Keyword Discovery Exemplum Gratia

Apr 3, 2009 by

I was working through a simple keyword discovery for a recent client when I decided that it would make sense to again reiterate why intelligent keyword discovery is essential to effective Search Engine Optimization. The client is in the vacations business and we were targeting a particular city. The usual “seed words” (primary keywords identified through brainstorming, existing traffic, competitors etc.) were present such as “[location] vacations”, “[location] hotels” and “[location] accommodations”. While typically a person new to SEO would look at the search volume of these and similar keywords and choose from that list, it is important to do a Traffic on Investment analysis of those keywords to determine exactly which keywords are best suited for organic optimization. Below is a screenshot, with the city blanked out for my client’s benefit, of the first 30 or so keywords. The list includes over 1000 words and 40000 datapoints.

There are several different search phenomena that we can decipher via keyword discovery to determine which terms or phrases are best suited for our client. I have outlined them in the graphic but they bear repeating in text.

1. Single vs. Plural: In many industries, potentials search using both the singular and plural variants. You can use this to your advantage by finding low hanging fruit. In this case, the singular version of “[location] resort” has a higher Traffic on Investment score (popularity/competitiveness) than the plural. Notice that the plural version for Hotels is better than the singular. This will vary from each individual term to the next, and the only way to be certain you are targeting the best term is to use keyword discovery.
2. Mid-Tail Gems: People talk a lot about the long tail, but really our industry is best suited for the mid-tail. You shouldn’t waste too much time targeting keywords that get little to no traffic, nor should you waste your time on generic terms that get tons of traffic. You want that mid-range keyword which is targeted to your needs and still receives a sustaining level of traffic. In this case, we were able to identify a variant using the modifier “golf” that was far more profitable than going after the short-tail “[location] vacations” or long-tail.
3. The Obvious is Obviously Competitive: Perhaps the most important piece of keyword discovery is that it teaches us not to go after the most obvious terms. There is no reason to target [location] when you offer a specific service in that area. After you have blown all your budget on ranking for this 1 term, you will get tons of unqualified traffic that wastes bandwidth and does not convert. While keyword discovery won’t tell you about conversion, it will show you that the Traffic on Investment for these terms is low due to hyper-competitiveness
4. Spelling Variants: Did you know that you don’t have to include a mispelled word on a page to rank for the mispelling? Often clients overlook mispelled phrases because they don’t want their site to appear unprofessional by including mispelled terms. A few key backlink anchor-text changes can solve this problem, and keyword discovery can help you find these gems.
5. Phrase Ordering: When you searched for your latest job in Google, did you search for “city state jobs” or “jobs in city state”? Keyword discovery helped this client know that targeting one ordering of “[location] accomodations” was more profitable.

Frankly, any SEO who does offer keyword discovery as a service is failing you. Chances are you are spending your organic rankings dollars inefficiently.