Research is Key(words)

Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz wrote a recent blog post about different strategies and tools for keyword research with excellent tips on how to effectively gather and organize data. Most of the tools he covered, however, work primarily for keyword research in English, and especially well for keywords that have higher search volume. If you are doing keyword research for a site in Hebrew, or in Swahili, or in Afrikaans, you have far less tools at your disposal. Even if a tool works in your language of choice (including English), there may not be enough search volume in your language or in your country of research to return results, as happens with Google Trends.

One of the most helpful ways to conduct research for these “lower search volume” keywords is to use Google Adwords. Not just the Adwords Keyword Tool – which may or may not be helpful in your case – but an actual Google Adwords campaign. By seeing how often your ads appear for the keywords you indicate, you can get a more accurate idea of how many people are searching for those keywords.

In general, when you set up an Adwords campaign, you want your ad to appear as high as possible in the search results, as long as you don’t have to pay too much. When you run a research campaign, however, you want to set your bid high enough that the ad appears, but low enough that the ad appears towards the low end of the search results (i.e. positions 7-10). This way you reduce the chances that people will click on your ad, reducing the amount of money you need to spend. You can get an idea of how high to set your maximum bid by using Adwords Traffic Estimator.

Start out by putting your keywords into the entry field, as seen above, using quotation marks if you want exact match (which you will probably choose if your keyword research is to determine which of several similar phrases people search for more). Do not choose a Max CPC, but do indicate your currency, language and country of interest.

Results:

Note that the bid amounts that are returned are enough to place the ad in positions 1-3 – not what we want for our research. Continue entering lower and lower amounts into the “Maximum CPC” field and clicking “Get New Estimates” until the Estimated Ad Positions show 7-10. See what the minimum amount is that you can enter and have it stay 7-10 (any lower will take you off the first page and severely minimize your chances of the ad showing at all, even if people do enter your keywords).

With prices like these, even if a few people do click on your ad, it won’t cost you so much – a bargain for effective keyword research. (Why Google estimates your daily expenses as $1 if they estimate 0 clicks at 6 cents apiece is a bit of a mystery… so you won’t be upset at them if you actually have to pay something?) Make sure to have a real landing page for your ad – if someone does click, you might gain a customer in addition to the information.

You now have the information you need to set up your research campaign, but these numbers are only an approximation. After your campaign is up and running, check frequently to make sure that your ads are showing, and showing in the position you want. You may need to adjust your bid up or down. Make sure – as mentioned above – that you indicate exact match for your keywords in order to get accurate information if you want to compare frequency of similar keywords (which would have a chance of appearing for each other if broad match was chosen), unless you are using Analytics filters that enable you to see exact keywords which sent visitors to your landing page.

After you have let the ads run for a significant period of time (still monitoring frequently to ensure that your campaign is running effectively), gather and analyze your data to see which keywords received the most impressions.

Happy campaigning!

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