Making Sense of All This Keyword Data

So with some simple Excel sorting this offers me an at-a-glance snapshot of the both the upper and lower maximum’s in terms of overall SERP competition.

The keyword opportunity model I talk about in my SEO competitive analysis post explains the idea of taking a macro approach to dissecting SERP’s at the keyword level, which in my opinion, is necessary for enterprise SEO and growing websites to over 100,000 visitors per month.

The macro approach to keyword research is necessary for content heavy websites (and optimizing for traffic), but not ideal when doing intent-focused keyword research, as would be the case for Ecommerce, software, or other scenarios where some keyword phrases are going to carry significantly more qualification.

Researching for Searcher Intent


When optimizing for conversion, it is critical to gain some perspective into the psychographics of your target audience, and also understand the most common segments of search intent. While all 4 of the most common segments offer opportunities for conversion, only 2 are of truly high value and worth targeting; commercial investigation and transactional queries.

The best way to get a handle on all this data is to group and categorize your keywords to look at the potential stage of the conversion funnel the searcher is within. By segmenting your keywords into funnels you can begin to paint a picture with your data that allows you to disseminate search intent.

Taking this even a step further, you can begin to understand keywords as they relate to search context. Where even something as simple as word order can play a crucial role when defining the meaning behind the query and ensuring you are selecting the right keywords to target.




Time to Do The Research


You can’t build the right house without the right tools, and search engine driven websites are no different.

The good news is at this point in time SEO has been around long enough that there is a whole slew of great tools you can use to assist you with your research efforts.

Tools run the gamut in functionality from pulling search volume, to providing related suggestions, to competition in AdWords, and many other helpful bits of information.




Don’t Forget to Check Plurals


One of the most common mistakes when doing keyword research is forgetting to run the numbers for both the singular and plurals versions of your terms.

I have found that often times one is significantly higher than the other, and quite often the plural version is indicative of commercial intent.

Take for example SEO versus SEO Services, the former is an informational query where the intent is most likely research or information gathering. The latter, SEO Services, is a transactional or commercial investigation phrase indicative of being further in the purchasing funnel.




Create Keyword Evaluation Model


Evaluating keywords for relative opportunities is still very tough.

Without massive stores of data and detailed insights into the competitive landscape it is easy to throw a  lot of time and money at targeting keywords that will never deliver a stable return.

In order to avoid this and instead focus only where there is rank to be had and money to be made, I believe it’s best to use an evaluation method.

There are a number of methodologies ranging from complex formulas including many different heuristics to more simplified models designed just to give you a sense of the opportunity.

I have developed a simple keyword opportunity model to help with this process, but for this post I am going to use a  simplified version.

This is meant to be more of a barometer than anything else and this data should not be used to make a business case, but more so just to give you a sense of opportunity.

I’m going to use keyword competitiveness scoring from SerpIQ, but you could also do this with SEOmoz’s keyword difficulty score or something similar.




Keyword Research for Page Titles


Optimizing page titles for search is best done finding a balance between volume and intent.

Bringing this back to the 2 schools of thought, your title keyword composition is going to depend on your goals;

If optimizing for traffic you want to find combinations to maximize use of high search volume terms.
If optimizing for conversion you want to pay attention to intent instead of search volume.
In both scenarios I recommend looking for creative ways to combine exact match phrases to leverage strings of keywords that contain several target keywords but are not awkward or stuffed.