Archive for June, 2009

What’s in your SEO Toolbox? What are your tools of the trade? If you’re like me, you use a variety of tools. Some free. Some subscription-based.

I’ve been doing a specific series of manual tasks for several years because there just aren’t any tools that do the job. But, now with all the Mashups, and API’s available, I can finally create my own tool. Needless to say, I’m not willing to reveal my idea publically yet.

The target audience is for professional SEO Consultants, Ad agencies, and on the client-side. What is a comfortable price you’re willing to pay for a new, solid SEO tool?

When I say new, I don’t just mean another tool that checks Title tags, Meta data, H1’s etc. There are already tons of free SEO tools available. I’m talking about paying for a tool that doesn’t already exist.

This tool I have in mind will help the SEO Consultant demonstrate his/her effectiveness.

Is $4.99 recurring monthly easy payment to make?
How about a one-time $49.99 per year?
Does $24.99 per year make it easier to sign-up?
Do you only use free tools?
Any other pricing models make sense?

If it helps your success, and helps you retain clients are these realistic pricing models?

I don’t know the answer to this. Think of this post as a fist stab at some market research. Nothing official. Just to give me an idea. Comments are always much appreciated! I also created a Poll.

Photo credit: Keystone IT

Continuing with my curiousity with the keyword “lyrics”, I wanted to know what are the top 50 searched terms on Google. Is “lyrics” one of the top searched terms on Google?

That question led me to explore a few of Google’s own keyword tools. I began by using Google Insights and sorting the data by All Search Terms/United States/Last 12 Months:

This provided me with an answer. But, I wanted to dive a little deeper.

Next I looked at Google Insights for the last 12 months for the term “lyrics in the category Entertainment > Music > Lyrics & Tabs.

Since Google Insights doesn’t provide actual search volume, I used the Google Keyword Tool to look at the monthly keyword volume:

Next I looked at Google Zeitgeist, which shows all of these searches which “had the largest volume on Google.com in the U.S.” within their respective categories:

I would think Zeitgeist and the Google Insights that show “Search Terms Related to Lyrics” to be the same. However, there are some discrepancies. For example, “Taylor Swift lyrics” is shown to be the 2nd most searched term related to lyrics. But, she doesnt show up at all in Zeitgeist.

Anyway, it makes sense that Lyrics is the #1 searched term, because more people are digitally downloading their music now, instead of buying physical CDs. And, since MP3’s don’t include lyrics, people must be searching for them. I guess it’d be safe to assume as digital downloads increase, so will the amount of searches for “lyrics” and related phrases.

One of the ways to measure success of an SEO campaign is based on the baseline metrics contained within your Keyword Analysis. Success metrics can include keyword ranking, visitor traffic, and conversions.

You can also measure “share of voice“. In Search Marketing, it’s more accurately called “share of searches”. A straightforward method of calculating the formula is using the monthly [Visits/Universe of Searches], expressed as a percentage.

Naturally, you need keyword data you can trust. It needs to be as accurate as possible. There are a lot of keyword tools out there. Some free. Some subscription-based. So, I decided to compare the term “lyrics” from four popular keyword tools.

Wordtracker:
They state on their site that “All search terms are collected from the major metacrawlers - Dogpile and Metacrawler.” That covers only 2% market of US and UK. Also, the keyword data generated is daily search volume. So, we need to multiply that by 30 to calculate the monthly seardch volume. In this case, the term “lyrics” was searched 407,340 times in a month. I’m not convinced this is the most accurate data.

Keyword Discovery:
KD does not use actual search volume. They state on their website: “The search counts that we provide are best used as a comparison to other search terms in our database. You should treat Keyword Discovery’s search counts as a rank, not actual total search volume.” Furthermore, Keyword Discovery gets it’s data from a few hundred small search engines.

Google Keyword Tool:
The Google Keyword Tool provides you with an actual number of search volume. They state on their website “Global Monthly Search Volume: This column shows the approximate average monthly number of search queries matching each keyword. This statistic applies to searches performed on Google and the search network over a recent 12-month period.”.

Microsoft adcenter Keyword Tool:
The adcenter keyword tool takes from search queries directly from the engine. They state on their site: “The data in the keyword research tools is based on historical performance data from Microsoft adCenter and from historical search queries (exact match type) on Bing and other MSN properties”.

Additionally, adcenter’s adlab has a group of keyword research tools that are definitely worth exploring.

Search Engine Market Share:
If you’re using the Google Tool or the adcenter keyword tool, you’ll need to make a quick calculation to get the “universe of searches”. In order to calculate the amount of the “universe of searches”, we need to know search engine market share:

To calculate a reliable number for “universe of searches” I think it’s best to just use Google Keyword Tool, and multiply that by the amount they are deficient in market share. Depending on the market research you use can alter the amount of search volume also.

For example, if MSN had a market share of 5%, then we’d multiply the number by 20 to get the “universe of searches”. That calculates to 2,717,220.

If Google has 70% market share, then multiply the Keyword number from their tool by 1.30 to calculate the “universe of search volume” for any given keyword.

Conclusion:
The Google and adcenter tools are free, and the keyword data comes directly from them. I think that’s as reliable as it’s gonna get for now. In my opinion, Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery are NOT as accurate data.

After all this………Do you trust Google’s Keyword Tool? Yes/No?