paid search

Research is the key before you start a search marketing strategy whether for SEO services or a PPC Campaign. It could be keyword research but I am talking about the competitive landscape that your trying to become a part of or your client is trying to make a name for themselves. 

With a strong understanding of the search marketplace and competitive environment, you can develop a plan that focuses on key opportunities and minimizes any potential problems. Competitive landscape research will also provide a business case and also show the importance of undertaking search marketing or search engine optimization efforts in the first place.

  Before developing your Internet marketing plan, we should understand the following:
 

Interest and Behavior of Our Market

• What are users actually searching for related to your offerings?
  
• What specific types of information users are searching for?
  
• What is the seasonality or patterns in their search behavior (if any)?
  

The Competitive Landscape

• What is the competition level for the most desired keywords, and how much will they cost you?
  
• Do your direct competitors understand effective SEO and SEM? What are their approaches?
  
• Which sites appear to be “winning” and what are the takeaways to build upon?
  

I like these online tools for both comprehensiveness and “bang for the buck”. As you will see most of them are free or offer free versions so you can’t go wrong from the “bang for the buck” perspective but you do get what you pay for so these tools do need to offer some “steak” to go with the “sizzle”. So let’s go over some of these top search engine marketing tools and understand how they work and find out which are most useful for your planning efforts

Interest and Behavior

Google Trends

• Free
• Shows estimated search volumes for keywords based on categories
  

• Shows search trends over time
  
• Matches key news events and how they correspond to spikes in search traffic
  
• Enables you to filter by geo-location
  

Google Insights for Search

• Free
   
• Provides detailed analysis on one keyword or a group of keywords
  
• Gives comparison by search terms, location, or time range
  
• Returns lists of top related searches and search terms that are rising in popularity
  
• Enables you to filter by geo-location and category (e.g., “education” versus “business”)
  

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

• Free
   
• Gives you the ability to see search volume and local search volume for keywords related to your terms
  

   

• Beta version offers you the ability to spider a web site and get the search terms Google sees as the site’s top terms
  
• Enables you to enter one term to generate a list of hundreds of related queries
  
• Helps you quantify historical search volume, filtered by geo-location
  
• Displays search volume trends over time in graphical format
  
• Assists in building initial keyword lists for your AdWords campaigns or SEO Optimization
  

Microsoft adCenter Keyword Research Tools

• Free
  
• Visually presents associations and sequencing among queries in the same session
  
• Detects and displays keywords that are similar or related to the search term entered
  
• Displays commonly misspelled terms or alternative spellings of the search term
  
• Forecasts search inventory and demographic makeup of term searchers
  

Competitive Landscape

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

• Free
  
• Enables you to view competition levels for your target keywords and related terms
  
• Displays average CPC Prices for top positioning on those keywords
  
• Permits you to set a max CPC and displays estimated ad positioning for those terms
  
• Lets you sort by CPC or advertiser competition to identify niche or low-cost terms
  

Compete.com Search Analytics

• Basic version is Free
   
• Advanced version will give you more info
  
• Analyzes top keywords driving into your competitors’ Web sites
  
• Identifies top keywords being searched for in a given industry or behavioral category
  
• Isolates top destinations receiving traffic on your desired keywords
  
• Compares how you fare against your competitor for the same set of keywords
  

comScore Marketer

• Subscription required
  
• Identifies top traffic destinations for any one or set of keywords
  
• Provides searcher profiles (demographic analysis) for any one or set of keywords
  
• Displays lists of keywords driving paid and organic traffic into your competitors’ sites
  
• Offers insight on which traffic sources generate entries and exits on competitor sites
  

Spyfu

• Basic version is Free
   
• Advanced version gives more in depth information and is very reasonable
  

   Provides a sense of how much your competitors may be investing in paid search
  

• Helps you understand which keywords are performing best for your competitors
  
• Enables you to view competitor ad copies and understand frequency of ad copy updates
  
• Identifies the other advertisers competing in the space
  

Tagged as: compete, google adwords, keyword research, paid search, paid search tools, PPC Campaign, search engine marketing, search marketing strategy, SEO, spyfu

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