As an SEO Consultant for Reload Media – I have what I refer to as a luxury, of managing many different websites across a broad range of industries and niches. This ‘luxury’ gives me access to an enormous amount of search data – which I’m sure many other SEO’s will agree with.

I love data. I love getting data and I love analysing it. I have often, in the past, spent hours going through the specifics of keyword rankings to give myself better insight with the intention of improving my understanding of search engine trends, changes and algorithm updates.

While I could spend hours writing about search engine changes in general, the purpose of this article is to discuss how similar (or dissimilar) the keyword rankings are in Bing & Yahoo.

On the 18^th of October, Yahoo published a blog post announcing that they had completed their algorithm transition update with Microsoft’s Bing search engine. It had taken 20 months, but they had finally completed it.

As a part of our process and procedures, we keep track of the search engine visibility for our client’s websites in both Yahoo & Bing. The questions we were so eager to find answers for was: “So, exactly how similar are Yahoo & Bing now?” and “Is it now worth us tracking both Yahoo & Bing?”. Sure, for the past few months Yahoo & Bing have always had ‘similar’ results, but were we about to see the keyword rankings in Yahoo & Bing become completely identical?

We wanted to find out. The process began by choosing three clients from three different niches / industries that we believed would be good for this report.  Stretching across a total of 615 different keywords, our initial focus was simply to compare the rankings data in Yahoo & Bing on their last rankings reports – all of which were within a week of writing this report.

The Difference between Yahoo & Bing Rankings

The data for these 615 keywords was recorded on the same day, more or less, at the same time. Rankings in Bing & Yahoo fluctuate so often that sometimes the rankings are absolutely nothing like they were the day before.

The number of keywords that had a rankings difference was 52 – but the number of keywords that had a rankings difference that was more than 1, was only 8. When we thought about the rankings difference being 1, we felt like it was so minimal, that it wasn’t enough to justify a dissimilar result. Any keyword where the difference was more than 1, really grabbed our attention. For the focus of this report though, we’ll include all 51 keywords.

The largest difference in keyword positions we encountered was 68+. This specific keyword is particularly niche to its industry and not overly competitive. Its rank in Bing was 32, yet it was not found within the top 100 in Yahoo.

The second highest keyword difference was 47+. Which, like the first keyword, is particularly niche to its industry and not very competitive and the result was the same. It ranked 53 in Bing, but was nowhere to be found in Yahoo.

Exact Rankings by Search Engine

The blue line represents Bing, while the red line represents Yahoo. For the most part, it’s easy enough to see the resemblance and how identical the rankings were. The two spikes are also represented in the graph below which displays keyword ranking differences.

Rankings Difference – Yahoo VS Bing

The graph above shows the 51 keywords that had at least 1 rankings place difference. The other 8 keywords (that had more than 1 rankings place difference) are easily identifiable.

This implied to us that while the rankings between Yahoo & Bing are essentially identical, there are still minor area’s where the two search engines handle things differently. There is always the possibility that one of these search engines was playing ‘catch up’ to the correct ranking placement though.

Which Keywords Performed Better?

The second step as part of this report was to find out which search engine ranked those 51 keywords in better positions. With 51 keywords, we knew we were going to have a winner, but the difference again was extremely small.

Bing was the winner. Out of the 51 keywords, 26 of them ranked higher in Bing than they did on Yahoo. This, once again proved to us that there really wasn’t much difference between Yahoo & Bing in terms of overall search visibility.

Keyword Performance by Client

We then took this data and thought it’d be good idea to break it down by client – to see if we could find any additional patterns or occurrences.

The first client we used for this report – we’ll refer to them as Client A, accounted for 21 (out of the total 51) of the keywords and Bing was the clear performer, with 14 keywords ranking better than the 7 in Yahoo.

Our second client (Client B) had 12 keyword ranking differences and of those 12, Yahoo performed better with 8 keywords in better ranking positions than Bing’s 4.

Finally, our third client (Client C) saw Yahoo edge out Bing slightly. Out of 18 keywords, 10 ranked better in Yahoo compared to the 8 that ranked better in Bing.

What Does This Data Tell Us?

This data tells us that while Yahoo & Bing more or less provide identical results, it’s quite clear that a website can perform better in one specifically. The difference will be extremely minor, and it could simply be an error with the time in which we recorded this data, but despite how similar they are – there will still be ranking differences and they still perform differently.

How Similar Were the Results Prior to the Transition?

As we keep track of many keywords on a monthly (and in some cases, weekly) basis, we knew it would be a good idea to compare this data over a four month period to see the keyword ranking differences.

We chose four keywords from the ‘differences’ list that we thought would be a good example to display month on month ranking data.

The data compared starts in August and goes through to the time of this report – November, keeping in mind that Yahoo made their announcement on the 18^th of October.

Yahoo & Bing’s Similarity is Inconsistent

The pattern here is that there is no pattern. The major difference in ranking positions for Keyword 1 was in October, for Keyword 2 it was in November, Keyword 3 it was in August and Keyword 4 it was August & September.

The only conclusion we drew from these graphs is that 80% of the time, the results in Yahoo & Bing are identical, the other 20% however – well, not so much. This also provides (for whatever reason) an inconsistency in either Yahoo or Bing. Or possibly even a combination of both.

Stay Tuned for Part 2 where we compare the combined average of Bing & Yahoo with similar data in Google!

Key SEO Factors

To keep things simple, we have included a handful of factors which we think are both important and can be easily analysed to determine how SEO friendly your site is. These include; the page title, how unique and relevant your content is and what server-side practices have been performed such as URL rewriting. We’ve also ordered these factors by importance and have included the area it specifically resides in.

Website Area Examples

• Page Title: Document Head
• H1 Tag (Heading): Document Body
• URL Rewriting: Server-Side
• Robots.txt file: Miscellaneous

Key Factors – Most Important

• Do I have unique Page Titles on all my pages which incorporate the keywords I want to target? - Document Head
• Do I have unique content on all my pages that is relevant to both the page name and my website? And are the keywords I want to target for each page incorporated naturally within the content? - Document Body
• Can search engines crawl and index my website? - Miscellaneous
• Do I have a blog or news section which is updated regularly with unique and relevant content? - Miscellaneous

Key Factors – Important

• Do I have more than one Page Title element per page? - Document Head
• Does my website employ URL rewriting? - Server Specific
• Are the keywords I’m targeting stuffed in any kind of manner for any of my pages? - Document Body & Document Head
• Do all my pages have H1 tags? And is each H1 tag relevant to each page? - Document Body
• Is my website located in the country I am targeting? - Server Specific

Key Factors – Somewhat Important

• Do I have META Description tags on all my pages? And are they unique for each page? - Document Head
• Do I have more than one H1 tag per page? - Document Body
• Are the following tags and elements using the appropriate amount of characters? - Document Head
• Page Title
• META Description
• Does my website avoid linking excessively both internally and externally? - Document Body
• Does my website have an XML sitemap? - Miscellaneous
• Is my website optimised for best performance? - Server Specific

If you’re finding that 50% of the above factors haven’t been optimised or at least implemented (specifically Most Important & Important factors), then your site isn’t as SEO friendly as it could be. We therefore recommend speaking with a qualified SEO company to audit your site and provide professional recommendations to increase your sites SEO friendliness.

This is because in the SEO game you have many different areas that make up the team. And a smooth running and engaged SEO team can really make a huge difference for client’s websites and their revenue opportunities.

Staff within an SEO team include SEO Consultants, Account Managers, Project Managers, Account Directors and ROI staff. Then there is also all the support staff such as the Administration team, the SEO content writers, SEO link builders and so forth.

I’ve found over the years that these tips below are some of the best ways to get the SEO success that every client deserves:

1. Ensure the SEO team are all on the same page. Not the same “web page”, but in terms of their communication strategies between each other. Make sure that they know how each part of the SEO process works.
2. Provide the SEO team with the right tools to do their job. Things like SEOMoz and Rank Tracker are a given, and if there isn’t a certain tool available, then I recommend looking into building it in-house. This is what we have done with our CRM solution and the SEO team love it.
3. Make sure there is a “Life/Work Balance” policy within your organisation, and the SEO teams know that you really care about their time away from the office too. I find a balanced environment in and out of the work increases SEO productivity and gets the team away from the screens. We have a pool table in our office that is used all through the day (mainly by the SEO team) as they tell me it’s a great way to clear they heads during a quick break.

Overall, it’s the same as in any busy working team. Look after your SEO staff and they will look after your client’s rankings. And this is what it’s all about.

Prior to this, Places listings were only accessible via a search within Google Maps.

In a further update, the Places listing map was moved on the top right hand side of the page – in what used to be AdWords territory!

After this critical alteration in Google’s search algorithm, it is now more vital than ever for every business to have their Places listing claimed, and most importantly, optimised.

So how can businesses take advantage of Google Places?

There are a few things to remember when creating your business’ Google Places listing:

• Claim your listing! This can done quickly and easily by either a phone call, SMS, or your very own post card from Google!
• Fill out as many of the fields as you can, paying special attention to the description and categories. This will have a significant impact on results, so choose these categories as wisely as you choose your website’s keywords.
• Upload photos to entice users to stay on the page and explore the entire listing.
• Encourage customers, friends and business partners to leave reviews on your listing in order to show Google that your listing is an authoritative source of reference.

Finally, and most importantly, a link back to your website not only shows your visitors where to go, but also provides a healthy link in Google’s eyes.

Google Places listings also offer a personalised dashboard which provides similar traffic statistics as Google Analytics, through which you can view:

• How many people have checked your listing;
• which keywords they have used to find it;
• and various tips and hints to maintaining your listing.

So there go. A quick guide as to the basics of Google Places listings!

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below!

Search engines today are very adamant on why duplicate content should not exist and how fresh, unique and relevant content is better for the user. Duplicate content is frowned upon because it’s a common practice used by black hatters to manipulate the SERPs. However, this is not always the case. Duplicate content can be accidental and not aimed at manipulating the SERPs. Either way, it is  a troublesome issue for search engines such as Google – which is why canonical URLs were introduced.

What is a Canonical URL?

A canonical URL is used to help determine if two or more URLs are the exact same, even if they’re syntactically different from each other. Search engines do possess the intelligence to analyse and conclude whether URL A and URL B are related and/or identical, however they’re unable to be sure whether it’s intentional or not.

Before canonical URLs were introduced and used in the SEO world, it was common practice that if you had duplicate content on URL A and URL B, you would 301 redirect one to the other to prevent any potential duplicate content issues. However, sometimes this isn’t always feasible and content which is on URL A may be duplicated onto URL B, URL C, URL D etc because of a number of factors.

For example:

• Session IDs – In programming, sessions are used to help preserve data for a limited time to each visitor. Every unique visitor will have their own Session ID. However, the problem is created when Google crawls a URL with a Session ID and indexed it as a completely different URL, thus creating duplicate content.

In order to help Google and other search engines determine which in fact, is the source URL, a canonical URL can be placed within the <head></head> section of the website. For example:

• <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.myurl.com.au/index.php” />

This way, whenever Google or another search engine crawls and indexes multiple session IDs, it will be known to them that only 1 URL is the source (real URL).

Another good example which I experience regularly is pages with search results. Let’s say we have a WordPress blog on the following URL:

• http://www.myblog.com.au

We’ve already gone ahead and  filled our blog up with various articles related to Electronics and added categories such as Televisions, Computers, Phones and Cameras. Now when a category is clicked by a user, they’re taken to a page with a list of articles within that category. For example:

• http://www.myblog.com.au/category/computers/

Looking at our list of computer related articles is nice but they’re only excerpts and there is no real information about what we are writing about or what computers are. So, we add 250-300 words of content, briefly describing what computers are and what we’re discussing. However, after a few weeks and over 40 articles added, Google has come along and crawled the computers category and indexing all the page URLs, thus creating duplicate content.

• http://www.myblog.com.au/category/computers/
• http://www.myblog.com.au/category/computers/page1/
• http://www.myblog.com.au/category/computers/page2/
• http://www.myblog.com.au/category/computers/page3/
• http://www.myblog.com.au/category/computers/page4/

Therefore, to prevent the possibility of duplicate content in this situation, we would add a canonical URL (like our first example) to the computers category within the <head></head> section of our website:

• URL: http://www.myblog.com.au/category/computers/
• <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.myblog.com.au/category/computers/” />

For more information on Canonical URLs including a list of commonly asked questions, you can visit Google’s webmaster central blog:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

Alternatively, Wikipedia has an article on canonical URLs or more specifically, URL normalisation which includes a list of examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_normalization

Are you sick of seeing your boss continually deflect potential marketing ideas that are preventing the business from growing?

Here are six tips to help you convince your boss that SEO should form a pivotal chunk of your marketing budget:

1.     Scare Your Boss!

Ask your boss for 5 keywords or phrases that potential customers would use to find your company in a search engine. Then show the boss where your company is actually ranking for these keywords.

If your website is absent for these keywords, you might put forward the question “How are people going to find us then …the Yellow Pages?

If your boss hasn’t thrown you out the front door like a bouncer on a Saturday night after your first sarcastic question, the next step is to grade your website against competitors. Use two of your main competitors (do more than two if you like, generally your boss’s ego will not be able to handle this ass kicking!) and compare where you rank in comparison for your boss’s chosen keywords. If you want an overall SEO score, I suggest using the Reload Media iPhone App or the Website Grader from HubSpot.

Note: I can guarantee that you now have your boss’s attention! Now it’s time to sell him the benefits of SEO…

2.     Quality Leads

Providing you have decided to implement SEO with a reputable company (yes, there are a lot of 2-bit dodgy brothers jobs out there), the strategic selection of keywords is of paramount importance. In layman’s terms, using a good SEO company to help choose the right keywords means that you can attract quality, high converting to your website.

Perfect keyword selection means that people who are searching for your products or services can find you easier in search engines for these keywords. This is why strategic keyword selection by a reputable SEO firm can actually delivery quality leads to your doorstep. It’s that easy!

3.     Brand Perception

When was the last time you utilised the services of a company that you found on page 4 or 5 of Google results?

You’re right! Probably never! Searchers who are surfing the Google tidal wave of information automatically assume that the industry leaders are the firms that appear on the first page of Google. This means that if you and your boss want to be seen as leaders in your field, you’ll need to start thinking about getting some SEO done now!

4.     Maximise Your Website Investment

Your boss more than likely dropped a sweet wad of cash on developing a fancy website. But what good is a website if it’s sitting out there in cyberspace getting no traffic, leads or enquiries? This is where SEO is the bee’s knees. SEO is a cost-effective way of driving traffic to your website. So tell your boss that having a website is step 1, driving traffic to it is step 2, and step 3 is sitting back and watching the leads and sales come in!

5.     SEO is Low Cost

Depending on geographical scope and competition for your desired keywords, SEO is a low-cost investment when compared to other forms of marketing like Print Media and the Yellow Pages. When comparing traditional marketing to modern marketing, SEO gets the thumbs up because of its measurability. Through Google Analytics, you can track what a user has typed in or searched on to find your website. This data is invaluable as you can calculate your ROI (return on investment) from your SEO efforts. Your boss can actually see a ROI figure, meaning they will be less likely to keep turning SEO away!

6.     Integrate Your Marketing

Is your boss pumping a large chunk of your marketing budget into TV, Radio, Magazines or Newspapers, but forgetting to integrate it online?

Studies show that a consumer is likely to go online and search for your product or service after seeing or hearing it through an offline marketing channel. So unless they remember your businesses name, they are going to be searching online for your products and services. If you are not ranking for these relevant search terms, your offline advertising efforts could be wasted! This is why your business must use an IMC (integrated marketing communication) approach for all forms of marketing.

Print this out, take it to the boss, and tell them why he or she needs SEO. If this doesn’t convince them, start your own business!

Add your tips below on how you think a boss can be convinced to implement SEO.

Most know of it, and many would have heard about it, but what is PageRank (PR)? How does it work? And how does it affect SEO?

Questions such as these are often asked to SEO experts and it’s important they are answered in the clearest possible sense.

What is PageRank?

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm named after Larry Page, co-founder of Google and involves assigning a numeric value to a page to represent how important it is on the web. It’s Google’s way of reflecting how important they believe a particular page is by considering over 500 million variables, 2 billion terms and the number of incoming links.

How does PageRank work?

Apart from considering variables and terms, PageRank takes into account how many incoming links a page has or as I’ll refer them to as, “votes”. Simply put, the more votes a page receives combined with the PageRank of those votes, the higher PageRank a page may receive. However other factors such as content (relevance) and visits to a page also influence PageRank but by how much is unknown. There are also other factors which contribute to improving PageRank but aren’t officially released.

How does PageRank affect SEO?

In the earlier days of SEO and PageRank, the higher PageRank you had, the higher your website would rank. However since then the web has evolved along with Google and their ideology of the web, the effect of PageRank on a websites ranking has reduced.

PageRank still contributes to where your website ranks however is far from the only factor. Therefore it should be considered lightly and used as an indicator only, as a range of other factors such as relevant content contributes to your websites rankings.

So what should I do next?

I won’t leave you empty handed so I’ll reiterate what I mentioned above and help you on your way with some helpful SEO tips:

• Focus on factors such as relevant content and the quality of your incoming links.
• Keep PageRank in mind as an indicator but focus on keyword rankings and traffic as they always tell the story.
• If an SEO company or SEO expert advises you PageRank is extremely important to your SEO, they may have limited knowledge and it’s recommended you seek advice from a range of SEO companies first before proceeding.

Apologies for the acronym soup I’ve served up today. Before we indulge in the main course, here’s the menu in brief:

IMC

IMC stands for Integrated Marketing Communication. According to Wikipedia, IMC is a “holistic approach to marketing” that “aims to ensure consistency of message and the complementary use of media” (IMC, Wikipedia, 2010).

SEM

SEM is short for Search Engine Marketing. In many cases, search marketing includes a wide variety of disciplines but for the sake of this article, when we refer to SEM we will be referring to pay-per-click search advertising. This includes sponsored advertising on the Google, Yahoo and Bing search and display networks.

SEO

If you are an avid reader of this blog, you will likely already have some idea of what SEO is. SEO is short for Search Engine Optimisation (or, for the Americans reading this, Search Engine Optimization!). This involves the process of optimising your website in a bid to improve your search engine rankings on the keywords that are most valuable to you. SEO is achieved through a multitude of visible website changes (on-page SEO) and non-website (off-page SEO) strategies.

SMM

A relatively new acronym in the online marketing field, SMM simply stands for Social Media Marketing. This involves harnessing the communication and viral power of social media platforms in order to achieve a particular marketing objective.

The Main Course

Ok. Now that we know the dishes, it’s now time for the special – a combination of the four!

Consistency. This the main ingredient in a quality IMC campaign. IMC involves creating a consistent tone, character, appearance, personality and message across your entire marketing mix. IMC has been widely accepted as the most effective way to cut through media clutter and deliver a single minded brand proposition to your target market.

You have probably already experienced a quality Integrated Marketing Campaign without realising it. Consider Optus. The way Optus have developed their IMC campaign is through the use of a consistent brand theme throughout all of their visible customer touch points. This theme of course, revolves around the brand colours yellow and turquoise and the use of wild animals in all of their marketing discourse (open a new browser/tab and check out their website now – you’ll see what I mean).

So how can SEM, SEO and SMM be integrated into an IMC campaign? Here are a few tips:

SEM

• Ensure that you develop your PPC advertising campaigns to include keywords that are utlised in your offline marketing efforts (for example brand slogans, tvc messages, etc)
• If your brand has a recognisable and distinctive brand personality, try to incorporate this personality into the writing of your ads.
• If you have a special offer or promotion running offline, replicate and reinforce this offer though your ad copy in the search engines.
• Let users know they have landed in the right place by integrating your landing page/website design with offline marketing themes.

SEO

• Like with SEM, make sure you have optimised your website for keywords and phrases that a potential customer might type in after ingesting your offline marketing material.
• Increase your search engine real estate by dominating the most valuable keyword groups relating to your industry. This will increase your branding and will allow you to reinforce your integrated marketing message every time a user searches for a relevant term in your industry.
• Make sure that, in making on-page SEO changes to your website, that you are able to create a balance between SEO and readability so as to maintain a clear and consistent marketing message.

SMM

• If you have an actual brand character, consider integrating this character across all of your social media channels. Brand characters are very powerful marketing tools and work well to create instant brand recognition and connection.
• Once again, if you have offline promotions running, you can boost the profile of this promotion through a creative social media marketing strategy.
• If you have decided on the brand tone and personality you would like to convey to your audience (are you young with attitude or conservative and corporate?), make sure to convey this personality in your social media interactions. A great example of a brand with a consistent brand personality and theme is Virgin (cheeky, red and white, casual, innovative, slightly (and ironically) anti-corporate)).

Mmm delicious…

I hope you’ve enjoyed this quick taste test on some ways you can incorporate SEO, SEM and SMM into your integrated marketing campaigns.

Please feel free to add a comment below if you:

• Did or didn’t agree on any of the points,
• Know of another good IMC example?
• Or simply have a question about this post!

…by Excluding Internal Traffic from your Google Analytics Reports!

Forgive the hyped up title, the following is simply a quick description of how to block your own IP address from being counted towards your Google Analytics traffic.

Do this and watch your conversion rates rise!

By the end of these ten steps you will know everything you need to know in order to exclude internal traffic from your reports.

The steps are as follows:

1. Login to Google Analytics
2. Click the name of the account you wish to create a filter for
3. Click the link to the “Filter Manager” (bottom right of your account dashboard)
4. Click “Add Filter” (top right corner of the grey box)
5. Give the filter a name
6. Select the “Predefined Filter” option
7. From the drop-down menus you will want to select “Exclude” “traffic from the IP addresses” “that are equal to”
8. Visit IP Chicken and make a note of the numbers that appear beneath “Current IP Address” – your IP address will appear in the following format: 74.125.74.129
9. You will now need to enter your IP address into the fields provided. If you see four boxes separated by dots simply enter the numbers in the corresponding box. If, however, there’s just the one box then you will need to enter your IP address using regular expressions. Don’t freak out – all this means is you have to put a backslash in front of all the decimal points, eg: 74\.125\.74\.129
10. The final step is to select the website “profiles” you wish to apply this filter to. Simply select your profile(s) and click “Add >>”. Once you’ve done this just hit “Save Changes” and you’re done!

How will this improve your conversion rate as promised in the title of this post? It’s simple – since you probably visit your own site regularly and never buy anything (you tyrekicker) you are unconsciously bloating your visitor numbers. Since conversion rate are essentially the number of visits required to make a sale, taking your own visits out of the equation will instantly improve your conversion rate!

Keyword Phrases vs Generic Keywords

Search engine users type in keyword phrases in order to return results that will hopefully satisfy the intent of their query. It is important to differentiate between a keyword phrase and a generic keyword. Examples of generic keywords include singular words like “accountant”, “hotels” or “marketing”. A keyword phrase would be something along the lines of “accountant Brisbane”, “luxury hotels” or “marketing conference”. Generic keywords tend to have higher volumes of traffic associated with them but in most cases have a far lower conversion rate than more specific keyword phrases.

Keyword Search Volume

How often is the keyword being searched? There are various free and paid tools available for approximating keyword volume, such as Wordtracker, Wordze and the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. It is important to emphasise that the numbers these tools report are approximate and by no means a concrete measure of how many times a keyword will be searched. Additionally, most of these tools report only on US search volumes and may be a poor representation of the Australian market. A further point to note is the seasonality and/or spikiness (unusual spike in volume due to the term becoming a hot topic) of a given keyword which will skew the reported number of searches.

Keyword Competitiveness

A keyword phrase with a higher level of competition will be more difficult to rank for. How many other webpages are competing for the keyword phrase you want to optimise for? An easy way to get an overview of this is to search for your keyword phrase on Google. You will notice above the results something along the lines of “Results 1 – 10 of about 343,000 for [KEYWORD PHRASE]. (0.33 seconds)”. This means there are approximately 343,000 pages in Google’s index that are somehow relevant to [KEYWORD PHRASE]. Keep in mind that not all of these pages will be explicitly optimised for [KEYWORD PHRASE]. More often than not the keyword will merely appear on the page or within the anchor text of a link pointing to the page.

You can narrow down the number of real competitors in a number of ways:

1. Include the phrase in quotes i.e. “keyword phrase”;
2. Use the “intitle:” or “allintitle:” operator – see which pages have the phrase in their title tag;
3. Use the “inanchor:” or “allinanchor:” operator – see which pages have links pointing to their site with those keywords as anchor text.

Commercial Intent of Keywords

Consumers will use different language depending on where they are in the buying cycle. Information seekers tend to use broader terms before narrowing their search to more specific keywords as they move closer to making a purchase.

Also, two searchers with different needs may use the same keyword phrase to find what they’re after. Generally, the shorter the keyword phrase, the broader the intent and the greater the potential for ambiguity. Traffic from longer, more specific keyword phrases (commonly referred to as “long tail keywords”) tend to convert better than generic keywords because the visitor has qualified themselves.

Furthermore, some words take on a different meaning through common usage or branding. Take for example the word “caterpillar”, with at least two very distinct meanings, i.e. the larval stage of butterflies and moths, or “the world’s largest manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, and industrial gas turbines.”

Relevance of Keywords

Just because a keyword has a relatively high volume, low competitiveness and high commercial intent doesn’t mean it has anything to do with the goods and services you sell. Additionally, it may be completely relevant to your business but the content of your website might fail to adequately communicate this.

Striking a Balance

Keyword research, like many aspects of SEO, is a balancing act which requires the researcher to go beyond merely looking at the metrics. In tandem with cold hard numerical analysis, sucessful keyword selection requires an understanding of pyschology, marketing, language patterns and general knowledge in order to discover the right keywords for your business.