Selecting the right keywords for a web page is critical element of a successful campaign strategy, however, its important to evaluate the competitiveness of key term selected.  Selecting only highly competitive terms can lead to unrealistic goals and an unbalanced approach to attain increase in traffic.  Join one of our own SEO specialists, Avinash Conda, as we explore this topic in this video.

From what I saw, Yahoo!’s editor offers most of what you’d normally need for developing and optimizing paid search campaigns, including bulk editing of campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords, statistics and a keyword research tool. I didn’t notice a way to add negative keywords or edit geo-targeting, though these aren’t deal-breakers.

Yahoo!’s editor is quite useful by itself, to any paid search marketer, simply due to its bulk editing feature. That said, its most interesting feature is its keyword research tool.

First, with most keyword research tools, you enter root keywords, and it spits back related ones. Yahoo!’s tool, on the other hand, presents you with a series of “test” keywords, which you then vote on—relevant or not?—and ultimately displays a list of relevant terms, refined based on your feedback. This seems to work well, and Yahoo! gets points here for a clever approach to an old problem. (Think Amazon’s option to train its recommendation engine.)

Second, its recommended keywords come as they might commonly be searched, e.g., “order floral arrangement,” as well as, many times, an alternate version of the same, e.g., “arrangement floral order.” (Its interface calls this Canonical Form.) Other keyword research tools provide alternate keyword forms, but Yahoo!’s actually pairs the common keyword with the alternate, which could make your review easier.

All in all, Yahoo!’s Search Marketing Desktop is a welcome addition to the paid search marketer’s arsenal. Now let’s see what happens to it when the Bing-Yahoo! marriage is complete…

What Does An Apple IPad Have to Do With Search Engines Optimization?

Your next question might be, “what does Apple IPad have to do with search engine optimization?”

Well, due to a frenzy amount of searches for this product and relating key terms, Apple IPad searchers have become victim to black hat seo techniques leading them to malicious sites.

Symantec’s Candid Wueest warns, “This is just the kind of opportunity fraudsters like to exploit by poisoning search terms. IPad-related spam and phishing attacks hitting consumers hard over the coming weeks.”

As the usual protocol to protect your personal computer from being tampered with, make sure you are using the latest security software and both operating system/browsers are up to date.

Jennifer Gayadin is a SEO Search Strategist for Path Interactive, a NYC Search Marketing Firm

Well guess what, it absolutely does.

Let’s take the word “flower” for example. In Google, the number one search result listing for “flower”  is wikipedia.org. Now let’s search for the plural form, “flowers”. The number one listing for “flowers” is FTD.com.

A lot of people think Google is “smart” enough to detect the similarities, but the truth of the matter is that they are looked at as two separate words (yes even it is just a “s” it makes a difference!). Many websites may rank for a plural term but are nowhere to be found when searching for the singular.

I Want To Rank For Both Singular and Plural Key phrases, How Can I Do That?

The next thought is usually, “well – I want to rank for both “. Of course you do, who wouldn’t right? Every single website has to have a different approach and there are many aspects you have to take into consideration . A rule of thumb that you may use for one website might not necessarily work out for the other, even if you’re dealing with different variations of the same word on the same site. Things like competition, high volume traffic, long tail phrases vs. short tail phrases are things you would have to keep into consideration.

Jennifer Gayadin is a SEO Search Strategist for Path Interactive, a NYC Search Marketing Firm

Well to start, just like any other marketing project you will need to know where you have been to know where you are going.   It is funny how marketers familiar with traditional media can make assessments easily on performance but when Search Engine Optimization projects lands on their laps a theoretical black hole of evaluation exits.

Projecting results from SEO does not have to be that difficult, but it is a process that does require a few benchmarking sessions to make sure that your project is on track and that you are focusing on the right metrics

Organic Search Engine Growth

Benchmarking Sessions Provide Focus

Before any project launches, we always have a series of internal SEO benchmarking meetings to make sure when we will be projecting results from SEO it will be in  line with client expectations.  Too often, SEO Agencies or consultants make broad claims about SEO and how it will impact the business.  There is this applied notion that “being #1 on Google” for a certain term makes all a marketers business problems go away.  Unfortunately, we have to deal with this concept and we use benchmarking sessions to manage our clients expectations and keep our team accountable based on real measurable results.

Here at Path Interactive, we have at least three separate benchmarking sessions which I will share in future posts.  The first initial session happens very early on in the SEO process and marketers should pay attention to this important step as they can avoid costly mistakes in developing content for on page optimization.

Keyword Selection Benchmark Meeting for Projecting Results From SEO

Google Keyword Tool

The first benchmarking session we have is during the Keyword Research selection process.  After deep keyword research and been completed and keywords have been through an initial client review, we have a short list of keywords to target to existing and new website pages.

At this point, it is critical that we make a quick traffic projection to make sure you staying in line with expectations.  Too often during the keyword selection process you can lose focus.  Various stakeholders may get involved in the process that don’t fully understand and weigh in on irrelevant or low traffic key phrases.  Or locally targeted business demand what they THINK are good terms but there is no relevant traffic.  The key phrases have to make sense, have to be realistic to achieve placement and provide the ROI needed to justify the spend.

Agencies have numerous tools and proprietary applications to assist in this process, but in house marketers can do a solid projection using the Google Keyword Tool.

Making an SEO Projection Using Google Keyword Tool

To make a projection, drop your focused keyword list into the estimator for a projected search volume of traffic on Google.  It is important to use the “exact match” function to come of with a conservative projection of volume.   Then, a projected click thru rate can be used on the keyword level to give you a quick assessment of the traffic available for ranking high on these key phrases from Google.  Look at the existing SERP pages again so you can get a best and worst case scenario for placement to project a proper click thru (CTR) rate.  CTR’s can be anywhere from 4-15% for top 10 placement on average.

Compare your projected traffic number against the same set of keywords coming from Google Organic in your Analytics account.  The difference will be a conservative performance benchmark for how these key phrases can impact website traffic coming from Google.  From here you can project the total search engine traffic by grossing up your projection by the percent Google relates to your total search engine referral traffic.   Finally, you can project results from SEO focused key phrases against your key performance metrics.

Keyword Projects Don’t Tell The Whole Story, But Keep You On Track

Keyword projections are only used to keep focus on the Keyword selection process but they don’t tell the complete story for projecting results from SEO.  To properly project the results in terms of return it is important to identify to go through a series of additional steps which we will share in future posts.

If you want to get a step by step instruction on how to perform a baseline keyword projection for SEO, just contact us and we would be happy to share.

Michael Coppola is CEO and founder of Path Interactive

At its core, the new Keyword Tool, currently in beta, is identical to the old one. You enter seed keywords or a site URL, and it generates relevant keyword ideas, along with associated statistical data, such as search volume and competition. This can then be used for search engine optimization, paid search or general market research.

This is really where the similarity ends. While the new Keyword Tool is missing a few features we’ve become accustomed to, it contains at least 11 new or improved ones, some significant.

11 New or Improved Features

• Filter by Location and Language – Limit your results to a specific country or language, so you can see search volume for, say, Australia only.
• Mobile Search Statistics – Did you know there are  41,100 mobile searches for “order pizza” a month? This feature limits your search numbers to non-smart mobile phones, and is particularly useful for convenience-related local businesses.
• Budget-Based Statistics – We all work within a finite budget. This caps your statistics based on whatever dollar amount you choose.
• Keyword Filters -  Filter your results by impressions, searches, competition, cost-per-click (CPC), clickthrough rate or cost, so you don’t waste your time with keywords that don’t meet your criteria. This is particularly useful, given the fact the new Keyword Tool allows you to use multiple filters at once.
• Keyword Categories – Drill down to your keywords by selecting progressively more specific categories, as opposed to starting with either seed keywords or a site URL. This is helpful when you’re researching a market area you’re completely unfamiliar with, and don’t want to deal with the sometimes overly broad keywords generated by using the site URL.
• Keyword Links to Google Insights – Get access to Google Insights, right from the Keyword Tool interface.
• Keyword Must Include – Filter your keywords to just those that contain the text you choose. For example, you could review only the keywords containing the (very) commerce-related word “buy.”
• Unified Keyword Match Types – You were forced to run the Keyword Tool three times if you wanted to research keywords in broad, phrase and exact match. With the new Keyword Tool, you can get keywords in all match types at once.
• More Data Columns – Get data on keyword relevancy, search share and more. You can now move column order, too.
• Precise Expected Ad Position – Previously, you were only provided a vague range of expected ad positions, based on your entered maximum CPC. You’re now provided an estimated position up to the second decimal place. (An”exact estimate,” but still better.)
  

For some reason, the new Keyword Tool is missing the adult, only show entered keywords and don’t show keywords containing filters, as well as the most highest search occurred in column. The don’t show filter is a noticeable omission, and will hopefully be added when the new Keyword Tool is fully released.

That said, the myriad of stackable filters alone make this version of Google’s Keyword Tool a welcome update.

The new Keyword Tool is available within select Google AdWords accounts, under Tools. It’s not available, as of yet, as an external tool, as is the classic Keyword Tool.

For example: 
People in the northeast don’t care about “earthquakes” 
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=earthquake%2C&geo=US&c

Earthquake Search With Google Insights

or 

People in New York (apparently) don’t care about the Phillies: 
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=phillies%2C&geo=US&cmpt=q

Phillies Search in Google Insights

What is potentially very useful for SEO purposes is that you can recognize that there are regional differences in how people term things. 

For example… a U.S. based travel company might target vacation vs. holiday… (see below) where the term vacation is used almost exclusively in the U.S. and (unfortunately) Iraq where “holiday” is used very heavily in the U.K. influenced areas (U.K., Ireland, India, Australia, SA). So if that U.S. based company would like to do business in Europe they would be more convincing if they pay attention to the vernacular of the region.
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#content=1&cat=208&q=vacation%2Choliday&cmpt=q

Holiday Search on Google Insights

Vacation Search on Google Insights

Even MORE relevant is that if you can begin to figure out how people are searching based on tighter regions. Take a regional term like “sneaker”. In the Northeast U.S. sneaker refers to athletic shoes. If we think about sneakers our searches are based on that word. But if there is a client that has 10 athletic stores in New Orleans, targeting “sneakers” would be useless because in NOLA they call sneakers “tennis shoes”.  Below are images from Google Insights illustrating how smart marketers can take advantage of very distinct terminology in the U.S. alone.
http://tinyurl.com/ku97uj

With some further analysis

So that is understandable even but more interesting is that when searching for “tennis shoes” in NOLA they might be more concerned with color and general style like “white tennis shoes” and “girls tennis shoes” whereas in New York people are much more concerned with brands like Coach, LV, Jordan ,etc….

Google Insights for Search is can become a very powerful tool when you are either a national brand looking to speak to different regions or even a local brand really looking to target just the customers in your area.  When formulating your SEO or your Paid Search, Pay Per Click strategy do some research with Google Insights for Search to get a better view.

Earlier this year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ( ICANN)  announced a plan to allow new generic level domain names (gTLDs) in addition to current ones like .com, .org, .edu, etc.  Under the plan, gTLDs would be virtually unlimited.  For instance, Ford could be not only ford.com, but also ford.cars, ford.auto, ford.road, ford.ford, etc.

ICANN states that “the expansion will allow for more innovation, choice and change to the Internet’s addressing system, now constrained by only 21 generic top-level domain names,” and considers this program to be especially important to its efforts to make domain names available that could contain non-ASCII characters or letters (for instance, Arabic or Chinese).

Generic Domain Name’s Don’t sit Well with Goverments and Large Corporations

There is significant opposition to the plan, especially from corporations and governments.  The opposing arguments mostly center around two issues: the potentially enormous additional cost to companies that wish to defend their trademarks and brand names, and the possibility that adding hundreds or thousands of new gTLDs could undermine the stability and security of the Domain Name System (DNS).

The Effect On Large Companies Can Cost

Large companies already have to buy thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of domain names to protect their brands – buying not only their trademarked names, but also common misspellings across all 21 current gTLDs.  For instance, Google owns not just google.com, but also g00gle.com and google.biz.   Depending on the number of new domain names, the price companies pay to control domain names could definitely skyrocket.

So, How Many New gTLDs Will There Be?

No one can predict how many new domain names will pop up because it won’t be cheap to register a new gTLD.  Companies wishing to register new gTLDs will need to pay $185,000 to submit the application and $60,000 each year to run the domain.  In addition, if a company is not already a registry, it will have to pay $50,000 to be evaluated.  In other words, a company will need to be sure that there will be a lot of customers in order to apply for a generic domain.  That said, the way to make a fortune is to see opportunity where others don’t, so don’t be surprised if some surprises pop up like .crafts, .florist, or .pizza.

Next week: the proposal’s possible effects on search engine marketing.

James Connell is Search Director at Path Interactive, a NYC-based interactive marketing firm.