Finding new keywords

You will always want to be alert to new keyword opportunities. This is the "expansion" phase of your keyword development. New products and product model numbers will become new keywords as they are released to the market. New technologies create new keyword opportunities at an ever-increasing pace. New laws create new keyword opportunities as they are passed. Stay on top of these keyword trends and you'll further edge out your competitors.

Eyeing the competition

One way to find new keywords is to keep an eye on your competition. What keywords are your competitors utilizing for the important pages of their website? Is your competition advertising new products and services? If so, it may mean that they've found a micro-niche within their market that you can harness as well.

You can also use one of several keyword spying websites. The website Spyfu (http://www.spyfu.com) touts itself as a resource that empowers you to "spot new SEM/SEO opportunities and outsmart your competitors." That's a fitting description. Spyfu gathers pay-per-click data on millions of websites and lets you discover what keywords your competition is employing in their pay-per-click campaigns. While the free version offers a peek, the paid version offers more data and more depth of features. As an alternative, the service SEMRush offers the same capability.

Another great spying tool is Google Alerts. Google Alerts is a free tool with which you can "monitor the web for interesting new content." Here's how it works: you enter a query term. When Google discovers new content that includes that query term, you receive an e-mail. This free service is great for monitoring your competition: simply enter the name of a competitor's website, and you'll receive an e-mail each time they publish new content on their website, or issue a press release.

The keyword tools we've described above in this chapter, Google's SKtool, SEOBook's keyword tool, and Wordtracker's free keyword tool, all present variants of keywords when you employ them. Use these tools to continually expand your keyword lists.

You may also encounter new keywords simply by analyzing your existing website visitor data. Google Analytics, the popular website analytics software, records and stores the actual search queries by which your visitors found your site.

Finding new keywords with Google Analytics

Google Analytics records and stores entry keywords for most visitors to your website. An entry keyword is simply the search query used by a visitor that was referred to your site by a search engine. Visitors referred to your site by a third party website that isn't a search engine do not have entry keywords, so no keyword is reported in Google Analytics. Google Analytics is principally designed to record and analyze visitor behavior on your website, but it has many secondary purposes, such as helping you expand your keyword list.

To see the entry keywords for your website, and the corresponding volume of visitors for that keyword, log in to your Analytics account. From within Analytics, select Traffic Sources on the left navigation bar and then select the submenu item Keywords. We will learn how to install Google Analytics and make full use of its power in Chapter 10,

In the main table, you will see a list of the entry keywords that your visitors used to get to your site. But perhaps you are wondering, "How does that help me, these are keywords for which I am already ranking?" True, you must already rank for these terms for them to garner a visitor. However, Analytic's list of actual entry keywords will nearly always include unanticipated variants of existing keywords. If it's a variant that you've missed initially, you might be ranking on page 5 or 6 of the search results. Google Analytics gives you the opportunity to find those supplemental variants so you can introduce them more prominently into your keyword strategy.

Google Analytics shows you the entry keywords by which visitors found your site. Some of these keywords will represent unanticipated variants of keywords for which you already rank.

Finding new keywords With Google AdWords

A keyword expansion tool that works much like Google Analytics is Google AdWords. Google AdWords, Google's popular pay-per-click advertising program, has a supplemental benefit: it's a powerful keyword research tool.

Google AdWords, like Google Analytics, is a prolific storehouse of keyword analytics. Google AdWords goes a step farther: it automatically generates new keyword ideas for you in the Opportunities section of the interface.

Tip

SEO professionals know that running a pay-per-click program in the Google AdWords program can generate two big benefits in the early stages of an SEO campaign: you'll get AdWords keyword suggestions, and you'll also supplement your clicks while you are working to rise up in the natural rankings.

To see AdWords keyword data, log in to your AdWords account. From there, select the Opportunities tab. In the main data table, scroll down to the table labeled Keyword Ideas. You will see your ad groups broken down on a list. Click on each ad group name to see a pop-up window with additional keyword suggestions for your campaign. While AdWords is focused on encouraging you to increase the scope and budget of your pay-per-click campaign, these supplemental keywords can help you build out your main keyword list as well.

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