CHAPTER 7

Words Are Key to Customers: Keyword Research

“Sandra Manager” is a midlevel marketing manager at a paper supply firm in the Midwest. She is in her early thirties and has 10 years of industry experience, 5 in a supervisory role at her current company. She is active on social networks in her daily life, but struggles with how she can best connect with new customers through social channels.

You work for a start-up software company that offers a customer relationship management (CRM) software product. Its most compelling feature is an ability to integrate with multiple social media platforms. Oh, and “Sandra Manager” has just been given a new software budget.

What’s important to realize about “Sandra Manager” is this: She is a persona, or the character you’ve created to represent your target prospect. Developing your personas by following processes laid out in Chapter 6 will help you see your prospects in a much brighter light. You will be able to theorize on everything from what they had for breakfast that morning to why they can’t stand Harry Potter. Essentially, you will know just about everything relevant to your product that could influence your customer personas. But, as an online marketer, unless you combine persona development with keyword research, you will be missing detail regarding one critical factor: the language your prospects use to search and socialize.

Traditional SEO copywriting recommendations often focus on finding and using keywords based primarily on popularity. Clients and consultants often work together to create massive keyword glossaries, or lists consisting of thousands of keywords, each weighted equally in terms of potential impact on driving new business. In many situations, building keyword glossaries skims over categorization, priority, and sometimes even relevance to the customer position in the buying cycle. In these situations, the objective is to capture top search visibility for every keyword on the list. The actual language used by the “Sandra Managers” of the world, or the keywords used to describe “what customers want,” can be as different from what business managers and marketers use as the difference between “inexpensive air transportation” and “cheap flights.” That disconnect can cost companies millions.

To illustrate how the trend is backing away from one-dimensional keyword evaluation, imagine the following broad-stroke scenario. You are developing a new campaign designed to build awareness of your CRM software’s social media integration capabilities. You conduct keyword research and discover that the keyword phrase “Facebook integration” is more popular than keywords related to integration of any other social platform combined. Yet your frontline sales team consistently fields calls asking whether your software “integrates with LinkedIn,” which is mirrored by research during persona development. Which phrase should drive your keyword optimization effort? What customers search for and talk about on the social web may be different.

You could make a case for both answers. Because everything in the online world can be tested and revised, the answer you settle on probably won’t fall into a bucket neatly labeled as right or wrong. In fact, the only wrong avenue you can take when selecting keywords is to ignore the wealth of data in front of you, including what should be filtered into your initial brainstorm session.

A PERFECT KEYWORD BRAINSTORM

But before we get too far ahead of ourselves and too far into the minds of our personas, let’s discuss factors that can help drive an effective keyword brainstorm session.

A thunderstorm will do the most damage if it can concentrate itself in a targeted location. If it is spread too thin, it dilutes into little more than raindrops. Similarly, the risk of a keyword brainstorm that is allowed to spread unstructured into too many different areas can result in a glossary consisting of thousands of keywords with little thought given to categorization, priority, or customer relevance.

On the other hand, if time is spent on research prior to a keyword brainstorming session, understanding what customer personas care about and which keywords are driving traffic to your own or your competitors’ websites, the stage can be set for a powerfully focused brainstorm exercise.

Figure 7.1 illustrates a word cloud of the first steps in a keyword glossary brainstorm. It represents the analysis of a website focused on the paper products industry and five top competitors. Tools used in this analysis included Google Analytics, for analyzing the company’s website, and SEMRush, which was used for analyzing the Google keyword ranking of competitor websites. Top nonbranded keywords (i.e., keywords not containing client names) are documented, along with data related to current ranking position, frequency of usage, and percent of total traffic.

After documentation, all keywords are organized into logical clusters by topic and with some consideration for the categories of the company website. Initial research and categorization will ensure your brainstorm begins on a far more productive note than simply posing generalized questions, such as “Which keywords would you like to be found for?”

DOCUMENT KEYWORD METRICS

Throughout this book, I have commented on the need to evolve SEO practices to become more holistic and to take a more customer-centric approach. That said, there are some basic best practices that will remain fundamental, one of which is researching and documenting keyword metrics.

Keyword metrics are analyzed prior to a formal keyword brainstorm when reviewing competitor data and then again when analyzing the resulting list of brainstormed keywords. This task results in three metrics (as shown in Figure 7.2):

These are basic, easy-to-use, and mostly free tools that anyone reading this book can use. As you advance in your pursuit of keyword nirvana, many other, more sophisticated tools are available. Documenting metrics at this stage in the process helps a great deal with prioritization. Initially, keyword categories can be arranged from most popular to least popular, which serves to ensure a more productive initial brainstorm.

KEYWORD BRAINSTORM, EVALUATION, AND FILTERING

By the time you reach the actual brainstorm stage, it is very likely that you will have many of the final keyword categories already fleshed out. This will help you ask the easy, yet critical questions that help launch a brainstorming session.

• Are the keywords being used by your competitors important and relevant to your offering?
• Are the keywords currently driving traffic to your website the most relevant?
• What other keywords describe your offering in this category?
• What keywords are good representations of your customer personas’ needs and goals?
• What keywords represent the interests of your customer personas according to their position in the buying cycle?

By spending time researching factors ranging from current rankings and frequency of usage by the competition to search volume and competitiveness, you will be armed with the basic data you need to ask the tough questions that can transform an initial brainstorm into deeper keyword usage insight, including:

• Are the initial keyword phrases the language of marketing executives or of your customers?
• Why does your website deserve to have top visibility in this category?
• What is the difference between your initial target keyword list and actual website content?
• Are you prepared to create the amount and quality of content needed to be successful in this category?
• Can you commit to creating and optimizing customer-centric content in this category on an ongoing basis?

LISTEN TO THE VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER

The last question dovetails nicely into a key step in the keyword brainstorm—a step that is not adequately served by either competitor research or a brainstorm with business executives: the voice of the customer.

Let’s circle back to our example on the decision to develop a campaign centered on “Facebook integration” or “LinkedIn integration.” Without insight provided by frontline employees, the ability of your software to integrate with LinkedIn would likely never have even been up for consideration. After all, traditional metrics would point you toward Facebook.

The voice of the customer, as represented by your research into customer personas, should be weaved into your keyword glossary development process. Involving frontline employees with brainstorming sessions, either directly or through interviews during the persona research process, can open a gold mine of data, ensuring your final keyword glossary is populated with keywords that are not only popular, but also meaningful for your best customers.

FILTER KEYWORDS WITH A RESEARCH TOOL

Earlier, we touched on third-party keyword research tools that you could use to support the development of your keyword glossary. Before we go further, however, let’s start with a few key principles:

• Keyword research tools are designed to support the assumptions provided by the two most powerful keyword tools that you access: research (with customers, prospects, and frontline employees) and relevance (to the brand product and services mix).
• Keyword research tools are designed to override the false assumptions often provided by the two most flawed tools that you can access—your gut and your brain.
• Keyword research tools listed in this chapter represent only a handful of examples pulled from a variety of tools available.

If you are developing a keyword glossary using this chapter as a guide, it is very likely that you are now staring at a large list of keywords, categorized according to time spent on competitive, brand, and customer research.

If you are feeling overwhelmed at this point, that’s okay. In fact, it’s very nearly ideal. This means that you have a very large list of powerful and impactful keywords in front of you. All you have to do now is refine them into a workable format. This is where you need to suspend your two most dangerous tools—head and gut—in favor of third-party tools that will help you see these phrases efficiently and objectively.

Let’s look at an example of how a keyword category, “social media + CRM integration,” might appear after an initial brainstorm session, as shown in Figure 7.4.

In this category, both “CRM software” and “software CRM” would serve as examples of broad phrases, whereas “social CRM software” would represent a long-tail phrase. A broad phrase would refer to the most popular and usually shortest keyword variation within a category. The long-tail phrase, on the other hand, is a more specific, multiword phrase related to the broad phrase.

It should be noted here that on an individual basis, long-tail phrases will commonly generate less individual search volume than broader phrases. For example, the Google AdWords Keyword Tool reports that “CRM software” has 74,000 local monthly searches and that “small business CRM software” has 2,400. If the focus of your CRM software company is on small businesses, then it makes a lot more sense to be relevant if you’re interested in attracting new business more quickly. Considering the pain points, needs, and goals of your customer according to their position in the buying cycle is also an important consideration when filtering for more specific search phrases.

There’s a tendency for searchers to use specific three- or four-word long-tail phrases in their search engine queries. In fact, over 50 percent of search phrases are three words or longer.1 Why do long-tail phrases get so little search volume? Because very few people use the same long-tail phrases. For example, while we optimize our site at TopRankBlog.com for a mix of 15 to 20 phrases, we actually receive organic search traffic from more than 28,000 unique phrases each month. Many of those phrases were used only once or twice during the entire month. Another perspective is the fact that 16 percent of the daily queries on Google have never been seen before.2 That means there are a lot of long-tail phrases out there.

Later in this book, we will offer more tips on how to determine which long-tail keywords to add to your glossary, how to track them, and how to use them in content development efforts.

The keyword category discussed here represents just one of dozens on your list, with each category consisting of a similar number of keywords. At this stage in the development of your keyword glossary, you’ll want to remember this phrase: “Those who strive to be everything to everyone will be nothing to anyone.” In other words, focus. Find ways to filter keyword variations in your initial brainstormed list that offer no immediate benefit, while fleshing out your categories with phrases that carry more impact.

While you can start to whittle down your list with the help of several tools, the one I share here is Keyword Discovery. This keyword research and project management tool pulls search popularity metrics gathered from second- and third-party panel data. Basically a sample of search queries used to estimate popularity, Keyword Discovery is also useful for providing alternative variations of keywords that you may not have considered. (See Figure 7.5.)

Based solely on data provided here, “CRM software” would appear to be the most attractive broad phrase, whereas searches for social-focused keywords have not been substantial enough over the past 12 months to register any kind of popularity score within this tool. In regard to derivative phrases research, we can determine at a glance that there is some searcher tendency to use both “CRM software” and the variation “software CRM” when searching.

Another insight we can glean from this data is that searcher interest appears to be lacking for keywords related to “social” + “CRM.” Of course, you know this can’t be the whole picture. After all, your frontline sales team fields calls daily related to integration of your CRM software with very specific social platforms, and the social integration module is one of your highest-selling features. It’s time to turn to another tool to put these numbers into context.

The Google AdWords Keyword Tool provides detail regarding the estimated volume of monthly searches happening on Google for a keyword, both globally and locally, on average over the past 12 months. Because this data is provided primarily for the benefit of advertisers, there is a vested interest in updating this data frequently. So, what context does Google AdWords give us on our list of keywords in Figure 7.6?

Much like the information we gathered from Keyword Discovery, Google AdWords Keyword Tool is telling us that “CRM software” is our most popular phrase and that volume around social-related keywords trails far behind.

That said, volume around broad, social-related keywords is certainly not nil, and many keywords related to specific platforms are generating between 1,000 and 3,600 global monthly searches. While our extremely targeted long-tail keywords (e.g., “Facebook CRM integration”) capture fewer than 100 global searches per month in some cases, these phrases could be used editorially in content that supports the more popular keyword variations (e.g., “Facebook CRM”). Also, keep in mind how relevant a phrase is and that our research is just a snapshot in time. The popularity of a particular phrase could rise, fall or fluctuate according to seasonality and demand due to news stories and trends in popular culture. If phrases appear with nominal query volume but have appeared in your persona research with customers and frontline employees, and if the conversion rates for those niche phrases are very high, it makes sense to include them in your glossary.

Based on the research conducted to date, our keyword category on “Social CRM” might be whittled down to the list shown in Figure 7.7.

Although we have managed to refine this category down to a more targeted list, there are two basic questions to answer in terms of assessing the viability of our keyword glossary:

To answer these questions, we turn to another tool that, like our brain and our gut, is powerful and accessible by all: the search engine. Spending a few minutes searching Google or Bing for a keyword can instantly give you a hint at how much general competition you are up against and what the competitive landscape of the search results looks like. As we discussed in Chapter 3 on research, there is a difference between business competition and content competition in search results. Evaluate the sources as well as the types of content that appear in the search results for the keyword phrase in question to assist in your decision about the viability.

Look at searches for “CRM software” with more than 43 million search results on Google and “software CRM” with more than 185 million search results. Both phrases indicated a significant amount of search volume according to both Keyword Discovery and Google AdWords. That means there is likely a significant amount of traffic potential for each phrase if you can achieve top search visibility and awareness. But how difficult will it be to meet that goal?

Despite the keywords being rather similar in terms of meaning and likely in terms of searcher intent, there is a large chasm in terms of competition. Does it make sense to try to go after a broad keyword already in competition with 185 million other pages, or to try to concentrate on a similarly broad phrase that’s working against the smaller, yet formidable, group of 43 million pages? Assuming equal or greater relevance and demand, the option offering less competition is an attractive choice.

Next, let’s look at search results and competition associated with more specific keywords. (See Figure 7.8.)

Results for “Facebook CRM” show heavy competition—but also top competitors such as Salesforce.com. “Twitter CRM,” meanwhile, shows a high level of competition combined with editorial and resource-based results from TechCrunch and Mashable. Finally, “LinkedIn CRM” search results show the most reasonable level of competition when compared against Facebook- and Twitter-related keyword phrases. “LinkedIn CRM,” like “Twitter CRM,” search results are mostly populated with resource-based content.

It should be noted that basing keyword decisions or SEO success purely on keyword ranking is inherently flawed. At any given time, Google has hundreds of algorithms in the wild that impact ranking results, creating the possibility of a different result nearly anytime a search is conducted, not to mention the impact of geographic location, personalization, and Google+ search plus Your World. So, what we are striving to determine is not just who is ranking, but rather a flavor for how much and what type of content is ranking relevant to the interests and goals of our target audience. What we can infer from our research:

• Those searching for “Facebook CRM” are more likely looking to buy.
• Those searching for “LinkedIn CRM” and “Twitter CRM” are more likely looking to learn.
• The popularity and searcher intent behind these keywords is not a secret to competing websites.

Based on all of the research here, we can make a case for nearly every keyword in the category we are working with. Since we cannot reasonably make a case for removing any keywords from this category, how do we ensure we don’t fall into the trap of trying to be everything to everyone? Let’s start by changing the conversation.

BUILDING YOUR KEYWORD GLOSSARY

Everything we’ve spoken about so far in this chapter has focused on one outcome: development of a prioritized, categorized, and manageable keyword glossary that is as considerate of customer interests as those of the company selling products and services. This glossary will be the cornerstone of your search engine optimization efforts that guide SEO copywriting applied to existing content, the suggestion of new content, and optimization of social media content. But first, let’s get back to our original question of refining the keyword category.

The category we are working with has been fleshed out in Figure 7.9 to include a metric defining competitiveness using the simplistic method of approximate number of pages that appear in the search results when the target phrase is searched on Google.

Those on your team who have not subjected themselves to the research you just conducted may see the list as one make-sense category. All keywords speak to social integration and can be used to describe the social integration capabilities of your software. But in spending time out in the wild, you know that the search landscape and searcher intent behind these keywords is a much different story. For instance:

• Competition for “CRM Software”-related keywords are reasonably competitive.
• Competition for “Facebook CRM” and “Twitter CRM” are extraordinarily high, while far more reasonable for “LinkedIn CRM.”
• Atop a large number of search results for “Facebook CRM” and “Twitter CRM” are your top business competitors.
• Atop a large number of search results for “Twitter CRM” and a reasonable number of search results for “LinkedIn CRM” are resource-and article-based results.
• “LinkedIn CRM integration” represents a potential third-party hole in the search landscape.

In other words, you are not looking at one unmanageable keyword category. Instead, you are looking at several categories.

When building your keyword glossary, breaking up larger categories into more focused and manageable categories is one of the surest ways to effectively determine which keywords should be used in content optimization efforts, which keywords should be used to drive what type of content (think of a web page designed to sell a product versus a blog post designed to educate about a subject), and the priority in which these keywords should fall.

As we get more into a conversation regarding priority, or when we start to discuss which keywords will drive a significant portion of your optimization and promotional efforts, it’s time to once again put some trust in your brain and your gut. But this doesn’t mean that there aren’t some tools at your disposal that can help your efforts.

Two tools you can use most readily are tools that are freely available and courtesy of Google. The first is one you may not have considered.

Google Suggest is represented by autocompleting queries that occur when you type letters into Google’s search box based on a mix of data sources. (See Figure 7.10.) Google Suggest can provide you with insight into which keyword variations are trending upward, even though you lack search volume metrics reported by other third-party research tools.

Based on the screenshots shown in Figure 7.10, taken from Google Suggest using our three social platform CRM-specific phrases, there is some support that backs up our decision to use each phrase. In regard to prioritization—and this is a bit off the cuff—it appears that those searching for “Twitter CRM” and “LinkedIn CRM” are more likely to add “integration” as a modifier than those searching for “Facebook CRM.” The simple reason behind this assumption is that “Facebook CRM app” currently appears higher than “Facebook CRM integration” in Google Suggest data.

Of course, the flip side of this real-time coin is that these results may be somewhat different the next time you look. Which is why, again, no one tool should be trusted to guide all of your decisions. Since Google Suggest displays suggestions in a format that you cannot copy, there is a very useful tool, called ubersuggest.org, based on Google Suggest data that allows you to export a deep list of suggested phrases organized in alphabetical order as a text file. This will make it much easier to bring Google Suggest keywords into your glossary document, which will likely be Excel.

Another tool you can leverage, and one that provides more data in regard to forecasting, is Google Insights for Search. (See Figure 7.11.) Offering a past and future trend line related to a keyword, Google Insight for Search can help you make prioritization-based decisions taking into account both what has happened and what is likely to happen.

One limitation with this tool, however, is that keywords with a lower search volume (e.g., “Facebook CRM integration”) won’t register data. As such, the examples are pulled using the broader “CRM”-based terms rather than the more specific “CRM integration”-based phrases.

As shown in Figure 7.11, again, you can make a case to put these keyword categories in any priority order. But remember the beginning of our story. Which of these variations do your customers currently ask about? (Answer: “LinkedIn.”)

What we know from our keyword research so far is:

• There is a fair amount of search volume surrounding “CRM integration” of all social platforms.
• Traffic related to each social platform phrase variation is forecast to improve.
• Facebook is by far the most popular and the most competitive modifier, with Twitter following closely behind.
• There may be a hole atop the market for LinkedIn phrases.
• Customers are asking about LinkedIn-related content.

By conducting the necessary research and using the valuable customer insight provided by your frontline team, you can make a reasonable case to focus your optimization and content development efforts on “LinkedIn CRM” integration-related phrases as one of your primary keyword phrase segments. At the same time, you can focus appropriate efforts on your software’s ability to integrate with other social platforms as well.

Now complete this exercise with the rest of your keyword list to refine and prioritize the balance of brainstormed phrases. Then spend time with stakeholders to help finalize the list. Keep in mind that with very large websites, this has to be done initially at the top category levels of content. Additionally, you may have keyword clusters defined by your business objectives and key goals for customer personas that will guide prioritization of a large body of keywords.

Regardless of the size of website or number of target keyword phrases, it’s important to understand that this is not meant to be an overnight process. What you are building is a keyword list that will remain in place as a starting point of reference for your content optimization, social media optimization, and link building for the next 6 to 12 months. Depending on your resources and ability to implement optimization on existing content as well as with new content, it can take some time before implementation effects are observed through improved search positioning, traffic, and links. Data collected from content marketing performance in search will enable further keyword list refinement as well as content creation, optimization, and promotion. When properly developed, a keyword glossary is an exceptional tool that can provide specific and actionable information applicable to any content creation activity in the organization, from marketing to customer service.

RESEARCH SOCIAL TOPICS

After this exercise, what you should have in front of you is a beautifully crafted, prioritized keyword glossary designed to guide your content optimization, creation, and promotion efforts for the next several months.

That covers search, but what about social? Depending on the need or situation, consumers may follow a pure search path to conversion. However, consumers are increasingly influenced by content they find on social media and networks as well as requested recommendations from friends. The consumer journey from initial query to purchase is increasingly complex, involving a combination of social interaction and research on search engines. The good news is that your initial category and competitive research, in combination with the work developing customer personas, will reveal insights about which social channels and topics matter most to your customers.

In combination with search keyword research, the next step in our process to become the most relevant source of information about our category of business is to develop a dynamic list of social topics. In other words, search engine optimization will guide us to the party, but social topics will help us be more interesting once we get there. If we can gauge demand for search phrases with keyword research tools, why not tap into what the most popular topics are on the social web, relevant to your business and solutions?

For an understanding of how a social keyword list can be developed, let’s use the high-priority keyword phrase we identified previously, “LinkedIn CRM integration,” and conduct a very basic search using real-time social engine SocialMention.com. While there are other social media monitoring or listening tools that can extract social keyword topics from their reports, they often carry substantial monthly fees. I’ve picked Social Mention for our example here because it’s free and easy to use. It can be a great starting point for getting your feet wet with social topic research. Other free tools that can provide insight into popular social topics include:

• http://www.stumbleupon.com/tag/. A more popular bookmarking service, this page shows the most recently popular tags and the most popular of all time.
• http://technorati.com/tag/. For blog topics, this is an organized directory of the most popular tags used on Technorati over the past month.
• https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool. YouTube is social media at it’s finest, and this tool is specifically for finding the most popular search phrases used to find videos.
• www.hashtags.org. Hashtags (#) are often used on Twitter as a sort of folksonomy of categorization. This tool shows a weekly trend of any hashtag you search on.

Social Mention will gather results from sources ranging from Twitter to blogs and comments, aggregating information as recent a few hours old. (See Figure 7.12.) Social Mention will also provide an indication of how searchers are consuming information by showing the most popular social channels relevant to your search.

So, what can we learn about “LinkedIn CRM integration” from Social Mention?

A glance at the search results shows a diversity of content sources, including Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Delicious. Within that content, we can see customer survey capabilities are sparking discussion. Also, building deep customer insights is a benefit of note. We can see that LinkedIn, Dell, and Salesforce will be among the competitors to keep an eye on.

Based on this basic exercise for one target keyword phrase using Social Mention, we can develop a list of social topics including:

• LinkedIn CRM integration customer survey capabilities
• LinkedIn CRM integration helps build consumer insights
• LinkedIn CRM integration competitor comparisons
• LinkedIn CRM integration trends
• LinkedIn CRM integration blended with Facebook and Twitter integration
• LinkedIn CRM integration demo

These social topics can guide whatever content you might have planned in support of the “LinkedIn CRM integration” keyword phrase, including blog posts, comments on other blogs, videos, tweets, and bookmarks. We can also see it may be worthwhile to promote that content through social channels, such as social bookmarking, and news sites, such as StumbleUpon, in addition to promoting videos on YouTube.

The icing on the cake is that social topics are useful for adding long-tail keyword content that’s not only in demand on search engines but also of interest to customers on the social web. The dynamic list of social topics is something you can update as often as necessary—weekly or even daily—according to your level of activity as a social media content publisher. Once search keywords are in place with content optimization and link building, you have a base of information to attract relevant search visitors. A proactive effort at mining social media sites for topics will allow you to maintain a more dynamic list of ideas and conversations relevant to your business, which can inspire new content, social engagement, and long-tail social media optimization. Once implemented, you can capture data for refinement, which Chapter 13 will help you with in terms of identifying new phrases, testing content, and refining your ability to connect with the “Sandra Managers” of the world.

ACTION ITEMS

Notes

1. Hitwise, “Experian Hitwise reports Google share of searches at 66 percent in July 2011,” Experian Hitwise, August 11, 2011, http://www.hitwise.com/us/about-us/press-center/press-releases/experian-hitwise-reports-google-share-of-searche/.

2. “Drive Innovation,” Think Insights with Google, accessed December 2011, http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/insights/facts/marketing-objective/.