Marketing on Internet Road 

Keywords research is a fundamental and highly important factor for any Internet Marketing and/or Search Engine Marketing activity; no news here. A new research by MarketingSherpa shows that the traditional ways of doing keywords research are not necessarily the most effective  nor commonly used ones.

Keywords research is not anymore about using a keyword suggestion tool like the one from Google, the one from WordTracker or others. Those are still very valuable but limited and are not considered as the most effective tactic. It's a good starting point for any campaign and surely for a new website, but it only a starting point and limited in its results.



The results of the research MarketingSherpa conducted shows that companies are using other means and tactics for getting effective results for their keywords research.

The most used tactics reported in the research is analysis of the Web Analytics data. This makes a lot of sense: since Google Analytics is free, there is no barrier to use it on any website and the profficiency of using the data collected by Google Analytics gets better all the time. Regardless of the tool, analyzing the keywords used by your visitors to find your site is a priceless tactics and actually shows any website owner if his/her SEO and PPC efforts are on the right track as well as gives new ideas for keywords that are a great opportunity to optimize the site's pages for.
As the research shows, a bit of further analysis on those keywords - which of the keywords convert better and which of them are being used more frequently - will take the keywords research to the next level. There is no surprise those are reported to be the most effective tactics, regardless of the size of the company.

The ease of using web analytics tools such as Google Analytics to track and analyze the search phrases visitors are using on the site's internal search makes it another great way to learn on the website's keywords to get optimized. What is more simpler than that: you collect data on what visitors are searching to get to your website as well as what they are searching when on your website.

But your site and company don't operate in a silo: how about your competition? More and more website owner realize that just like competitive analysis served them in traditional marketing, it is greatly effective online. What's better than to see which keywords your competitors are competing for with their SEO efforts and with they Pay-per-Click campaigns?

The new entrant in the list of most effective keywords research tactics is "social semantic mining". Using social media by monitoring the major social networks and bookmarking site (e.g.: delicious, StumbleUpon, etc') enable analysis of new words in your market and niche. If your target audience is using those keywords to communicate and engage in the social networks, what is better than to optimize your website (and your social media presence) for those keywords?

A word about the budgets: for some, the amounts that are presented in the image above might look irrelevant. They shouldn't: Most of the tactics reported for the keywords research don't cost or don't cost much (Google Analytics is free) and there is barrier to use those tactics. It is simply a good practice to see what the bigger spenders are doing and use the same tactics even if your budget is significantly less.

As a conclusion: there are multiple ways available to perform keywords research, beyond the simply straight-forward ones. Use a combination of the keywords research tools with your Analytics data, competitive analysis and Social Media monitoring to get to those best keywords you are looking for.


The full article on the effective keywords research tactics from MarketingSherpa could be found at: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?id=31582

Online Competitive Analysis is being recognized more and more is a “must have” for any company that wishes to compete and dominate in the Search Engine Marketing world.

Why an Online Competitive Analysis is a Must

The reason is very simple: you are not operating in a deserted island. There are so many parameters that influence your results and success in competing online, that investing in all of them might dictate a huge investment and sometimes on least important ones. The market your business operates in has its own unique characteristics and as such – the competition has its one unique ones.

Just as any business should have an updated version of a competitive analysis document, with SWOT analysis showing where he is placed in the market he is competing on, any commercial website should have a clear view of its competition and analysis of what it takes to compete and be dominant online, by having an online competitive analysis.

What an Online Competitive Analysis Should Include

An online competitive analysis should help you answer questions such as:

• How many backlinks does your web page need have? (Important note: it’s not only how many backlinks to the site, but also the specific page you are competing with on a specific word; it could be either of those parameters or both together)
• Do you need to use Pay-per-Click campaign in your industry? Are your competitors using PPC with the SEM strategy? If not – does it mean you shouldn’t as well, or will it give you a competitive advantage?
• If PPC is a good option (always is…), what should be your monthly budget for the campaign?
• What types of landing pages do you need, both for your Organic listings and for your Paid search initiatives?
• Do you need a blog (sure you do…) to drive away prospects and customers from looking at your competitors as thought leaders?
• What are the keywords your competitors are targeting? Did you miss any of them on your SEO and PPC campaigns?
• How big should your site be? Should you make sure adding 2 pages each month to your site? 4? 1? Engage in Article Marketing campaign?
• How active are your competitors in the Social realm? Do you need a Facebook page because your target audience follows your competitors there, or maybe you can gain an edge with having a good one?
• Do you need to invest more in an Email Marketing campaign and deliver news to your prospects and customers, just like your competitors are doing?

How to Correctly Read and Analyze an Online Competitive Analysis

Just like with any analysis, you need to ensure that your first step is all about collecting the right kind of data. The second step will include proper analysis of the data. Then – get some actionable insights out of the data and the analysis. The last step – roll out the action items you took as a result of the preceding steps. This way, you will make sure the process is correct and the actions are really a direct result of the situation as well as your decisions and your means (e.g. – your budget).

Whether you are running your SEO, PPC, Social Media and other Internet Marketing strategies in-house of with an agency, the online competitive analysis is your tool to direct your online marketing initiatives in the right direction. And if you employing an external SEM agency for your internet marketing make sure they are doing a competitive analysis for your website, so it is used to drive them and your budget in the right direction. Only then you can align expectations and measure the results.

Do  you have experience with online competitive analysis? We'll be glad to hear of that, as well as any other comments.