Keyword Marketing Research

When selecting keywords to rank for in organic SEO, it is important to analyze your competitors, and find where it is feasible to spend your time and resources. You initially do this by analyzing the search results for your desired search phrases. While there are many factor to consider when determining competition, there are some thing you will also need take note of:

• Onpage optimization and SEO, e.g. keyword density of targeted phrase.
• Google PageRank of both ranking website domain and the ranking pages. Gives a good hint to the level of backlinks which is an important offpage SEO technique.
• Data such as number of pages in domain indexed by Google and Yahoo. Again helpful in determining competitor overall strength.
• Page title including the one currently used and the one in Google search results. Tells you if the website owner is actively optimizing.

Generally speaking, the more data you add, the better you can compare different keywords and even sometimes niches

Search engines love focused themed content with backlinks from similar themed sites. Throw in a good domain name in the mix, and you are ready to start ranking. When you feel you have some good traction, you can always later add more content such as forums etc.

this way you can start small with a good converting pages selling your main product or service coupled with some nicely themed articles. Easy to get started, and should you get enough incoming link juice, you can start pouring it into user generated content.

Niche websites also have the advantage that they are easy to research and create quality content for. You can research popular keywords using a keyword suggestion tool. That being if you just want good organic SEO or want to go all out with paid search advertising. Your content and theme of website will match what you are trying to rank and bid for.

If you become real successful, you may even find that you can sell affiliate products or earn from adsense in your forums or articles. The important thing is to get the initial traction with a focused niche website that can rank well in search engines.

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When advertising in Pay Per Click networks such as Adwords, you can get insights on good website titles, URLs etc. you otherwise would not have. There are many click through studies on the net how to increase CTR. One such click through study tested importance of difference between two else seemingly similar display URLs.

Combined with search data available from Pay Per Click networks, testing ads in e.g. Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing can help you choose good website titles, URLs etc. for organic search. However, why limit yourself to that? The CTR on your ad text can also help you determine areas of interest for potential customers. Consider it extra value for the money spend on paid search and PPC Pay Per Click

Having a high click-through rate on your ads in paid search will most likely decrease your cost per click as most search engines offering ads appreciate serving relevant results that gets clicked. This means you have every incentive to test and test again. Things you can try:

• Experiment with call to action phrases.
• List benefits and features in different styles.
• Split search keywords into specific adgroups.
• Find related keywords using keyword research tool.
• Optimize landing pages to match keywords you bid on.

Paid search networks are different, and you can not expect the same ads perform equally well on all search engines. Besides different competition, the quality of keyword search and ad matching can vary. You should monitor all networks you advertise on and not necessarily be willing to pay the same for all clicks.

Webserver logs explained
Most webservers such as Apache and IIS log most requests to the websites they host. One use of this information is to allow a webmaster gain insight into how people find and navigate his website. It is even possible to find out the search engine and exact keyword phrase a person has used to find the website.

Webservers and log files
Many web hosts provide raw log files of all requests to your website. Some also includes an interface such as AWStats. If they only provide raw log files, you can access them through FTP and view them later in Analytics software.

Analytics software
Analytics software either analyzes your log files very in-depth or utilizes extra tracking through e.g. JavaScript. Such tools go beyond common log file analyzers and viewers. Some known products are: ClickTracks, IndexTools and Google Analytics.

Look for search engines and keywords used
When you have found out which keywords people use, start digging more. See which pages rank for what keywords. Now use keyword research tools to find related search phrases. Find keyword variations with many searches and weak competition. From here you can create new pages or modify existing ones to cover more search phrases.