SEO Keyword Research: Metrics that Matter
There are dozens of tools out there to assist you in performing SEO keyword research. Two of my favorites include:
Google AdWords Keyword Tool
This tool is free and you don’t have to be setting up a paid campaign to use it. Helps you identify keyword expressions that people are actually using in the searches. Does not include metrics which determine whether you have any chance of succeeding in ranking organically (natural or unpaid in the search results) for those terms.- SEMRush.com
9 queries per day for free once you register; paid subscription is very powerful; gives you strong insights into the terms driving traffic to your competitors’ sites.
However, even if you use these tools, you will have to sort out which expressions will actually be achievable by YOUR site.  Once, we spent HOURS manually researching the competitive data — but now have a tool that gives us all the info — and more — that you see on the chart below. We willingly spent some significant $$ for access to this software because it saves so much time. That allows us to go much deeper into the research, explore many more aspects of a client’s market, and produce a list of SEO keyword targets ranked using Evergreen’s proprietary algorithm. We hand over the resulting list confident that it will produce measurable results for the client.
The metrics that matter are:
Searches (Broad) | Average # of searches conducted daily that included these words (in any order and probably with other words, too) |
Searches (Phrase) | Average # of searches conducted daily on these exact words in quotation marks |
Searches (Exact) | Average # of searches conducted daily that included these exact words in the same order |
SEO Traffic (Broad) | Max daily clicks that a #1 ranked site in Google would receive for this broad term. |
SEO Traffic (Phrase) | Max daily clicks that a #1 ranked site in Google would receive for this phrase in quotes. |
SEO Traffic (Exact) | Max daily clicks that a #1 ranked site in Google would receive for this exact search. |
Phrase-to-Broad | The percentage of phrase match searches out of broad match searches for this keyword |
SEO Competition | Total number of web pages globally that mention a specific keyword term somewhere on the page, in the same word order, in Google’s index |
Local SEO Competition | Total number of web pages in the US that mention a specific keyword term somewhere on the page, in the same word order, in Google’s index |
Title Competition | Total number of web pages globally that mention all the words in this keyword term in the page’s title tag (maybe not in the same order) |
Local Title Competition | Total number of web pages in the US that mention all the words in this keyword term in the page’s title tag (maybe not in the same order) |
Competition to Title | The ratio of pages with the term in the title tag to the pages which simply mention it somewhere. |
AdWords CPC | Cost per click to be the #1 advertiser for this keyword on Google – if your competitors think it’s worth spending money on this — then it’s worth exploring |
OCI | An indicator of the chances that someone searching for this keyword term is looking to buy as opposed to browsing for information. |
Are YOU confident in your keyword research? Are you finding the SEO metrics that matter? This one part of your SEO effort is perhaps the most “modular”, easily outsourced and relatively inexpensive task. Let Evergreen Consulting Group help you produce results and improve the ROI on your entire Internet Marketing effort! Call Amanda at 802-310-5310 or fill out our contact form to explore what we can do for you!