to only talk about PPC on Gooogle’s “Search Network” as the QS (Quality Score) metrics change depending on the ad type. As most of you may know, Google rates the “Quality” of your keywords on a scale from 0 to 10. Many factors weigh into the scoring (many of them Google doesn’t divulge) but in short there are four main areas that Google looks at; Click through rate, the ads keyword relevancy, the keyword relevancy of the landing page and the landing page load time. An entire book that can be written about Google’s QS but explaining the QS process in detail really isn’t the purpose of this blog post.

Is B2B really different than B2C?

The short answer here is a big YES! – Especially in the PPC world… Typically B2B ads compete with B2C ads for space, but the desired traffic is very different. Take for example a wholesaler of widgets and a widget retailer. The keywords used in both campaigns are going to be very similar and overlapping especially if the retailer or wholesaler or both are using “broad match” search terms (a subject for another day). So what is a wholesaler to do so he isn’t buying worthless retail traffic? One effective method is ‘pre-filtering’ or ‘prequalifying’ the clicks they receive by writing ads that drive only qualified traffic; which brings us to QS and B2B campaigns.

Should you chase QS in B2B Ad Campaigns?

On the surface the answer here again is a yes but (you knew it was coming didn’t you) not with abandon. Yes, a QS of 10 out of 10 means you’re going to be paying less per click than someone with a QS of 4….but how many worthless clicks are you paying for to get that high QS? Remember that one of the metrics Google looks at for determining your QS is the CTR (Click-through rate) so to achieve that high QS score, your ad will have to be clicked on a lot, not something a B2B company is necessarily looking for… a B2B must focus on ROI rather than the number of click-throughs or the QS. So using the prequalifying ad writing method will lower your QS score and raise your per-click costs but, if done correctly, will actually lower your overall marketing spend per lead (ROI). You can’t let your QS fall too low so keep an eye on it but keep a closer eye on the “bang per buck” your AdWords Pay-Per-Click campaign is delivering.

Google Adwords, PPC for B2B, PPC Quality Score

Todays’ fast-changing, ever-challenging, internet market often leaves companies scrambling to find the latest “fix” to boost their search engine rankings.  But just as in health and fitness, there is no magic pill.  As every good CEO knows, a company has to crawl before it can walk.  Building search engine rankings and organic traffic takes time and effort, and a good SEO strategist will be the first to tell you that many things feed into a websites organic search engine visibility, but the one thing that is often overlooked are the inner pages.

Inner Pages Need Search Engine Optimization Too! 

Many people only think of their home page, but one of the best ways to increase internet presence is to give a little “face time” to your inner pages.  If you spent time making a page, it obviously is of value to your whole site.  The question is, have you bothered to get Google to notice that page?  Think of your whole site as a puzzle and each page is a piece of the puzzle. You took the time to make all the pieces of the puzzle, don’t you want Google to put them together?  Without proper Title Tags & Meta Data, your page is just another stranger to Google.  

So, while you may be tempted to try some risky or black hat short cuts, for get about that… and take the time today to optimize your inner pages, you will be amazed at the results. For more information on SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION or to talk to one of our SEO Experts, feel free to contact us or give us a call at: 800-829-5240.

inner page optimization