KEYWORDS: How can I find keywords to target now that the majority of searches have been hidden from keyword planner?
-
Hello Community,
I am not an expert and I need some advice. So thank you for your time
I read that Google is not showing the same amount of search volume data it was showing before (like up until 2-3 weeks ago, after the NSA scandal) and that now it's changed the way we should look at which keyword groups to target since we dont know anymore how many people actually searched for these terms.
Say I want to start a new site around the topic "french chocolate" (just joking, but say I want to).
How do I find out today which is the most searched term in that keyword group/cluster? I mean this in terms of volume of searches.
Please help, I need some guidance on how to approach my content developmente strategy from now on, I always heavily relied on keywords and that got me awesome results in less than a year!
Thank you again for your time
Best
-
Hey There
I know this question is a little old but just want to add some things. If we're talking about volume only - and getting accurate numbers from the Keyword Planner there are a few important things to know.
-
First of all - the changes are just calculating the numbers in slightly different ways. They are still accurate, so long as you know what's different.
-
For one, volume for desktop and mobile is now combined together - there is no separate report at the moment for desktop vs mobile so you're seeing these volumes combined
-
Next is they are now averaging volumes across the last 12 months (which before I imagine they may have pulled from the most recent month)
-
Now you can also not only get volume by country but also by city, state, region etc.
-
Lastly - they are showing you all exact match volume by default - which is what you want. Broad and even phrase match are not very ideal for SEO.
So when you go into keyword planner, it's actually easier in my opinion to get the right data. You don't need to set a match type. You don't need to add up desktop and mobile and they have average the last 12 months for you.
The only thing you need to do really is decide on your location. If you want to know how many people type "french chocolate" in France vs. the whole world or vs. Italy - that's the biggest choice you have to make really.
Full documentation from Google on the changes here.
Hope that helps
-
-
You can still get useful data directly from the AdWords keyword planner. In addition, you can see limited historical data from the Webmaster Tools report (CTR, Impressions etc), but be warned that this isn't the most accurate and reliable tool in the world. Sometimes the best keywords come from thinking about what your audiences' needs are and then using instinct to think about what search terms they might use to find your content. I will often use the AdWords tool to pick out a few keywords relating to the page and will then create variants that I believe are likely to be searched and are semantically relevant.
Often, content that is well thought-out and created from the sole perspective of quality (without keyword research) can perform amazingly. With semantics, it's becoming easier for content to rank based on the overall theme of the content, as opposed to individual keywords. Do consider the long-tail keywords that pop up in good quality content, too (this has always been hard to research anyway).
Good luck!
-
I would suggest you read the following post that outlines the pros and cons of keyword planner plus giving you some alternatives and ways to find out volumes:
http://moz.com/blog/keyword-volume-tools
Hope that helps!
-
Hi, with my first site that I started 1 year 2 months ago im up 33k visits per month only organic, 98% of it is from Google.
Im writing top quality content in Italian which is the country I operate in with my dev agency.
Now I want to make a new site that can double that number of visits just by targeting different niches that I find interesting and potential. I know I have awesome content to pull out and only need to understand if there are new ways to find awesome keywords with tons of traffic.
Do you know of any new ways? Has anything changed on the keyword tool in order for us to determine what are the highest searched words?
Thanks again
-
Are you starting it just to rank best? I will rather suggest start something that you like writing about; let it be chocolate or banana shake. Let's say you love "chocolates" search for the ideas.. go for a keyword with relatively low competition. Grab bits and pieces and grow on them.
Cheers!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Multiview - Are they worth or can I do it myself?
Hi, I'm new to the Moz Community here although I have visited this site quite a few times. Recently my company has been contacted by MultiView for a B2B marketing strategy to get our business in front of targeted and potential customers - based on behavior of website visitors - basically behavior based marketing and inbound lead summary. Are you all familiar with what Multiview does? If not, I can explain some more. But, I have a couple questions: Are they actually what they claim to be? Are they a trustworthy company? Is there a way I can do everything they are telling me with the getting particular ads in front of people based on behaviors (similar to AdWords, but this seems more in depth) and detailed info for the visitors to my site (actually see who they are)? I realize this may take more work on my part than having them do it. But, is there a way I can collect this info myself and do all this work myself? Behavior based campaigns and this sort of thing are new to me, as I haven't worked with this before for my company. So, any and all info is appreciated! Thanks!
Industry News | | QFish0 -
Now that Google is no longer publicly displaying Page Rank updates, how will this effect Moz's ability to calculate DA and PA?
Hi, How much more important do you guys think that Moz's Page Authority and Domain Authority metrics are going to become now that Google has stopped giving people public access to a site or pages Page Rank? And how accurate is PA and DA as a measurement in comparison to Page Rank..so for example if I was seeking a guestposting opportunity and saw a site as having a PR of 4....if I now looked to Moz's Page and Domain Authority metrics instead...would that still give me equivalent information on the strength of that domain and thus make a judgement on whether it will be a worthy site for a guestpost.. I guess what I am asking is, how close is now looking at Moz's metrics (ie. a third party company) to the info on PageRank that was being updated by Google themselves? Also will the lack of updated public PR info from Google effect the ability for Moz to calculate PA and DA?? Look forward to your replies on this,
Industry News | | sanj50500 -
Is there a really good place to find high end, cutting edge web developers online.
My issue is that I know there are a lot of web developers in the world and all of them are great just like all the great SEO's in the world. Does anyone know of a great place to find really top talent that is the kind where the people are constantly stretching and trying new things, etc.
Industry News | | RobertFisher
Is there a web dev board the better ones are on, etc. Any luck in other areas? We have a position available, but will not fill it with anyone average or above average. I really would love to know what boards, forums, etc. I can find them on, but every search lists 50 boards and, the is not my everyday world. I just do not know which are the ones that will put me in front of the best in the world. Any help is appreciated. Robert0 -
Penguin 2.0 Update - Just Hit - Google Messes up again, can anyone on SEOMOZ please tell me why or how some of these websites are ranking?
I am getting a bit tired now writing all of this so please excuse grammar and spelling mistakes, I wanted to post this up quickly tonight so I could possibly get some feedback by morning. So I feel I figured out some of the new update that just hit and I am sure the update will continue to keep coming and rankings will most likely change for a while, but I do have a few questions in the mean time if they stay. Please look below, why would some of those sites be ranking? Some sites utilize no onpage SEO, some no backlinks, one of the sites is a single page site and every page is a broken link even the contact us page and it's rank 1..... I am not 100% sure that Google got this one right. I see many instances below where other sites are much higher quality and have more authority. It's as if Google took terrible sites and said here is a site for you, now deal with it and I hope it works out at the top. I do see several sites that belong on the first page, but I see others that are very questionable. This is how the following is written below. Before the url is the anchor text density % for the site. This indicates the percentage of the amount of times the anchor text was backlined versus other anchor texts they used. Issues with the sites. Most of these sites don't utilize onpage SEO and it's clearly not a factor for onpage density purposes, there is a site with 37% keyword density on it. Some sites even have broken links. Please note: I already know that there is a lot of data that is analyzed to determine rankings more than this, but PA/DA is suppose to be a major factor according to everyone that believes in SEOMOZ.org. So I am taking in account for many of those factors being calculated due to this. These are just some random keywords I picked, because I know you need to analyze other SEO firms after and update to figure out what lasted and what didn't. All of my sites lasted due to ethical tactics, but I had some rankings move down and others go up, very odd. Keyword Analyzed: CHEAP SEO Not Knowng http://searchengineland.com/the-hidden-cost-of-cheap-seo-social-labor-131585 92-DA 75-PA - A lot of content 4715 words on the page including comments. not known http://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-cheap-seo-or-link-building/45932/ 87DA 63 PA Words on page 3673 Not known www.cheap-seo-solutions.com 26 DA -- 38 PA 1112 words on page 9.52% www.cheapseocompany.com 34 DA ---- 41 PA 10 + anchor texts but 623 words on page 10.26% seocheap.net 35 DA --- 45 PA 10 + anchor text 855 words on the page I am not 100% sure why this is ranking lol, the services page isn't even working it errors out. The onpage SEO is sloppy and the writing looks forced. Why is this even ranking? The site also looks low quality. The density is higher than SEOMOZ even and it has less words. In this case DA + words carried this site up, not the anchor ratio being low. 6.17% http://www.cheapseo-services.com cheap seo Page Authority DA 28 -- PA 38 276 Words No onpage, 35 duplicate pages, free template, etc.. etc.. 10% www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-do-seo-cheap DA 94 --- PA 56 only 5 anchor texts used on this page. 8651 Words I am willing to bet if you diversified this with about 5 more anchor texts this could be number 1 easy. This only has 5 total diverse anchor text backlinks for this page. Keyword Analyzed: Affordable SEO Services Rank 1 47% www.affordableseoservicesx.com/ 24DA PA36 New site It still has broken links all over the page The Contact us page doesn't even work lol. Great going Google on ranking such a high quality 1 page website. 471 words How is this site ranking? How could Google even rank this site? Rank 2 The Term isn't mentioned at all accept in title and header not known mbseoservice.com/ da 20 pa 32 PR 0 Just has affordable seo services in title anchor Possible New Site 627 words Rank 4 12.77% affordableseoservices.net 22 DA 35 DA - Proof Exact match domains still work great with high diversity rates, low word amounts, bad DA, etc..... 348 words Rank 5 4.24% www.howardsemgroup.com DA 39 PA 49 893 words. Rank 6 2.49% www.i4.net/ 59 DA and 66 PA 588 words Rank 7 4.71% www.bluefrogseosolutions.com/ DA 31 PA 42 527 Words This site looks like it was created in 1998 and never updated. Low quality site IMO Rank 8 Not Known www.mainstreethost.com/ 76 DA 81 PA possible co occurrence added in with main domain name /url 281 Words not 1 exact anchor text match Rank 10 2.7% bestcheapseoservices.com/ 18 DA 29PA This is just a blog site, come on Google... 4379 Words
Industry News | | MarketingOfAmerica0 -
Can any one recommend some good up to date resources?
HI everyone,
Industry News | | AMA-DataSet
I'm quite new to SEOmoz and to the SEO industry.
I like to think that I have a basic knowledge of SEO now after a few weeks of reading article, books, watching videos etc. but I'm struggling with the practical application. Not to long ago to found out that "keyword" weren't reference to meta keywords as some of these articles had said, this turned my understanding upside down for some time until I did more research on keywords. Iv also found that some parts of the SEOmoz "beginner's guide" are outdated, which Iv read from cover to cover. But this got me a little concerned, how do I know any of the information iv spent my time learning is correct and not outdated? So I was hoping does anyone know of any recent up to date resources/guides/case studies/ practical application case studies I can have a look at? Thank you in advance0 -
Site search
My google site search is now costing us $750/year. That is an outrageous fee for providing a search feature on our website. does anyone know of an effective search box we can put on our site that is less expensive than google?
Industry News | | StreetwiseReports0 -
Does it make sense to go after broad search with less competition vs. narrow search with very high competition?
We are in the process of analyzing our current site structure, on-page optimization and keywords to form a new strategy around our site. What we are finding with the keyword research we’ve done thus far is keywords that are shorter-tail have less competition, but far more searches than some of the long-tail keywords. For purposes of illustration I will give an example. Let's say we sell Wedding Cakes and the keyword string “Garden Wedding” has approximately 246,000 monthly local searches and medium competition, but “Garden Wedding Cakes” only has 880 searches and very high competition. We believe that if we create a very effective landing page for "Garden Wedding" with all kinds of great content surrounding "Garden Wedding" that we have a much better chance of ranking on page 1 than if we were to go after the term "Garden Wedding Cakes". Furthermore, the volume of search far exceeds the "Garden Wedding Cakes" and hopefully will reach a much larger audience. However, because "Garden Wedding" is such a broad term, we are concerned that we don't necessarily understand what folks are searching for vs, when someone types in "Garden Wedding Cakes" we know they are looking for a cake. Here are the questions we have: Targeting broader terms with higher search, has anyone implemented this type of strategy? We think in the long run, this will help us with exposure, but also with help our targeted page of "Garden Wedding Cakes" rank higher (if we can earn a great PR for the page "Garden Wedding". Would we run the risk of creating a higher bounce rate with this strategy for people who are looking specifically for Garden Wedding items/supplies, etc.. Is this a major concern? Could we monetize the effort put into new, rich content surrounding Garden Weddings, when we are in the business to sell Wedding Cakes? Any insight that one can provide would be greatly appreciated.
Industry News | | UrbanityStudios0 -
Did Google's Farmer Update Positively/Negatively Affect Your Search Traffic?
See the attached image, showing a comparison of SEOmoz.org's search traffic from Google over the past 6 days and the prior week. farmer-3x.gif
Industry News | | randfish2