SEO Blog

With Christmas just a few short weeks away, those very nice people at Google have just released another (free) keyword research application to help advertisers find additional phrases that they could be advertising on within Google’s pay per click platform, AdWords.

The Search Based Keyword Tool acts differently to most in that it uses your site to identify what it believes your web pages are about and then offers up a list of search queries that it believes are relevant to you and that you are not currently bidding on.

As with any keyword research application, you need to take the data and apply your own knowledge before blindly running off and adding a few more billion to Google’s profits. However, this tool has other potential uses. For example, you could also use the data Google presents to you and extrapolate negative keywords, i.e. if Google believes there is a match for a keyword, there is a danger your adverts could be shown if you use broad match in your campaign. Secondly, if there is a definite disconnect between what Google is indicating it believes a page to be about and your intentions, then you may want to review the page in question to validate your copy, e.g. text, headers, title etc.,

All in all, this looks like a useful keyword research tool and astute online advertisers should be able to find plenty of useful data to use to their advantage.

Those kind people at Wordtracker have just released a free service “Keyword Questions“.

We’ve used a combination of our keyword research and various software applications in the past to uncover the questions that searchers ask online. Why? Answering questions in the form of an article or blog post is a great way to give your site a boost in terms of increased visitor numbers. The search engines love to see fresh content that helps searchers to find the information they went online to research.

Wordtracker have done us all a favour by making this research available to all. Below is a screenshot from a question I asked about questions!

Wordtracker Keyword Questions

The data is from the US database so not perfect for UK online marketers but should still be a useful resource.

Thank you Wordtracker!

Although Nielsen Online, the owner of Blogpulse, describe it as an “automated trend discovery system for blogs“, in my opinion, this description doesn’t do it justice.

It goes far beyond that and is a valuable tool for anyone wishing to conduct online market research.

Blogpulse tracks blog activity constantly and you can use it to search by topic, brand or even URL to see who is blogging about you, your company or a topic you may be interested in.

For site owners, this is a gold mine of data and can be used in many ways. For example:

1. Trend Research
The site has free trend analysis so you can compare one, or more, terms with another.

Blogpulse Trend Research Example

2. Conversation Tracker
This feature is a great way to pick up on the ‘buzz’; to find out the flow of conversations on a particular topic across the web.

You could use Blogpulse to stimulate fresh ideas for articles, new web pages or simply to post comments yourself on the latest hot topics. Entering a term that is relevant to you or your business will instantly uncover blog posts that have been made recently on that subject giving you the opportunity to carry out further research or even post comments on these entries to position yourself as a subject matter expert and build up the link popularity for your site.

All in all, this is a really useful site offering free online market research and a ton of useful data.