Is the Google Keyword Tool any use for SEO?

The title of this post is a question I was asked by a colleague recently. I realise that for most people working on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) I’m teaching you to suck eggs, in which case stop reading, or read it and tell me what I’ve missed! But for any beginners (which is what this is aimed at), read on for my answer:

Yes the “Google Keyword Tool” is very useful to anyone doing SEO.

What it does is analyse actual search traffic for certain keywords in Google as well as suggest other keywords. The current keyword tool is a combination of two previous keyword tools and despite initial problems with accuracy of the search figures it seems to be fairly trustworthy now. That said I wouldn't base your company strategy on the figures they quote, just use them as a handy tool, backed up by your own site analytics.

For example type the word ‘property’ in there it will tell you how many times people searched for that keyword on Google worldwide and in the UK. You can search for many words at the same time and it will also give you related keywords, again with search quantity.

Now there are loads of uses for this but some examples include:

• When you’re looking to optimise a page about a specific subject, for example “Architect jobs”. I can type this in to the keyword tool and find out how many times it’s been searched for. However I can also type in “architects” and find out related topics people are searching for which may help me extend my website reach, such as “the role of an architect” and “architect salary”. In this particular example I added these two subjects to my job website and so increased the traffic to the site.

• Another example is when someone comes along and says “I’ve a great idea, why don’t we change all our title tags to ‘Real estate’ from ‘property’ to grab the American market”. I can go to Keyword tool and prove that it’s not a good idea because the word isn't used much in the UK or that maybe we should create an entirely new section targeted at the American market that discusses real estate.

You probably already know the top keywords people use to reach your site, but by using this you can gain a better understanding of the search universe for different keywords. It can confirm what you’re doing is right, maybe clarify keywords you should use or suggest other areas of development.

Oh and you can also now put in a website address and it will use all the keywords on that site to feed its keyword ideas.

The original purpose of this is for people to find keywords to put against their AdWords but it works for what I’ve suggested too.

PS: There are two versions of the tool one 'external' and one built in to Adwords. There are numerous posts about the accuracy of the external tool so suggest you use the one in AdWords. You just need a FREE AdWords account to access it - you don't even need to use AdWords itself.

Related posts
Finding keywords for Google Adwords (Jul 2007)
Growing strange cacti (Feb 2009)

The year 2010 so far in search and digital marketing

Structured data and social media are the two major trends (in my humble opinion) to impact upon search and digital marketing so far this year.

I've posted just the once this year, I'm not proud about it, so i thought, 'what have i missed in online marketing and SEO this year?' and was it anything important?

So I've had a look, and put together my highlights of the first six months of 2010, this is in NO way comprehensive.

22nd Jan - 'Event' markup in Google's Rich Snippets. This was also followed by 'microdata' in March and 'recipes' in April. My only blog post this year explains what rich snippets are - and although these three updates are not mind-blowing the continued use and expansion of structured data in search is my first trend of 2010 and a big change that websites need to embrace.

28th Feb - Facebook was added to Google's real-time search. This relates to the second major trend of 2010, not real-time search but the rise of social media in digital marketing. Originally launched using Twitter (of course) amongst others, Google's and Bing's real-time search pushes social media further to the forefront of digital marketing. Watch a good video about real-time search and the history of SEO on SEOmoz.

8th April - Digital Economy Act 2010. Hastily whizzed through parliament before government was dissolved for the general election, this is about regulating digital media. Specifically this covers how internet service providers (ISPs) must provide a list of people believed to have infringed copyright seemingly based on self certification by the copyright owner and ISP. There is no clear indication of checking the validity of evidence against these infringements so leaving the act open to potential abuse and limitation of civil liberty.

Do you feel represented?
(img source - bitter wallet)

7th May - New look Google. On a lighter note, Google has had a spring clean. Amongst other things what this may do is expose the extent of universal search to more people, making it all the more important to sort out those blogs, news articles, images, products. Like with the rise of social media, digital marketers have just been given more reasons why they should have their search fingers (that's the index on the left hand) in many pies.

11th June - Caffeine indexing system. Caffeine is Google's new search index. This is what it looks at when you type a keyword in and press 'search'. Caffeine apparently searches everything quicker through it's novel structure including real-time web, video, images, news. It will be a few months before we see if there's any direct impact on SEO but it does seem to back up the importance of the trends I mentioned earlier of structured data and social media.

15th July - iPad released. Could this reinvent the world as we know it? No. But i thought I'd mention it as websites race to get themselves iPad ready and EVERY competition at the moment offers one as a prize.

Soon - Google image search update. This doesn't seem to have taken effect yet for me, but apparently was launched recently and is "more intuitive and gets the user the answer a lot quicker". I know a number of sites where images are as important to their users as the text, but this has never been reflected in search. I hope this changes that, but we'll have to wait and see.

And let's not forget - The mobile web. Everyone i know (apart from me) has an iPhone or an Android powered phone. The mobile web is coming of age (sorry for the oft-repeated cliche but i honestly think it's justified this time) and those sites that cater for mobile users are going to have the edge. Especially sites which provide content relevant to those of us on the move - like sport results, restaurant listings, pub quiz answers etc.

With all this excitement and technological invention it sounds like SEO just got complicated. But i don't think it has, all these things are just important to bear in mind. A firm SEO footing is still good content, quality and quantity of links, relevance to your users and then you can look at reaching your audience in as many ways as possible.

Is structured data the future of search?

Rich snippets are increasingly used by Google to present searchers with information above and beyond the site title and meta description - such as reviews, prices, addresses - any data that is 'structured'.

This is nothing new, which is why it's such an appropriate subject for a cutting edge blog such as this to write about after over 4 months of total silence.

An example would be review and price range information for a restaurant. Something Google currently provides on Yelp search results - one of their partners when they initially embarked on rich snippets.

How this works is Yelp.co.uk presents the review and price information on each restaurant page in a format that Google can understand using 'microformats' or RDFa markup.

In English that last sentence translates as; Google knows that the two dollar signs refer to the 'pricerange' and the 15 reviews refers to the amount of reviews (or 'count').

By defining the content of a website into principle parts (such as 'pricerange' and 'count') it allows for easy comparison across websites.

Instead of having to go into a website to see that Yelp has 15 reviews and Toptable has 20 reviews you can see this in the search results, such as in the screenshot above.

This could potentially work for any data. Imagine searching on Google and instead of just titles and descriptions you get a summary of a site page - so if it's a product, you see the price, if it's a restaurant it gives a rating, if it's an event, it gives a date.

This would make it easier for you to know the content of a website and quicker for you to search and surf.

Personally i think this is a direction the web could take IF websites catch on to this method of coding and agree specific microformats - for example everyone uses 'price' for prices as opposed to 'cost', 'amount', 'payment' etc.

The well established Google product search (previously Froogle) is making good use of microformats and Wolfram Alpha had a good bash at it last year (what happened to them?!*) - i definitely think it's an area to keep an eye on.

*Update: They are providing factual answers to Apple's Siri software amongst other things...

The only thing standing in the way would be cleverer search algorithms that can figure out which part of web page is the price, the review, the date without the need for it to be hard coded as such. I'm sure the magical web boffins are thinking about this as we speak. Shh, they can't be disturbed...

Related posts
Search images by the colours within them (Feb 09)
What content types can Google Search? (Dec 08)

5 steps to improve your online presence

Just written an article about 5 simple steps to improve your website's ranking in Google.

There's also the same thing arranged in a graphic.

Enjoy!

Growing strange cacti

This is just a quick post with a few resources on growing cacti, especially weird ones!

This post is also a test post to prove the effectiveness of title tags and keyword optimisation on getting to number one in Google for a fairly obscure keyword phrase.

By ensuring the exact phrase (and variations) is in the title tag and is in the page copy you can reach the top of Google.*

*Obviously in the case of the keyword term I've chosen there's a danger that Google may see me as trying to spam their search engine unless the page actually contains content focused towards it.

Therefore i will actually provide some resources on rare cacti and their cultivation. Hopefully anyone actually looking for growing information or a Google employee won't think i'm a complete d*ckhead trying to do some dodgy black hat SEO as the page is also the most relevant to that term (i've checked, no other page or post covers cactus growth like this one, honest!).

• Cactus growing tips
• Wikipedia article on cacti
• A forum post about strange and rare cacti - unfortunately i don't think the pictures are live any more.
  
• British Cactus and Succulent Society - yes, this exists!

Also, if like me you want to know what a 'succulent' is here's the Wikipedia definition:

"Succulent plants store water in their leaves, stems and/or roots. The storage of water often gives succulent plants a more swollen or fleshy appearance than other plants, also known as succulence."

As of 16th Feb this post was the first result in Google for the term "Growing strange cacti" (in quotations).

Related posts
Finding keywords for Google Adwords (Jul 2007)
How to optimise your PDFs for SEO (Oct 2008)
Is the Google Keyword Tool any use for SEO? (Nov 2010)

4 basic video SEO tips

Since before YouTube launched in 2005 video has slowly become a bigger and bigger part of the internet. Video specific search engines have cropped up including Blinkx and Google Video, the latter feeding its results into the main Google search listings.

Video is another way to reach your users so the search optimisation of online video is nearly as important as the SEO of text.

1. Exposure - Put your videos on video sharing websites such as YouTube and Metacafe. You can of course put videos on your own site either via flash player or YouTube embed code but the advantage of video sharing websites are their large amount of video hungry users.

Video search - You'll appear in video search websites such as Blinx and Google video if your videos are on YouTube or Metacafe but you can add your own Media RSS feed of your videos to these sites too. (Clearly rainbow coloured logos are a prerequisite of having a video search site).

Useful link - Here is a list of video sharing and video search websites plus the relevant links to their submission pages.

2. Keyword optimisation
Optimise video much like you would images.

• Include keyword rich and relevant titles and descriptions - in the case of video sharing sites this is what appears as the page title and description in search listings.
• Adjacent text is also likely to affect the video SEO. Google explicitly states for images that they analyze "the text on the page adjacent to the image, the image caption and dozens of other factors to determine the image content." I don't think it's presumptuous to assume this may also be a factor in video SEO.

3. Closed captions and transcripts
When included in the video closed captions are an option that can be turned on by the user. This includes things such as subtitles but also environmental sounds, musical score, different languages etc.

These are of great benefit to users and vital for accessibility. Closed captioning allows your video to reach a far greater audience. YouTube explains how to add closed captions.

Their benefit to SEO is not obvious outside of the fact that the most usable and accessible sites tend to invite the most links.

However separately available video / audio transcripts CAN be particularly good for SEO, in addition to the embedded closed captions. If you have the transcripts then include these for download (as PDF) or even on a separate web page. This provides text that can be indexed not only extending the reach of the video but producing good content. More on this here.

4. Alternative HTML content - with the recent addition of flash indexation by Google you can use the SWFObject code to put alternative text behind the video for SEO.

Audio
We may at the moment just be stuck with the above optimisation methods but it's possible Google may start reading your video's audio tracks in the near future. Google have started beta testing GAUDI (Google Audio Search) on their YouTube political channels. It’s an audio search of YouTube videos. They take the audio tracks from videos using speech recognition technology and automatically convert them to text.

Useful links: ReelSEO - Fantastic video SEO site that I’ve just discovered.

Related posts
How to optimise your PDFs for SEO

How to optimise your PDFs for SEO

Optimise PDFs for search engines, much as you would any other page on your site. PDFs are returned in Google search listings just like HTML pages.

Here is a simple guide to optimising PDFs, to summarise:

• Keyword optimise, keep relevant, as you should any page on your site
• Text can be indexed, images can't, keep it texty
• Ensure PDF is not duplicate content
• Set a reading order
• Hyperlink to the PDF on your site with the PDF title
• Hyperlink within the PDF with relevant anchor text
• Include a company footer
• Input meta data - a step by step guide to inputting PDF meta data
• Ensure the file size is not to big
• Relevant file name - although not mentioned in this guide, choosing a relevant, clear file name is also important. This will become the URL (i.e. www.site.com/my_guide_to_scratching.pdf) so if it is obvious this may encourage clickthrough from search engines. It will also help you find the file in your back office and analytics!

Related posts
Tips to optimise videos - SEO
Growing strange cacti - a keyword optimisation test

What www.google.com does for SEO and keywords

I've just put www.google.com through SEOQuake (a handy Firefox plugin that provides keyword density and meta information) as part of my previous post about page title tags. I wanted to see whether Google used the <meta name=title> tag or not (it doesn't).

Search royalty

What i found was the following:

Title tag: "Google"
Meta keywords: None
Meta description: None

Keyword density
Number of words on www.google.com: 56
Just 3 words are repeated more than once and they are:

• "Web"
• "Search"
• "Google" (and "Google" is also in the title tag)
  

It's that simple. Google's home page is very clear about its purposes and I am in no doubt that the fact the above three words are the only duplicated ones is not an accident.

I wouldn't recommend leaving out keywords or descriptions for any site, however i also wouldn't tell Pele how to play football. Google owns search, they can do what they want, and when it comes to their home page the content is all that matters. I'm sure they might have a couple of links to boost their search rankings too...

Related posts
Growing strange cacti - a keyword optimisation test

SEO Suite 8 review: What does it do?

According to the Apex website, SEO Suite 8 is a ‘comprehensive’ Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) programme doing a variety of SEO functions.

Some of the functionality of SEO suite 8 is new to me and quite useful (such as the external link checker) however much of it can be found in numerous free tools on the web.

The cost of SEO Suite 8 ranges from £75 to £300 pounds for a number of different versions. I tested the trial version (which is free) for about 20 minutes and there is also more functionality over and above the core functionality I will look at below.

On the sites I carry out SEO on there are already initiatives in place that cover a lot of the functions of this software – such as directory submitting from an online list monitored via an excel spreadsheet, a linking policy done in much the same way, a manual check of internal website structure, tags and links plus reporting done through a separate analytics programme.

As a result I won’t be buying SEO suite 8 but it’s not as bad as my cynical mind expected it to be.

Following is a break down of all the functions and overview of what they do.

SEO suite 8 is split into 4 tools:

1. Site Optimizer
2. Site Submission
3. Links Building
4. Reporting

Site optimizer consists of:

• Keyword builder
• Input in a keyword and it will give you more related keywords. Same thing as Google Keyword Tool or Quintura does.
• Plus a ‘keyword library’ – which is where the list is stored, much like copy/pasting into Excel.
• Site optimizer
• Based on the keywords you input on the previous page this will scan your webpage(s) and tell you the keyword density
• Page creator
• I didn't use this but apparently it creates a page containing all the keywords. You could just do this yourself.
• Meta Tag Editor
• Hook SEO suite up to your website, enter in the meta tags you want and it will change them all. Again you could just do this without SEO suite.
• Competitor Analysis
• Do the same for you competitors and compare where you lie, what keywords they use etc.

Site submission revolves around submitting to search engines

• This has a list of search engines. Essentially it’s a browser that will take you to each of these search engines where you go through the normal submission process.
• Of course if you get people linking to your sites you may well get indexed without resorting to this. (click image below to enlarge)

Links building does what it says on the tin.

• Backward Link checker
• Find sites that link to yours. Do this in Google by entering "link:www.yoursitename.com" into the search box. Update: This is actually inaccurate, read how to get backlinks here.
• Competitor Link checker
• Find sites that link to your competitors. Do this in Google by entering "link:www.yourcompetitorssitename.com" into the search box. Update: This is actually inaccurate, read how to get backlinks here.
  
• Internal link analysis
• In their words "this will analyse your internal linking structure to make sure that it complies with search engine standards. This will help to increase your link reputation." - I couldn't figure out exactly what this did, think it shows amount / proportion of links.
• This seems a bizarre and slightly pointless way of checking site structure - card sorting and user testing (video on user testing) are probably more useful – however i could be wrong.
• External link analysis
• Checks your external links – this will check all the links to your site and look at the keywords contained within those links. One of the few functions of SEO suite I really liked. (click image below to enlarge)

• Link directory creator
• Submit to directories – as useful or not as directory submitter.
• Reciprocal link creator
• "It will send "personalized" reciprocal link invitations to all potential link partners" – much like sending a "personalized" email to a list of websites.
• Article submitter
• I wasn't actually aware of this technology – it will submit articles to popular ezine websites. I've never seen an ezine website but imagine this submitter tool to be along the same lines as the link directory creator.
• Link partner checker
• Become an SEO Clouseau with your link partners. Once you've entered in your link ‘partners’ (the sites you've asked to link to you) this will check their site to see the link actually exists.
• Link validator
• I couldn't get this to work but if it checks internal links then it may well be useful. This would mean alerting you to links on your site (both internal and external) that return dead pages, 404s etc.
• This is something that Google Webmaster tools also does, just not very well.

Reporting

• Web Ranking
• Set up regular reports to monitor your 'ranking' on search engines.
• I've always been a bit dubious of the word 'ranking'. Surely what’s more important are whether people are clicking through, not leaving your site, visiting other pages within it, buying products, reading articles etc. See my post on measuring SEO effectiveness.
• Page Rank
• Gives you Google page rank for all your URLs.
• Link popularity
• I got bored by this point but the promo is just as informative as this post on the matter telling me that "[checking your link popularity] can be done easily with the SEO Suite" no less than twice in a three sentence paragraph.
• Index checker
• What pages are indexed on which search engines, not just Google.
• Ranking on each engine, not just Google.
• Submission report
• Remember that submission you did earlier? Well here's where you find out if it worked.
• Site statistics
• Didn't get into this but quite a stats package with everything from hits to unique visitors. Much like Google Analytics, webtrends etc.

Finding keywords for Google Adwords

I've been using Google Adwords for a couple of years now and find it so much easier to use than Yahoo's version. Like everything Google you can adapt it to how you want it, everything's quick and automatic and it's really easy to use.

Did you know you can't stop Yahoo ads appearing on certain sites even if you want to? That means if a site is spamdexing by filling itself with adverts and no other content you can't remove yourself from it, that's up to Yahoo, in the meantime irrelevant visitors cost you money. OK you could stop your ads, refine them, adjust keywords, but wouldn't eliminating bad sites from your campaign be easier?!

However the one area with Google that's lacking is finding keywords.

Google keyword tool is handy and what i've been using for most ads but that was until i found something that was far more fun! - Quintura. OK it may be doing the same thing but with all the floating, moving words it gives you so many more ideas. So for a list of similar words then keyword tool is fine but for inspiration use Quintura. Then when you're bored of that just start typing in random words - I was amused to find that "Crystal Palace" also brings up "knitting needles".

Quintura also seems better for finding negative keywords - words to eliminate from your campaign that you don't need.

Related posts
Growing strange cacti (Feb 2009)
Is the Google Keyword Tool any use for SEO? (Nov 2010)