Generating keyword ideas with online tools

There are several online tools that can help you generate keyword ideas. These online tools employ a variety of techniques (term stemming, synonyms) to generate related, alternate phrases for a given search term. These tools can be helpful in finding additional search phrases.

Generating alternative keyword ideas with Google Sets

Google has a little known tool that is very helpful in building out initial keyword lists. This tool is called Google Sets and is available at http://labs.google.com/sets.

Google Sets takes one-to-five-words input from a user and returns a larger set of related terms. For example, inputting "accountant, bookkeeper, and finance" into Google Sets returns "bookkeeper, finance, accountant, educator/trainer, manager, auditor, CPA, accountants, controller, accounting, and account." These additional terms present additional keyword opportunities.

Generating alternative keywords with SEOTools Keyword Suggestion Scraper and Google Suggest

Two related tools can help suggest alternative keywords to you. SEOTools.com offers a free keyword suggestion tool, available at http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-information/. The tool works much like Google Sets with a few key differences. When a user inputs a keyword, the tool returns a list of alternative search phrases. There are some fundamental differences from Google Sets. First, SEOTools will return only results that begin with the same phrase that the user inputs. For example, inputting the term "people" will return "peoplepc, people of Walmart, people magazine." That's because SEOTools' keyword scraper gets its data from Google Suggest. Google Suggest is the component of a standard Google search that offers alternate search suggestions when you begin to type a search query at Google.com. You may have noticed Google Suggest during your typical search usage. See the image below for an example of Google Suggest at work. One benefit of this tool is that it (and SEOTools-related keyword scraper) will only show terms for which Google has registered at least some search volume. This serves as a preliminary indication that the terms are in use. The drawback is that neither tool will return a count of relative search volumes you'll have to research that separately. However, for gathering keyword ideas, these two tools are helpful.

Google Suggest offers helpful and valuable variations for search terms. Each alternative will be based on at least a minimum threshold of the search volume.

Building keyword lists with common qualifiers

When you build out your keyword list, you should also build variations of the popular terms with common keyword qualifiers. A keyword qualifier is simply an additional term, usually an adjective that the search users employ to further narrow their search. For example, some Internet users might search for "Expert plumbing repair" rather than "Plumbing repair." Qualifiers might not always represent desirable searches; qualifiers like "Free" and "Research" tend to indicate folks looking for a do-it-yourself or free solution to a problem. The most popular qualifiers generally fall into one of the few categories. Some common categories and corresponding search qualifiers are the following:

With all the keyword research, you'll need to apply a "Human touch." Keyword research is not an entirely objective undertaking purely based on statistics. You will need to follow your instincts as you build and hone your keyword list and strategy.

Analyzing customers' search behavior

It's important to think about how users search for the products and services that they seek online. There has been a wealth of research undertaken on the subject, and our own patterns and techniques as search users can teach us much about how others use search.

Most of the research on user search patterns leads to a few basic conclusions. First, new users seeking information online tend to enter either longer search strings or shorter search strings than experienced users. A new user might enter a query such as "The hospital nearest to Oldham Road in Oklahoma City." If you ever have the opportunity to observe an inexperienced user make use of a search engine for the first time, it can be a fascinating exercise.

As these new search users become more accustomed to search engines they "learn" how to enter more economical queries and research indicates quite strongly that this education happens nearly immediately. Users quickly distill their search patterns to the shortest possible phrase that will return what they are seeking.

The other mistake that new search users make is that they enter queries that are too short. An example would be a search user entering the query "Pool cleaning" when seeking a local pool cleaning company. Such a search is far too broad to yield relevant local results: it will yield some educational content, a few national manufacturers of pool cleaning equipment, and some national online pool supply stores. And so, users very quickly learn that phrases that are too broad will not yield focused, relevant results. The searcher tries again, this time searching for "pool cleaning in Las Vegas" and the search engine returns a list of solely local pool cleaning companies exactly what the searcher intended.

We are all users of search, and we have all passed through our informal education on how to use a search engine. Because all search users become accustomed to using search engines very quickly, as website owners, we can depend on a certain reliability in the way search users utilize search strings to find what they seek.

Building keyword lists with location names

If you are in a local market catering to a local clientele, then location names are going to be big money keywords for you. Internet users seeking products and services near their home or business quickly learn that a search phrase with a location name returns more relevant results than a search without a location, just like the "Pool cleaning Las Vegas" example earlier.

Applying long tail theory to local search

Bearing in mind what we have learned about local search usage, a great opportunity presents itself to the WordPress webmaster: long tail searches in local markets. This is an underutilized approach that can reward aggressive and diligent website owners. Experienced webmasters and SEO professionals use this approach and earn big gains. Here's how to do it.

In both major cities and local markets, there are always surrounding communities and towns that represent both customer opportunities and keyword opportunities. In the city of San Diego, for example, there are dozens of surrounding towns (Del Mar, National City, Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, Solana Beach, Encinitas, and so on) as well as neighborhoods (Pacific Beach, Old Town, Mission Bay, Bird Rock, La Mesa, Clairemont, and many others).

To a business owner, these additional geo-markets are all great keyword opportunities, especially for WordPress site owners. Long tail theory applies to smaller communities: because the communities have smaller populations, the search volumes in those areas will be light. However, the conversion rate in a smaller community will be higher, because the keyword is more closely focused on the searcher's location.

And, with WordPress, you can quickly and easily build out extra pages to capture this extra traffic. Finally, the icing on the cake: most other business owners won't or don't bother with optimization for smaller communities. Either they are too busy, too uniformed, or their website platform is too unaccommodating to easily modify or build out the extra content to capture this low-hanging fruit. If you cover enough towns and neighborhoods, your ultimate reward can be to completely dominate an entire region.

There's a wrong way to go about this, however. Some webmasters and less sophisticated SEO "professionals" will simply stuff a list of cities into the bottom of a page. That's wrong for two reasons. First, it's clearly keyword stuffing: the intentional inclusion of keywords in batches without regard to content solely for the purpose of infecting keyword results. Keyword stuffing is against Google's webmaster guidelines. Second, it's just not effective. You need more than one or two words at the bottom of a page to rank for anything meaningful.

The superior approach is to build out pages for each geo-market. With this approach, you can use the town's name in the title tag, body text, and other HTML elements with this extra power, you'll rank soundly for searches that include that town name. Also, the individual pages you create will speak more directly to members of that community, so you'll out-convert competitors as well.

In the following screenshot, we can see WordPress at work dominating Dallas area pool cleaning: several mid-sized cities and smaller towns are represented in the sidebar navigation (each with its own destination page) and this site ranks extremely well in nearly all of these geo-markets: North Dallas, Plano, Garland, Farmer's Branch, Carrollton, Coppell, Allen, McKinney, Frisco, Addison, and Richardson, TX. Each city has its own page that is effectively optimized for pool cleaning service.

Following the people, following the money

When building your keyword list, you'll always want to return to the question "Who is my customer?" If you are a deck builder, pool builder, or plastic surgeon, your customer is a homeowner (in the case of home services) and a person of financial means (in the case of home services or plastic surgery). It's obviously helpful to know where the people with the money live. If the residents of a town or neighborhood aren't able to afford your product, you'll obviously not want to market there. Similarly, you'll prefer to put your efforts into high-population areas over low-population areas. This same approach can apply to other demographics that might impact your bottom line: where are the families with children? Where do the senior citizens live? These inquiries are basic demographic questions that you can use to focus your keyword strategy.

For most, you'll have a sense of your own community: where the population centers are, where the wealthier people with disposable income live. There may be other variations: areas with new home construction underway are a gold mine for home services like window blinds, alarm companies, and pool builders.

If you don't have a true encyclopedic understanding of the demographics of your region, or you simply want to deepen your understanding of the local marketplace, there is a great web-based tool that can help you "follow the money." The tool is Webfoot Maps and can be found at http://maps.webfoot.com/. Webfoot has created a collection of demographics-based Google Maps mashups that visually represent demographic data like the population density and household income as an overlay over a standard Google Map. With this tool, you can zoom into your town and see where the population centers are and where the high-income folks are living. Webfoot Maps are currently only available for North America and Australia.

The site offers a tremendous amount of data and it can be very helpful in crafting a keyword strategy. The census data upon which the site relies is from 2000, but it will likely be updated soon when the new 2010 census data becomes available. To use the tool, browse to http://maps.webfoot.com/ and follow the link for "US 2000 Census." From there, you can select any of the following demographic criteria:

Webfoot Maps present sensible graphical data for each default selection, but you can adjust the Value parameter to display, for example, you can display only areas with incomes above $100,000 per year.

Here's how Webfoot's demographic Google Maps mashup works at displaying household income in the geo-markets including and surrounding Kansas City. Darker areas indicate higher income levels. Areas with higher incomes can present excellent web marketing opportunities for some businesses.