This video from the people at Comediva gives us a look into G-Male, the perfect male.

At first, the Google creation seems like a Godsend – he knows your schedule, your sandwich making habits and he can find all of your misplaced items. Wow!

But after a while, things begin to get strange when GMale begins assigning you circles. Then he uses his “active listening” to pick up on “keywords” to discern his female companion’s favorite color. Things take a turn when GMale begins to know a little too much about you.

“Google is taking the guesswork and confusion out of what you need in a relationship. Because how can we give you everything you need if we don’t listen to everything you say?”

Check it out below –

This isn’t the first time we’ve covered someone poking fun at Google’s privacy issues by making a Gmail reference. Back in July, a video leaked from a Microsoft conference called Gmail Man. The video shows a mailman who reads everyone’s mail, and is quite unapologetic about it.

Content marketing is customer centric and therefore often focused not only on creating information to educate prospects and customers about product/service features and benefits, but also about topics of interest relevant to the situations that cause people to need or want those products and services.

Effective content marketing informs prospective buyers of what they need to know in order to help them arrive at a logical conclusion to buy and recommend. Relevant and engaging content facilitates that outcome.

“Great content isn’t great until it’s discovered and shared.”

Understanding the information needs of the customers you’re trying to reach is the first step in creating a great editorial plan. The role of keywords in a content marketing program come into play as a manifestation of knowing what customers are interested in and what their pain points are. What are they searching for? What are they talking about on the social web?

Great content is best optimized, so to speak, for the intended reader first and foremost. At the same time, that content is thoughtful about keywords that can attract new readers through search and social recommendations. Great content is amazing. Great content that is findable and shareable is even better.

Here’s an Example Scenario:  Company 1 2 3 wants to focus on “Round Widgets”

• Target Customers Care About Round Widgets That Cost Less and are Environmentally Safe
• Target Customers Search for “round widgets”, “low cost widgets”, “green widgets”, “environmentally safe widgets”
• Target Customers Socially Discuss “save money on widgets”, “widget impact on the environment”
• The Content Plan Outlines An Array of Content Objects Supporting Search Keywords & Social Topics
• Content Plan Tactical Execution: Blog Hub, Video Tips, Shared Customer Widget Photos, Facebook Page for Widget Environmental Tips, Email Tips & Issues Newsletter, Widget Deals Twitter Account, Guest Blog Posts Using Target Keywords on Widget Blogs, Contributed Articles to Consumer & Environmental Publications on Widget Cost Saving Tips and Being “Green”

By coordinating customer needs with content creation, optimization and social publishing, there’s a much greater and more relevant reach for the investment.

Keywords guide content optimization for findability through search engines as well as a focus on topics that customers care about and are discussing on the social web. Keywords are also useful guides for the blogger and publication outreach.

Keywords drive the “optimize and socialize” efforts of content marketers to share, promote and increase the reach of information that is relevant for customers who may buy or refer brand products and services.

The mistake online marketers often make is to solely lead with keywords (vs. customer needs) thinking that optimizing for the most popular phrases are all that is needed to maximize customer reach. High ranking content that doesn’t resonate with readers to share or with customers to buy and refer isn’t an effective approach. Also, customer information needs will vary according to where they are in the research and buying process.

Keywords and topics change over time so even after a customer is acquired, it’s important to monitor, measure and refine as needed.

My question for you: Are your content marketing and optimization efforts focused solely on high popularity count keywords? Are you digging into both search keywords and social topics as you formulate your content marketing strategy?

Originally published at TopRank Online Marketing Blog

Sherman, set the Wayback Machine to the Interwebz circa 2001 …

Page rank was the big magilla in the ranking algorithm. It didn’t matter how crappy your website was–with enough links from anywhere, you could get a page to rank. Trust and authority where unknown concepts in SEO. If you had a moderate to low competition KWD, you could rank without the word being on the page. If your KWD was moderate or harder you did need some on page SEO, and keyword density WAS a factor. At the peak of this zaniness I remember reading posts about the optimal keyword density being between 4.9% and 12.2%. The word had to be in the first sentence, had to be in italics once on the page, in bold once on the page, and in bold and italics once on the page. While not entirely true, there was a kernel of truth to be had somewhere in there.

Then in the fall of 2003 the shoe dropped. Google pushed out the Florida Update on a Saturday morning, and all hell broke loose. Trust and authority became leading indicators, and all those crazy keyword density formulas became the stuff talked about on the porch at the SEO old folks home. In short, the right anchor text from a trusted source could make a page rank even if the word wasn’t on the page. Copywriters who loved superfluous wordy adjectives reveled around the bonfire with high value link sellers. Of course things changed over the next few years, but people cling to old ideas, especially if they love them or if they make their lives easier or more enjoyable.

Back to the question: does keyword density matter … kinda. If you want to rank for the phrase [fuzzy blue widgets], you had better have the phrase [fuzzy blue widgets] on your page. In fact, it should probably be the keyword on your page with the highest density (excluding stop words).That said, you shouldn’t stuff the words [fuzzy blue widgets] on your page to the point where it becomes awkward to read. While I hesitate to give a number, if you have a keyword density that approaches or goes over 10% you should probably give it to a non SEO to make sure it reads like natural language. That’s not to say you should never do it but, if you do, have a damn good reason and make sure it passes the sniff test.

How do I check keyword density? I use the Scribe SEO plugin (see Scribe SEO Review). Scribe SEO is paid tool that does a few things, and one of them is checking keyword density right from the WordPress post panel. It’s incredibly easy to use. Before I publish a post, I run Scribe and check that the word/terms that I want to optimize for are the ones that have the highest density. I’ve been using it for several months now and am very happy with it. Here’s a screen shot of what it thinks of this post:

Keyword density via scribe seo

No discussion of keyword density would be complete without touching on LSI (latent semantic indexing). You can read about LSI in lots of places on the web but, simply put, it’s Google ability to understand synonyms–i.e., that [cars] and [automobiles] are the same thing. While Google says they aren’t using LSI and I agree, I do have to say that something similar to LSI is definitely at work. My proof? Do a keyword search for [mike gray]. The word [mike] never appears on my website, but Google ranks me for the term and highlights the word [michael], so they have some some idea the words are connected. However, in actual practice, I don’t see this all that often in the wild.

So what are the takeaways from this post:

• While keyword density isn’t a primary factor, it isn’t something to be ignored
• Make sure you are emphasizing the keywords you want with a KWD density tool
• Scribe SEO provides keyword density inside the WordPress post screen
• If you have a high density, make sure you are doing it while still sounding natural
• Don’t depend on Google to use LSI or understand synonyms, even though they may be trying to

Originally published on Graywolf’s SEO Blog

The biggest difference being that Google figures if you’re on a mobile it’s likely your intent is more local focused – plus it’s easier to know exactly where the search is being conducted.

The other issue is that people turning to the mobile browser tend to search on that device a little differently, think more abbreviated, than they do on the desktop and that’s something we all need to understand a little better.

The Google Keyword Tool is a tool that every marketer must have in the toolbox as a quick way to understand some data on the kinds of things people are actually searching for – or at least the actual words and phrases they use most when looking for what you offer.

You access mobile data through the "Advanced options" link

The tool recently received a nice little update with the addition of mobile search data. Using this tool is the first step to understanding the keyword differences inherent in mobile search. The reason I think this is such an important topic is that at some point mobile search will be the dominant form of search – it’s already there for some industries. (BIA Kelsey Report)

It’s time to start thinking about blending some of your keyword strategies to make them more mobile centric – and of course getting serious about local optimization. (5 Ways to Make Your Website Scream Local)

Some observation’s from playing with the tool:

• If you sell something that is mobile related or found primarily via a phone you’ll get far better keyword ideas
• You can now have a much fuller picture of the search volume for phrases – mobile is doubling and tripling volume estimates
• This is a pretty significant piece in the local search optimization game

Here’s Google’s official help page for using the Keyword Tool.

Originally published at DuctTapeMarketing.com

If you’re not familiar with negative keywords, advertisers can prevent their ads from appearing in response to certain search queries using negative keywords (specific words or phrases that help prevent ads from being displayed to customers who are unlikely to click).

Advertisers can now add thousands of negative keywords t both the campaign and ad group levels. The company notes that you’ll need to delete negative keywords at the keyword level, because the list limit hasn’t been expanded there yet.

"Doing so will also keep your keyword-level negatives from overriding your newly expanded lists at the higher levels," says Microsoft’s Tina Kelleher.

Advertisers need to upload their expanded lists of negative keywords at the campaign or ad group level with the negative keywords migration wizard in the Desktop, then remove keyword-level negatives, the company says.

"Unless, of course, you’re perfectly happy with your campaigns as they are now and don’t need the increased capacity for negatives at the higher levels, then there’s no action you need to take at all," Kelleher adds.

"The broad match modifier is a new AdWords targeting feature that lets you create keywords which have greater reach than phrase match and more control than broad match," writes Dan Friedman, on the Inside AdWords blog.

"Adding modified broad match keywords to your campaign can help you get more clicks and conversions at an attractive ROI, especially if you mainly use exact and phrase match keywords today."

Friedman says if you mainly use broad match keywords, that changing your current broad match keywords to modified broad match will probably lead to a hefty decline in click and conversion volumes and will not improve quality score.

To remedy this Friedman writes "To maintain volume, keep existing broad match keywords active, add new modified broad match keywords, and adjust bids to achieve your target ROI based on the results you see."
 

"Whether you have ten keywords or ten thousand, making sure your ads are showing is a top priority," says Miles Johnson of Google’s Inside AdWords crew.

To use the feature, simply select "Diagnose keywords" from the "More actions" menu on the Keywords tab:

"After clicking ‘Run test,’ you’ll see the real-time results appear in the Status column next to each keyword," explains Johnson. "If all is well, you see ‘Ad showing.’ If not, you’ll see a brief summary of the problem (for example, ‘Low bid or quality score’)."

Users can hover over speech bubble icons to get more details on the status of any keyword. You may find more info on quality score issues, for example.

So – if you’re doing keyword research, where should you begin? Unless you’re an affiliate marketer you already have a product and since you’re the target audience of this article – I’m going to assume that’s the case. For the purpose of this article I’m going to pick a hobby of mine and also an area where I don’t have a client and imagine I’m doing keyword research for the imaginary online downhill mountain biking store DH Mountain Bikes.

So Where To Begin …

The first thing one needs to do is try to think up all the possible phrases that might apply. I call this my seed list … it’s the list of phrases that my research starts with and is generally based on brainstorming. In this case the list would be:

• downhill mountain bike
• dh mountain bike
• mountain bike

The keyword tool I generally use first is Google’s keyword suggestion tool. There are other great tools but I’ve found Google’s tool to be as accurate as any other, the price is definitely right (free), and they’re very good about providing the information required to know just how wrong the data is if you know where to look. So let’s do just that.

Before we begin you’ll need to head over to Google’s keyword tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. In the top left (for now) you’ll see a link to a beta version of the tool. Click on the link and you’ll be at the new version of the tool which will provide you easy access to much more information – as long as you know what to look for. So let’s begin with our three seed phrases.

When you see the list you’ll first have to know what the numbers are. This tool is a tool designed for AdWords and the default number is the Broad match which means it includes every phrase with the term. For example, the term “mountain bike” has a broad match total of 2,740,000 which will include “downhill mountain bike”, “mountain bike parts”, “kona mountain bike”, etc. etc. What we want to know is how many searches are for “mountain bike”. Down the left-hand side you’ll see a set of check boxes. Deselect “Broad” and select “Exact” and you’ll get the Exact match numbers – the number of searches for the exact phrase. You’ll quickly see that 2,740,000 drop to 450,000. This is how many people searched the GOOGLE SEARCH NETWORK for “mountain bike”. Why is this in caps – because it’s so commonly misunderstood that I definitely want your attention brought to it. This isn’t the number of searches on Google.com – it’s the number of searches on all sites who’s search is powered by Google. From YouTube to Beanstalk’s blog search – it’s all in there so the data starts to get skewed from the start. Then let’s add in all the automated queries from rank-checking tools and just manual searches from you and your competitors and the data gets further skewed. This skewing will exist in all data – the thing I like about using Google is that at least we know more about what’s adjusting the data.

OK – so from there we need to organize the data into a more useful set of information. To do this one needs to understand the columns of data. The first column is the keyword, the second you’ll see is a link to the term on Google Insights. We’ll get into this later. The next is Global Monthly Searches – this is the average number of searches/mth worldwide. This can be helpful in some industries but in ours – I’m only concerned with the US market which is where my imaginary store ships to so I’m more interested in the next column Local Monthly Searches which is the number of searches in the US (or whatever region I’ve specified when entering my keyword phrases). This is the data I’m interested in. The last column is the search trend. This is extremely important but often overlooked. It is a column that wasn’t visible by default in the old/current version.

OK – let’s organize our data by search volume. Click on the “Local Monthly Searches” and you’ll see the keywords order by descending search volume. With this data in front of me I then typically look over to the Trend data to see what I can find there. In our case we’re going to see an increase in search volume in the spring and summer. This make sense of course. Think of your industry and see if the trends reflect what makes sense.

I’m also looking for anomalies. Often I’ll see phrases that jump for a single month. One has to know that unless there was a news story or other event that would spark interest in a single term or brand – a tool or some other such incident is likely falsifying the data. You need to look at these trends and see if they make sense. If not – you need to either test the phrases with PPC or just skip over them and select different phrases. There’s little worse as an SEO than focusing energies on a phrase only to find that the search volume is not what was expected based on the estimates delivered.

So now what?

So what do you do once you’ve filtered your data down to just what you’re interested in looking into competition levels on. Well – the first thing I do is to look to the trends to see if there are any phrases that obviously need to be filtered out. In this case there really aren’t any high in the search volume column. So the only thing left is to look at the competition levels to see what makes sense. For our purposes we’ll be dividing the list and research into two categories:

Major phrases – We need to decide what the long-term goals are going to be and the targets for the main pages. These will be the totally generic phrases such as “mountain bike” and “downhill mountain bike” as well as brand or type specific phrases such as “specialized mountain bike” and “full suspension mountain bike”.

Longtail phrases – We also need to look into the types of longtail phrases we’re going to want to target. In this case I know I’ll want to target specific parts which will require new research. I will spare you the details there but I’ll end up with specific models of components such as “hayes mx2”. You don’t need to know what that is – you need to know the makes and models in your industry (or other longatil opportunities such as “new york hotel with jacuzzi”, etc.)

I generally would gather together a list of 15 or 20 major phrases and 50 or 60 longtail phrases and would then head into the competition analysis to determine which phrases to move forward with.

These keywords are suggestions supplied to Google by domain owners about the types of content users are looking for when they arrive on an undeveloped domain. They are used to help our system determine the best ads to place on these domains. For example, with the domain www.rockstarsand.com, a publisher might suggest the keywords "bitumen" and "mining" so that ads may appear from advertisers offering oil extraction products.

Keyword hints remain optional. When keyword hints are provided by the publisher, our ad-matching systems will use them more often. As always, we aim to provide the most relevant ads for the user, the best value for advertisers, and the best returns for publishers. This means in some cases, keyword hints will be ignored when we have evidence that other targeting approaches perform better.

Keyword hints have to adhere to Google’s policy guidelines for AdSense for Domains. The company also recommends the following guidelines to maximize effectiveness:

- Limit your keywords to 3-5 phrases
- Ensure your keywords/phrases are separated by commas
- Ensure your hints are relevant to the domain
- Stick to one theme for potentially ambiguous domains.

Google says it is working on additional product improvements for AdSense for Domains, and these will be announced in the coming months.

Related Articles:

> Google Launches AdSense Product Ideas Page

> Google Makes Risky AdSense For Domains Expansion

> YouTube Videos in AdSense Could Drive Clicks

In fact, Cutts mentions that people have sued each other for meta tag keyword theft, when really this is just a waste of everybody’s time, because they don’t even play a role in the ranking of sites on Google. Have you been under the impression that the keywords meta tag was important to ranking in Google? Comment here.

"About a decade ago, search engines judged pages only on the content of web pages, not any so-called "off-page" factors such as the links pointing to a web page," says Cutts. "In those days, keyword meta tags quickly became an area where someone could stuff often-irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords. Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag."

Just because Google ignores the "keywords" meta tag, that doesn’t mean it ignores all meta tags. In fact, there are several that the search engine definitely uses. For one, Google sometimes uses the "description" meta tag as the text for search results snippets. But even then, the "description" meta tag isn’t used to influence ranking.

Google also recognizes the "google," "robots," "verify-v1," "content type," and "refresh" meta tags. Information about how Google understands these can be found at this page in the Webmaster Tools help center.

"It’s possible that Google could use this information in the future, but it’s unlikely," Cutts says of the "keywords" meta tag. "Google has ignored the keywords meta tag for years and currently we see no need to change that policy."

So the moral of the story is, if a competitor is jacking your keywords, and using them in their own "keywords" meta tag, this will have no effect whatsoever in how they rank in Google when compared to your site. Cutts says other search engines might use the information, but Google doesn’t.

Google does note that its enterprise Search Appliance has the ability to match meta tags, but this is of course separate from Google web search.

As I have said before, these videos and other tips Google frequently gives out are worth paying attention to for any webmaster looking to rank well. Whether they’re talking about duplicate content, meta tags, or paid links, they’re all aimed at telling webmasters how it is, and clarifying any misconceptions to the contrary. Whether you agree with Google’s methods in all cases or not, the tips are for your benefit.

Like it or not, Google controls what people find on the web when they search. The company’s huge market share is just something that is. There is always the possibility that could change in the future, but at this point, it looks like webmasters are not going to be able to ignore Google for a long time, if they hope to be found on the web by searchers.

We realize (and Google surely does too) that many well-seasoned marketers already know that Google ignores the "keywords" meta tag, but webmasters are born everyday, and not all of them have been so heavily seasoned to this point, and that’s why Google puts this information out there. There is always misinformation (particularly when it comes to search), and sometimes the record just has to be set straight. Who better to do that than Google itself?

Do you find Google’s Webmaster Central videos useful or do you think they’re mostly just retreads of things you already know? Share your thoughts here.