Yahoo’s data points out that the number one source of small business marketing is the internet, and that 83% of consumers are affected by social proofing, which indicates the relevance of a merchant’s online reputation. Social proofing is the practice of using testimonials and a sort of word of mouth online. Eighty percent of internet shoppers likewise say that a bad online reputation can turn them away from a sale.

As for e-commerce data statistics, the Yahoo study points out that 17% of web searches are conducted to seek out a specific product – and 30% of marketers need help with SEO and product keywords. This is where Yahoo’s new Marketing Dashboard comes into play. Advanced features of the new platform include:

Local Visibility Pro: Small businesses can increase their online visibility by submitting their business information to over 100 search engines and directories
Reputation Management Pro: Users get more comprehensive data, plus the ability to track their competitors, receive email alerts, and share positive customer comments via social channels or email
Integrated campaign tracking: Small businesses can also attract new customers by taking advantage of marketing services from featured, best-in-class third party marketing vendors, including Constant Contact and OrangeSoda, and display and monitor results from campaigns with those vendors from within the Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard

An added perk to the new dashboard is that the entire service is free.

Over at TwiTip they’ve done a nice job of talking about Twitter’s search capability and what it means to someone who is actually trying to use it versus talk about it. Not sure how you feel but lately the company to company sniping between Google, Facebook, Twitter and everyone else is a little tiresome. Until it actually affects how we use these tools (they are tools after all not some kind of magic potion) why not just work on making their products better and stop yammering but I digress.

Since many feel that the search feature of Twitter is the money maker for the ever expanding Internet darling it makes sense to see what they are up to. The author, Chris Allison, has this take as an overview after mentioning the hive mind that Twitter creates:

Google is a hive mind too, but their data is often collected as a side effect of user action, whereas the majority of Twitter’s “thoughts” are genuinely created and intentionally produced- carrying on

This distinction is important in establishing the place in the market that each of these information giants may hold moving into the future. Twitter is busy making their search function more robust. To cut to the chase and let you draw your own conclusions the two best options for you are to go the advanced search page. What caught my eye is the ability to look at tweets from a locality, time and sentiment point of view. I admittedly have not had the time to dive in and truly test drive these features so don’t be afraid to tell us about your experience.

In addition there is a search operator page that outlines everything you will need to know to search Twitter in its current incarnation. I suspect Twitter search will be a moving target for quite some time and one that merits very close attention moving forward.

So here’s some questions to ponder. Does this capability truly threaten Google? How will you use Twitter v. Google when searching for information? Beyond that, what about the rest of the real world of searchers that we as Internet marketers need to be thinking of? So many questions and I suspect so many Pilgrim opinions.

Comments

As Eric Goldman reports, in Orion Bancorp Inc. v. Orion Residential Finance LLC, Orion Bancorp (the trademark holder) sued Orion Residential Finance (the accused infringer) for using the trademarked term “Orion” in AdWords ads. Orion Bancorp not only won their case, but also got the judge to issue an injunction against Orion Residential Finance to apply to future search engine advertising campaigns, barring them

from purchasing or using any form of advertising including keywords or “adwords” in internet advertising containing any mark incorporating Plaintiff’s Mark, or any confusingly similar mark, and shall, when purchasing internet advertising using keywords, adwords or the like, require the activation of the term “ORION” as negative keywords or negative adwords in any internet advertising purchased or used.

Goldman notes that this injunction may become standard in future trademark rulings.

On its face, the ruling may initially seem a little unfair: after all, shouldn’t Orion Residential Finance have a legitimate right to use its own name in search engine ads?

The answer, however, is no, it doesn’t: Orion Bancorp registered the trademark. As an extremely similar business (well, presumably so, based on their names), Orion Bancorp has a right (even a duty) to protect its trademark. Plus, they may not want to be confused for Orion Residential Finance, depending on each of their business practices.

What’s the best course of action for Orion Residential Finance? Obviously, they can appeal the ruling. But if the ruling ultimately stands, I’m thinking it’s probably time for a name change. And this time, use one that’s not already trademarked.

via

Comments

The sponsored lunch today at Search Insider Summit comes from Microsoft adCenter which included a demo of their new Keyword Services Platform and add-in to Excel 2007.

Stacy Harris:

Feedback from marketers is that traffic is good, but they want more of it. Marketers also want AdCenter to be easier to use.

Natala Menezes is up next and promptly announces Stacy was engaged last night!

Key points for current and future development of adCenter: Quality, Transparency and Simplicity.

What does this mean to keyword research, optimization and analysis? Access to real data, not just graphs including demographic and geographic information. It also means easy to use tools including keyword libraries and an adCenter add-in for Excel 2007 which focuses Keyword research, forecasting and monetization data.

Next up is Zhaohui Tang.

Keyword research is the most important aspect of any search optimization or analytics effort affecting: expansion, monetization, commercial intention, seasonality, synonyms, categories, translation, demographics and others.

Microsoft adCenter Keyword Services Platform: Algorithms to extrapolate new terms from a set and categorical relationships. Server platform offering keyword related services for adCenter but also for 3rd party developers to create new advertising applications.

Demo of KSP. I was sitting at a very bad angle as you can see, so I didn’t get any good photos. While the tool will not be released until early 2008, hopefully the adCenter team can give me access soon to do my own demo and review. Hint hint.

The demo shows Excel 2007 with numerous tabs on top showing a variety of keyword applications that go to the web and bring back the data directly into excel. Keyword extraction, suggestion, search buzz, monthly traffic, keyword categorization, geographic info, demographic info, monetization info (clicks, impressions, avg positions, CTR, CPC). There are also advanced algorithm settings.

The app is cool enough that there are whistles from the audience after the search volume tool is run resulting in big smiles from Stacy and Natala:

Audience: Will there be backward compatibility for Excel 2003?

Natala: Microsoft is working on a web version and the MSFT engineer fellow said there will be a backward compatible version for Excel 2003

Audience: (Gord Hotchkiss) are all the features you showed only for your “head” phrases? How many terms will be returned?

Engineer: Only keywords where at least 10 queries per month. There is also a “generous” quota of query volume.

Natala: It’s also a live database being added to and will grow as time goes on.

Audience: How is the confidence score determined?

Engineer: Long answer, but basically algorithms that give an indication of probability.

Comments

Session description: Expanding and optimizing keyword lists doesn’t need to be complex or time consuming. This session will provide a preview adCenter’s latest innovation – the adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007 and how it can be used to rapidly and easily build out or expand keyword lists and plan keyword strategy.

Presenters:

• Stacey Harris, Agency Marketing Manager, Microsoft
• Natala Menezes, Product Manager adCenter
• Zhaohui Tang, Senior Group Program Manager

Natala Menezes
The goals and direction for adCenter:

• Quality
• Transparency—real, actionable, accurate data
• Simplicity

When we talk about transparency, we want to give you access to real data—not just graphs and relative measures. We want them to be actionable and performable for you. We’re big on demographic and geographic info.

Simplicity—easy-to-use tools in the environment you’re working in already.
New product launching next month inside an application that you’re already familiar with, Excel: the Keyword Service Platform (KSP).

What is it? A treasure trove of keyword info. It has algorithms to extrapolate new terms from a set, define categorical relationships, access to real data. It’s a development platform.
(Want access to SDK? adcafb@microsoft.com)

“Better Together” [because everything at Microsoft needs a name.]

• Search marketers already work in Excel.
• Keyword research shouldn’t involve so much cut & paste.
• Excel 2007 advances: unlimited rows; advanced add-in platform
• You don’t need to be an expert in Excel to use these tools
• Data is tuned for adCenter but can be applied to any campaign on any engine

The right keyword for the right audience to capture the right customer
3 philosophies: keyword research (easily generate and expand your list), keyword forecasting (historical monthly data and future predictions), keyword monetization (understand KPIs to help you decide which keyword to use & how much to bid)—CPC and CTR

Zhaohui Tang

Keyword technologies & related tools

Keyword research is the most important aspect of any search optimization, promotion campaign and web analytics.

expansion—relationships

monetization

commercial intention: map vs. digital camera. We’ve had 2 researchers working for 2 years on this.

Seasonality

synonymy

categorization

translation—automatic
demographics, geographic

KSP is a server platform that provides a set of smart keyword-related web services to empower adCenter, windows Live and 3rd party developers building next gen of online ad apps and beyond.

Demo and XBOX give away

XL plugin—ad intelligence. Lovely icons: keyword wizard, keyword extraction, keyword suggestion (options), search buzz, monthly and daily traffic, keyword categorization, geographic, demographic, monetization and vertical kpis, advanced algorithm.

Daily data updates, researchers in adCenter labs building new models—all at your fingertips

type in URL (autos.msn.com)—generates keywords (as many as you want). Gives you top two most likely categories (segments): vehicles/automobiles. Financial services/insurance/vehicle insurance
select keyword, use expansion. Finds all the keywords containing those keywords.

Easy to delete keywords

100s of keyword in seconds—confidence for relevance (r2)

Monthly traffic and forecasts—real numbers!

Daily traffic and forecasts (great for dayparting)—as recently as 2 days ago.

(Conservative approach—take out fraud/bots)

Geographic info—where are people searching from. City, state, country

Demographic info: percentages male/female, age distribution (over a set date range) (some uncertainty, of course—margin of error)

Vertical KPIs—compare insurance vertical v. used car vertical—clicks, impressions, average position (I guess your ads’), CTR, CPC

Monetization—show CTR, CPCs, etc.

Algorithm settings: generates a chart with different positions over time—and can graph impressions, CTR, CPC, etc.

Conclusion: Keyword Wizard is fabulous
available in early January
acpc@microsoft.com to get access to tool

Other features to play with:

search buzz—reveals keyword trends, “spiky” occurrences. Great for capturing popularity data, top frequent keyword over a longer time period

Questions

Is there going to be back end compatibility for non2007 XL?

We’re debating whether to provide 2003 version or do web-based. It would be pretty significant to do 2003. (Zhaohui says they’re working on it, but have no dates)

If I’m not an XL user, can I use KSP? Do you buy/subscribe for access?

We’re working on this as FREE tools (except for Excel).

All the features we saw—are those available for all keyword? Or are there thresholds?

Zhaohui: There are certain things (privacy issues). We only do keywords with at least 5 customers bidding on it. There’s a quota system to avoid abuse (but it’s fairly generous). For larger deals, you can get partnership.

To clarify: is there search volume info threshold?

If there are at least 10 queries a month, we’ll show then numbers.

It’s a % based system on Passport data. Some confidentiality on geographic and demographic info. It’s a confidence score to use as a predictive measure.

Can you explain how the confidence measure is performed/conducted?

Zhaohui: Each algorithm owner decides how to interpret the confidence score—depends on the researcher that wrote it.

Natala: More likely to vary in predicting CPC. You can use this for establishing a testing pattern.

They’re working on lag times in budget/updating.

The search volume data is just from Live. Right, so if you wanted to extrapolate that, you should use market share data. . . .

Natala: We often say the data is best tuned to adCenter, but you can use it anywhere.

Comments

Michael Mattis discussed the insert keyword option for Yahoo Search Marketing on the service’s blog. He touted it as a way of improving the relevance of the ads a marketer could display.

When creating an ad, the marketer would click on an “Insert Keyword Automatically” link. This brings up a prompt to place a default keyword, like ‘wine’, into the ad. Wrap the copy around the title, and Yahoo does the rest:

But here

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/yahoo-harnesses-search-for-keyword-inserts-2007-12/feed 0 http://www.webpronews.com/pubcon-organic-keyword-research-2007-12 http://www.webpronews.com/pubcon-organic-keyword-research-2007-12#comments Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:43:39 +0000 Navneet Kaushal http://www.webpronews.com/?p=42567 Developing keyword lists is a mission critical step for organic search engine optimization. This panel will review how to mine keywords, research keywords, expand keywords, and refine keywords.]]> Developing keyword lists is a mission critical step for organic search engine optimization. This panel will review how to mine keywords, research keywords, expand keywords, and refine keywords.

Moderator:

• Detlev Johnson

Speakers:

• Ryan Smith, Lead Systems Architect, Beyond Ink
• Seth Wilde, Search Engine Marketing Manager, uShip
• Craig Paddock, Managing Partner, Boost Search Marketing

First one to share on Organic keyword research was Craig Paddock, a managing partner from Boost Search Marketing.

• Keyword Discovery
• Go through log files
• Employ 3rd party sampling (WordTracker, Trellian)
• Track organic conversions vs. paid conversions

Use Competitive Intelligence

• HitWise
• Trellian

KWP Expanders/Variations

• Best /online / buy / cheap / discount / wholesale / accessories

Protect your band names/terms

• Highest converting (2x+)
• Easiest to rank for
• Include misspellings, variations (locale, etc)
• Affiliates will target branded terms you miss
• Target more than one result
• Include on ranking reports

How to decide which keywords are most important?

• Let your customers decide
• Organically, it’s tough to determine the most significant ones especialli if you’re not ranking somewhat for those terms in the first place

Craig’s tactics:

• Start a paid campaign just to get data
• Within 48 hours you can get very good impression data
• Use exact [keyword] and broad match in setup
• Set no daily limit and bid high enough to be on the first page
• Monitor impressions and CTRs specific to your site

Points to remember:

1. While performing Craig’s tactics, minimize impressions for "broad" terms
2. Purchase both broad and exact so you can see both what people are searching for and what people are clicking on

Keep a note of:

• Competitiveness of KWPs
• Wordtracker exports popularity and competing sites
• If possible, SEO Quake plug-in for FireFox, the SEO for FireFox plug-in
• Check the current ranking for a particular keyphrase. Even if you already have a high rank, it shouldn’t stop you from targeting it

Google Clustering: If 2 pages naturally feature from the same domain within the same SERP, then Google will cluster them together. Example: If you have #1 and #9, they will appear as #1 and #2 (indented). If you have #1 and #14, they will not be clustered because they do not appear on the same page.

Personal Research:

• Create a spreadsheet to organize all data collected on each term
• Use that to make educated choices
• While making your keyword phrase selections, it’s better to be a big fish in a small pond than to
• jump into a big pond as a small fish

Allow your customers to make up their mind on the keyword phrases you should target. Let your PPC data steer your organic campaign. Keyword Phrase research is much more than just Keyword Phrase popularity.

The second speaker from the panel is Ryan Smith, Lead Systems Architect, Beyond Ink.

API means (Application Programming Interface):

• Allows you to get data straight from search engines without removing HTML
• This speeds up and automates a lot of your Keyword research
• API helps generate lists of keywords found on your site
• Also t suggests keywords, etc.

How to write an API:

• You should know a web scripting language like PHP, Ruby, Python, ASP/ASP.Net, or Perl
• You need to know how to make Web Service API XML requests, or how to hack their example code
• You might need to know a little reexp voodoo for parsing HTML results
• You’ll also need some type of database like MySQL, SQL Server, or even Google Gears

Advanced Web Ranking XML Reports

• This is inexpensive, reliable and easy to manage for small jobs
• It can use G/Y API keys if available
• Pulls keyword data via API’s
• Will use proxy servers
• It is harder to develop automation cs. Web APIs
• Bad for automating large and numerous projects with multiple keyword groups

Yahoo Web Search API is great. Windows Live Search API is also great. Google is currently working on a new API. Ask.com stopped their API.

• Web Harvesting
• Violates search engines TOS
• On the other hand, closing the API access violates the trust of developers

Anonymizer.com Proxy Services:

Anonymizer lets you prepay for 1 million proxy requests ($1,000). With this you it operates CIA-style front companies who own IPs. These companies regularly blacklist detection to rotate out bad IPs. If they have to, they completely kill off front companies and start new ones to get around blocks and blacklists.

Auto keyword extraction:

• Yahoo Term Extraction API
• WordsFinder.com
• Keyword Extractor API
• ClickTracks API

Apparently, Overture is not the best for availability as it tends to scramble search terms. The Google Trends API and Microsoft AdCenter APIs are better. WordTracker is cool, it’s cheap. But I get a lot of zero results so I’m not exactly sure I can recommend it. The best so far is, KeywordDiscovery.com but it’s $500 a month. Nevertheless, it’s worth every cent though.

Last speaker was Seth Wilde, Search Engine Marketing Manager. Poor Seth couldn’t open his presentation.

Main points:

• Site’s internal search is a wealth of information
• Continually mine data to see which keywords are actively used for searching once they’re on your site
• Visit competitor’s sites

  Make note of title tags

  Find out what they are buying

  What are they trying to rank for

• 1 word phrased might generate traffic but are not great for conversion. 1000 hits with a 15% conversion rate is much better than 10,000 hits with a 1.5% conversion rate
• Use 1-3 keywords per page
• Regularly adjust your keywords

Comments

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]]> http://www.webpronews.com/pubcon-organic-keyword-research-2007-12/feed 0 http://www.webpronews.com/pubcon-seo-design-organic-site-structure-2007-12 http://www.webpronews.com/pubcon-seo-design-organic-site-structure-2007-12#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:56:10 +0000 Navneet Kaushal http://www.webpronews.com/?p=42451 Site design is critical for quality indexing and rankings. There are pit falls that are not apparent. This session will take a top down approach to designing a modern website.

Moderator:

• Todd Friesen

Speakers:

]]> Site design is critical for quality indexing and rankings. There are pit falls that are not apparent. This session will take a top down approach to designing a modern website.

Moderator:

• Todd Friesen

Speakers:

• Mark Jackson, President / CEO, VIZION Interactive, Inc
• Lyndsay Walker, Web Analytics Coordinator / SEO Specialist, WestJet / Lyndseo
• Paul Bruemmer, Director Search Marketing, Red Door Interactive
• Alan K’necht, Founder & President, K’nechtology Inc

The first speaker of this conference is Mark Jackson, President / CEO, VIZION Interactive, Inc. Just like the man says, he will cover Keyword Research, Creating a SE friendly architecture and Building content.

Keyword Research: Mark feels that most people cannot even do this well.

• Know your audience and target them
• Don’t only stick to popular phrases
• Create a list of target words that matter (Find words from the users not your boss)
• Decide relevancy
• Create a spreadsheet

Next step:

• Find out who is ranking which keyword and why
• Create your own niche
• Determine factors to compete with words
• Develop your content

In terms of competitive analysis for pages, Yahoo! performs the best.

Important Pointers:

• Incorporate the keyword research
• Incorporate comp analysis then lay out your site
• Use keywords in pages
• assign tags, metas, etc.

SE friendly sites can be aesthetically pleasing too. Just remember the pointers:

• Stay away from JavaScript, Flash intros, Image based navigations.
• Allow space for content
• Use images sparingly
• Include "alt" and "title" in images
• Static URLs are preferred
• Design should be part of the third phase

A great example of this is Trip Advisor.

Building content:

• Content should be engaging to both readers and search engines
• Start internal-linking
• Stay away from marketing fluff
• Use Anchor texts
• Blogs are great for getting out quick content
• Research well

Todd takes the example of Nike, as they rank great for footwear and not running shoes because they never use the word.

Next speaker is Alan K’necht, the founder & president, K’nechtology Inc.

Linear Approach:

• Search engines care about words and positioning of words
• Search engines give more preference to things on top than at bottom
• Use 2-tier design architecture
• Separate content from presentation
• Organize content logically
• Use H1 tag first
• Use CSS to position

Newspaper Approach:

• Headlines first
• Newspapers add links to inner pages. (Make sure these have your targeted keywords)
• Add graphical non-required items lower down
• Stick image/graphics at the end of the page

A great tip is to use the Firefox Webmaster Toolbar. This way you know what the site looks like. Remember content comes first and then navigation etc. Think of what’s important and that should appear first.

All in all, make your site search engine-usable.

Next up is Lyndsay Walker, Web Analytics Coordinator / SEO Specialist, WestJet.

Design for your visitors:

• Clear navigation for both search engines and visitors.
• AVOID FLASH. This serves no purpose. Use CSS or Java instead.
• Pick content over images. Fresh content is best.
• Use Divs
• Use stats. Find out what people are using, learn from it and put it to your advantage
• Design for and test everything in Firefox. Afterwards, tweak it for IE.
• Keep in mind a mobile design too

Must haves:

• Title tags must be unique
• Meta description tag. These should be targeted to the specifics in the page
• Header tags – place emphasis on the most crucial words
• Strong code-to-content ratio
• Use DIVs over tables
• Don’t forget your keywords
• Links. Don’t forget internal linking

It’s finally the turn of Paul Bruemmer, Director Search Marketing, Red Door Interactive.

Organic site structure:

Server configuration: robot.txt, redirects, 404 error codes, internal broken links, duplicate content, dedicated IP address, alias URLs, transfer of keyword page rankings, etc.

Web Site Architecture: Pay attention to:-

• Inclusion ratio
• Directory structure and naming conventions
• Internal linking structure
• Dynamic and persistent URLs
• Site Maps (HTML)
• Privacy statement

Content Generation:

• Keep a watch on your competition. You have to be on par or better
• Textual content types: articles, industry news, etc
• Think about content promotion while you’re generating it- Blogs, RSS feeds etc

Content Optimization:

• Almost the same as Lyndsay’s list of must haves.
• Natural Link Profile:
• Ensure your links are natural-looking
• Imagine you’re in a neighbourhood and you want your links to look good

Deep Link Profile:

• Ratio of your links to subpages in comparison to your homepage’s links.

Additional Considerations:

• Feeds
• Paid search
• Local search/ mobile search (map locations, XHTML for mobile)
• Development and administrative staff etc.

Comments

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]]> http://www.webpronews.com/pubcon-seo-design-organic-site-structure-2007-12/feed 0 http://www.webpronews.com/keywords-still-the-foundations-of-sem-campaigns-2007-12 http://www.webpronews.com/keywords-still-the-foundations-of-sem-campaigns-2007-12#comments Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:33:09 +0000 Navneet Kaushal http://www.webpronews.com/?p=42434 Keywords are still the foundation that build all search marketing campaigns. This session will look at researching and developing a killer keyword list for a site or special project. It will also look at tools available to automate the task of finding keywords and phrases.

]]> Keywords are still the foundation that build all search marketing campaigns. This session will look at researching and developing a killer keyword list for a site or special project. It will also look at tools available to automate the task of finding keywords and phrases.

Moderator:

• Christine Churchill

Speakers:

• Ken Jurina, President, Epiar Inc
• Larry Mersman, Vice President, Trellian
• Wil Reynolds, Founder, SEER Interactive
• Stoney deGeyter, Pole Position Marketing
• Natala Menezes, Product Manager, Microsoft adCenter, Microsoft

Moderator Christine Churchill, kicks off the discussion stating the importance of keyword research and how if this is done well, the rest of SEO will go well.

First speaker of the day is Ken Jurina, President, Epiar Inc. Ken says he’s certain he’s at the right place as the carpet has mouse patterns. Heh heh.

What exactly is keyword research and how should it be done?

• Used to data-mine possible keyword search behavior around the hundreds of phrases from manifold sources.
• Get rid of skewed results such as inconsistencies, non-seasonal irregularities, and clear-cut data errors.
• Pinpoint core relevance or non-relevance of potential phrases based on demographics, geography and other ad-targeting parameters.

Uses of Advanced Keyword Research

• Business Research: Use it to research products, competitive intelligence.
• Social Research: Political issues, publish topics, celebrity branding.
• Brand Equity: Select relevant words for your core. If you ‘sell t.v. sets, find out which models are popular.

What are people looking for?

• New Product Ideas: Find out what are people want? This opens many new opportunities.
• Consumer Feedback: Find out what users are saying, problems they face,, parts they are seeking for, service problems & issues.
• Celebrity Brand: Find PR issues.

Ken shows a case study of a music store.

Situation:

The client has a store selling brick and mortar music equipments. Online presence is almost nil.

After some keyword research, they learned people wanted new product lines, there was a gap for a new vertical, demands changed seasonally, including searches for discontinued products.

Result:

Sales reach $90,000 from virtually nothing. Big rankings on over 85 percent of key phrases.

Conducting Advanced Keyword Research:

Use multiple sources – WordTracker and Trellian. Find out keyword difficulty based on search in Google which will tell you how big the competition is. Ken pinpoints keyword research tools offered by SEOmoz, We Build Pages and Trellian.

Free Keyword Research Tools

Google Trends: Shows useful comparative data on keyword phrases. Results break it down depending on geography, date range, language while also finding news stories based on trend. Google Trends give you the option of seeing search results chronologically. Find peaks and valleys.

Microsoft adCenter: Good for keyword forecast, demographic prediction etc .

The panel’s second speaker is Larry Mersman, Vice President, Trellian who is herre with a case study for NeedMoreBeer.com.

Larry says that keyword research is all about identifying keywords and phrases that your customers use to find your site, business, its products or services.

NeedMoreBeer.com.

This site was optimized for ‘finest beer in Germany online.’ after some research, they found that the search phrase (German beer) had a big number of searches performed. What they did next was, update their content. This resulted in a 200% hike in sales.

• Keyword Discovery Phrase: Create your keywords list, including misspellings, typos etc.
• Evaluation Phrase: Organize your your keyword list in such a way that more significant terms and phrases get more attention.
• Implementation: Use the terms on your site.
• Optimization and Performance Tuning: Tweak your content accordingly.

Create lists based on brainstorming, finding out what your competitors are using, go through what your customers say, use log files and also from keyword generators.

Keyword research should be used to find relevant search phrases and words, recognize potential spellings and misspellings, find out the search phrases and terms your competitors find significant etc. Always keep track of what your competitors are using.

Wil Reynolds, Founder, SEER Interactive, is up for an interactive discussion. He starts by asking the audience to write down a few keywords for the images he has running on the projector. After which, he asks everyone to read out their keywords. Moral of the story: Everyone uses different keywords and search phrases.

The best way to stay in business is to buy your own product. To this effect, he uses a Mercedes. Apparently, the German car company do not like to call their pre-owned cars as used. However, this is the term that search engine users type. To overcome this dilemma, Wil had to do some keyword research.

Selecting wrong keywords is detrimental to your career. Further, Wil mentions a few companies who were replaced when their keywords didn’t evolve. Some of the comparisons he made were of:

• Tabloid vs Perez Hilton
• Home Depot vs Tim the builder
• Business 2.0 vs TechCrunch
• AAA vs Mapquest vs Google Maps

Wil’s Favourite tools for keyword selection and research

MSN adLabs’ Search Funnel: This site tells you what users look for or go to after they type in your keyword. Wil thinks it’s the best tool to find intent though it still lacks data. Nevertheless, it’s best for broader and bigger terms rather than small and niched items.

AdLabs: Focus on broader search, keep a check on updates, drill down.

Yahoo! Suggest: Wil finds this better than Google’s. How it differs from Google is that, Yahoo! Suggest doesn’t bring up suggestions based on the first four letters like how Google does.

Up next is Stoney deGeyter, from Pole Position Marketing who will throw some light on gathering, sorting and organizing keywords for an SEO campaign. These he divides into three phases.

Phase 1. Gathering Keywords.

Find out what your campaign’s core terms are. Core terms are unique, 2-3 search phrases that appropriately present the focus of any webpage on your site. While findign out your core terms research, you have to take time and think of ideas. Think about your site, find its meta tags, log files, content, link structure to reach core terms. Stoney recommends using keyword research tools.

Sort out the search phrases/core terms on the basis of which are significant to you. Ask yourself which terms will help your target audience, what are users using to get to your page, which products & services brings you most benefits, which are the keywords/ terms/ search phrases that have the most volume.

The next step is to study the phrases that stands for those phrases. All in all, it’s your core search terms. Don’t over-do anything. You will probably end up with hundreds and thousands of search phrase results. Do the analysis later.

Phase 2: Sorting & Selecting

Keep the keywords you know will help in converting visitors and users into consumers. These keywords should be able to pull your customers in. also, the search phrase should directly represent your content and not be relevant for someone else’s. Search phrases should be specific and not too broad. Leave the info queries for later.

Study the search volume of the phrases. Aggressively search for keywords both long tail and short tail. If they convert visitors then optimize them. If it’s too short then there will be no conversions. Rule of thumb says two-four words query is more than enough.

Phrase 3: Organizing Process

1. Find out the intentions of the search engine user and divide terms appropriately. Ar the terms you are using for research, purchase or buying.
2. Recognize key pages. Decide which webpages are best suited for which kind of keywords. Each page of the site has an exclusive purpose. If more pages are require, build them.
3. Collect groups based on same underlying theme. For eg: You cannot put ‘elegant’ and ‘cheap’ together.

Last speaker for this discussion is Natala Menezes, Product Manager, Microsoft adCenter. She starts off by talking about some initiative going on in adCenter. People at adCenter want users to gain easy access to real information and simple to use tools. Here, she brings up the Keyword Service Platform. This is the holy grail for keyword information. Algorithms to extrapolate new terms from a set, define categorical relationships. Access to real data. Developmental platform. Apparently, adCenter has a team of industry experts who help and guide them with their own personal insight.

Better Together: adCenter + Excel 2007. These two created an application using the Excel platform as they know that search marketers spent a lot of time using the software. Natala states that keyword research is not so much about ‘cut and paste’ nor do you have to be an Excel or search engine optimization master as these aim at keyword research, forecast etc. Natala runs through the better together tool.

Hence, the panel comes to an end.

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