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Archive: March 2013

Four Hidden Gems for SEO Keyword Research

By now, you probably know about the some of the basic tools for SEO keyword research before launching an online campaign. Everyone understands the tools that are available through Google’s Keyword tool and performing various online searches. But if you want to take your campaign to the next level, you need to go beyond the basics and use a wide range of sources for your research.

One great way to do this is with eVisible’s free Keyword Suggestion Tool, which provides you with effective and targeted keywords to meet your needs. Along with this, there are other outlets that will provide you with useful information and potential keywords for your SEO campaign. Here are four sources to consider:

keyword research sources

Popular Posts of the Year: One way to understand what keywords people are searching for is to see which blog posts are generating interest within your niche. One way to do this is by performing a Google search that looks something like this:

[your field]+most popular posts of 2012+traffic

So, if you an investigative firm, you might perform a Google search like this:

“Investigative Law” “most popular posts of 2012” traffic

The results might take you to posts like this one from the Diligentia Group highlighting their 10 most popular posts out of the more than 50 they made in 2012. Reviewing these posts will give you a sense of which keywords they highlighted and what readers were searching for when they arrived.

Google Keyword Tool Searches By Year: You can also use chronology to narrow your searches when using the Google Keyword tool. When reviewing your analytics data with Google Keyword, do a search for “2012.” This will tell you the phrases and keywords that were generating interest in the previous year and which ones will likely to become popular soon.

Wikipedia: Nothing is more frustrating than spending money on a keyword campaign only to see a Wikipedia link come up first on results. It can be hard to move a Wikipedia site some a top ranking. You can use this tool (https://stats.grok.se/) to review the traffic volume of any Wikipedia site for the last 90 days to see if a page associated with any keyword term is going to be an obstacle to your success.

Government Websites: As Search Engine Land accurately points out, government sites are potential goldmines for keyword information. In many cases, you can see the most popular pages, referring sites and keywords used for many government sites that could relate to your niche. Reviewing this data will give you a better sense of popular keywords and potential link partners.

Six Forgotten Web Analytic Points That Can Make or Break Your Campaign

One of the most difficult parts of a website optimization campaign is analytics. With many data points to choose from when looking at your landing page optimization campaign, it’s easy to overlook some of the most important elements. Here are six analytic points you need to pay attention to:

Entry Pages: A lot of emphasis is placed on home pages in website analytics. But landing pages and product pages are also critical to the success of your site. One of the best things to analyze on an entry page is the last action a person took before leaving. It might tell you what was frustrating on the site and caused them to quit.

Meeting Sales Goals: The main goal of almost any website optimization campaign is to increase landing page conversion and turn clicks into sales. But too many people get bogged down in the minute details of their web campaign and lose focus on tracking their sales performance. Most solid analytics tools have the ability to set and track eCommerce goals.

web analytics

Web Form Stats: Your web forms are critical to your landing page conversion rate. Whether its customers asking for more information on your services or a shopping cart or payment page to complete a transaction, you need to know if customers are filling out forms once they get to the final step in the process.

Search Keywords: Finding the right keywords to focus your optimization efforts is a critical aspect of your SEO campaign. Before you do this, you’ll want to see how people are finding your site now. If the majority of customers found it by searching for your “brand name,” you aren’t doing enough to attract new customers. More generic keywords will be effective search keywords to optimize.

Traffic Sources: It’s easy to become so wrapped up in detailed web analytics and forget about one of the most basic pieces of data: where your web traffic is coming from. Determining if visitors are coming because of web searches, referrals or ad campaigns will help you understand which tactics can potentially have the best results.

Actual Website Traffic: Did you know that many website visits aren’t from real customers but from search engine robots and spiders that crawl Internet sites regularly? Most web visits that last 10 seconds or less are useless to you. Focus on lengthier visits to get a more accurate reflection of your web campaign.