Keyword Appraisal

SEO Plus:

Keyword Generation + Keyword Appraisal

Search volume is just one factor in determining which keyword phrases to optimize your site for.  High search volume doesn’t automatically translate to a high volume of high quality organic search traffic to your site.

One thing to consider is your potential competition for the search engine traffic.  Your site’s ability to show up in the search results for a particular keyword phrase depends partly on the number of other pages on the web that might also show up for that keyword phrase.  The fewer the competing pages, the better your chances are.

Another thing to consider is the commercial intent behind the keyword phrase used in a search query.  The phrase “tuna fishing,” for example, has a much higher search volume than “tuna fishing charters.”  But the person who enters “tuna fishing charters” is much more likely to be looking for an opportunity to pay for a fishing trip; the “tuna fishing” searcher is just as likely to be looking for free how-to information.  Your object is not simply to get traffic from the search engines – you want to attract potential customers, searchers with commercial intent.

Yet another thing to consider is the “market value” of a keyword phrase.  One way to determine that value is by looking at what advertisers are willing to pay for a particular keyword phrase in the Google AdWords marketplace.

In our Keyword Appraisal, we start with our generated list of keyword phrases and filter it down to the handful of high-volume, high-value keywords most likely to yield the online results you want.  We use a proprietary tool that provides us with this information about each of the selected keyword phrases:

• Total Searches – the average number of people who search for this term daily
• SEO Traffic – the potential daily traffic that a #1 ranked site for this keyword phrase might receive
• SEO Competition – the total number of webpages in Google’s index that mention this keyword phrase
• SEO Title Competition – the number of webpages whose page titles include all of the words in the keyword phrase
• SEO Title Competition / SEO Competition Ratio – a low ratio can indicate weak competition in a market
• AdWords Traffic- the daily traffic (clicks) that the #1 AdWords advertiser for the keyword phrase might expect  to get from their ad.
• AdWords Competition – the number of AdWords bidders for this keyword phrase, compared to the competition for all keywords
• AdWords Cost per Click – the amount you might expect to pay to be the #1 AdWords advertiser for this keyword phrase
• Adwords Click Through Rate – the percentage of people who click on the #1 AdWords advertisement as a percentage of total traffic for this keyword phrase
• Online Commercial Intent – the probability that someone searching this keyword phrase is looking to purchase, rather than looking for information
• AdWords Value – the daily value (cost) of the traffic the #1 AdWords advertiser for this keyword phrase might expect to receive
• SEO Value – the value of the organic search traffic the #1 ranked site for this keyword phrase might expect to receive, as indicated by the AdWords marketplace

We send you the data as a .xls file (MS Excel workbook), and spend some time helping you decide which keyword phrases to optimize your site for, including site navigation, page naming and blog categorization strategies.