Keyword Research: Data Sources Relevant to Your Business

A few weeks ago I had the priv­i­lege of pre­sent­ing on a panel of SEM experts at the Search Mar­ket­ing Expo in San Jose. The topic at hand: “Beyond The Google AdWords Tool: Advanced Key­word Research Tac­tics”. After fur­ther review­ing the value that many Adobe cus­tomers are get­ting directly from Search­Cen­ter and Site­Cat­a­lyst in doing their key­word research, I decided that I wanted to share with the broader Adobe com­mu­nity a few of the thoughts I pre­sented as part of that SMX panel…

Where to Find Rel­e­vant Key­word Research Data

There are numer­ous ways to expand and/or refine your PPC key­word port­fo­lio, but which are the most effec­tive and can be used on an ongo­ing basis to pro­vide con­sis­tent, mea­sur­able uplift to your paid search mar­ket­ing per­for­mance? And which are the most RELEVANT to your busi­ness in specific?

Far too often, search mar­keters rely on generic key­word sug­ges­tions tools, such as the one pro­vided by Google AdWords.  Yet, as has been made painfully obvi­ous to sea­soned search mar­keters through years of use and expe­ri­ence, these tools are woe­fully lack­ing and do as much (if not more) to help drive the search engines’ finan­cial inter­ests as to help adver­tis­ers build out mean­ing­ful, rel­e­vant key­word lists that truly drive busi­ness KPIs.

The sad irony of it all is that most search mar­keters have a ver­i­ta­ble gold­mine of key­word research data right under their noses and don’t even real­ize it. The most valu­able and rel­e­vant sources of key­word expansion/refinement ideas and analy­sis come from data natively col­lected by the Adobe Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Suite (DMS). The four key­word sources I’d specif­i­cally like to touch on here are:

1. Paid Search Query Data – the raw query data of the search terms you are already pay­ing for today.
2. Organic Search Terms – key­word can­di­dates from the other side of the search engine results page (SERP).
3. Inter­nal (On-site) Search Queries – search terms your users are search­ing for on your site.
4. Social Ana­lyt­ics Data – terms and phrases the mar­ket is using in con­junc­tion with your brand, prod­ucts, and services.

Paid Search Queries

To begin with, peri­odic analy­sis of paid search query data should be in the fun­da­men­tals toolkit of any search mar­keter. Search term lists and basic pre-click data (impres­sions, clicks, cost) are avail­able on a small sub­set of search engine plat­forms – but to get the com­plete list of paid search queries com­ing from all search engines, as well as the actual con­ver­sion per­for­mance for each of those queries indi­vid­u­ally, our cus­tomers are turn­ing to the DMS and specif­i­cally solu­tions sur­faced inside of SearchCenter.

The great part about paid search query min­ing is that these terms are dri­ving traf­fic (and con­ver­sion) you’re already pay­ing for. You might as well look into mak­ing them exact match key­words and increase your chances of pay­ing less (per click) for that same traf­fic. Adding strong per­form­ing search queries directly to your PPC cam­paigns also allows you to break them out into their own adgroups, allow­ing for much more refined and tar­geted mes­sag­ing through the ad text you pair with those key­words (which should increase your CTR, thus increas­ing your Qual­ity Score, and ulti­mately fur­ther low­er­ing the CPC you pay for that traffic).

Organic Search Queries

A sec­ond source of highly valu­able key­word research data native to the DMS comes via the other side of each search engine results page – organic search queries, along with the traf­fic and con­ver­sions they drive. Once again, this data is based on traf­fic you are already receiv­ing to your web­site today and actual con­ver­sions gar­nered through your SEO efforts. Dive into it and dis­cover those high per­form­ing gems that you have yet to add to your paid search cam­paigns. This will help you fur­ther dom­i­nate both sides of each SERP, push­ing your com­pe­ti­tion down the page and cap­tur­ing incre­men­tal site traffic.

Of course there are those who will ques­tion, “Why should I bid on a term that is already cap­tur­ing ‘free’ traf­fic for me today?” This is a sub­ject that deserves more detailed analy­sis than I have room for here, but those famil­iar with research in the SEM indus­try know of many stud­ies prov­ing out the mar­ginal uplift of show­ing up in a top posi­tion for both organic and spon­sored search. (For a more in-depth cov­er­age of this issue, please refer to some of my favorite colum­nists over at Search Engine Land here and here.)

Inter­nal Search Queries

Per­haps THE most rel­e­vant source of key­word research avail­able to search mar­keters today, inter­nal (on-site) search terms are what your users are search­ing for on your web­site. No stray clicks or poorly match­ing algo­rithms here. This chan­nel is essen­tial for under­stand­ing what vis­i­tors expect from your web­site – the goods, ser­vices, and infor­ma­tion they truly want to find. In fact, these vis­i­tors are so cer­tain that what they’re typ­ing in should be on your site that they’ve over­come the ten­dency to sim­ply “bounce” back to Bing and have instead directly inter­acted with your site’s own inter­nal search engine. To not learn directly from this gold­mine of user intent would be a trav­esty indeed.

Of course with all of the sources of key­word research data I’ve out­lined so far it’s not just about key­word expan­sion but also about refin­ing your lists where appro­pri­ate. The same is true of inter­nal search. There cer­tainly are those queries that rep­re­sent goods, ser­vices, and/or infor­ma­tion that your busi­ness sim­ply does not deal in. Those searches often result in a “No Results Found” page. These inter­nal search terms are great oppor­tu­ni­ties to build out your neg­a­tive key­word lists so that your paid search ini­tia­tives don’t con­tinue to drive mis­guided traf­fic that will even­tu­ally be dis­ap­pointed by a poor expe­ri­ence. This save you money and reduces less-than-positive encoun­ters with your brand.

Social­An­a­lyt­ics Data

Cer­tainly the fastest grow­ing source of key­word ideas our cus­tomers are lever­ag­ing today is com­ing from social media, specif­i­cally the terms and data tracked through Adobe Social­An­a­lyt­ics. By mon­i­tor­ing the “Every­thing­Sphere” (Twit­ter, Face­book, Google+, blogs, etc.), our plat­form can help mar­keters under­stand the terms and phrases the mar­ket (your cus­tomers) are using in con­junc­tion with their brands, prod­ucts, and ser­vices – in their own words! Dedu­pli­cat­ing these terms with exist­ing PPC key­word lists is an excel­lent way for search mar­keters to expand their key­word lists beyond cur­rent (often unre­al­ized) bound­aries of “proper” asso­ci­ated ter­mi­nol­ogy to the more col­lo­quial phrase­ol­ogy used by the masses.

Of course here too mar­keters have the oppor­tu­nity to allow DMS data to help refine their search strate­gies by iden­ti­fy­ing those neg­a­tive sen­ti­ment terms that may crop up in asso­ci­a­tion with their brand. Add these to neg­a­tive key­word lists to pre­vent wast­ing ad impres­sions on brand detrac­tors. After all, not many want to have their paid ads show up when some­one searches “[My Brand] SUCKS!”

Don’t Just Run Reports – Take Action

When ana­lyzed in con­junc­tion with site con­ver­sion data, search mar­keters can use these data-rich and company-relevant chan­nels of key­word infor­ma­tion to:

• Uncover spe­cific search terms that they are not already pur­chas­ing (but are lit­er­ally proven to lead to con­ver­sion) to extend the reach of their paid search mar­ket­ing efforts, and
• Find and neg­a­tive match pre­vi­ously unac­counted for search terms that they do not want their ads to be asso­ci­ated with or that have explicit his­tor­i­cal data indi­cat­ing poor per­for­mance, and thus reduce wasted ad spend.

The Google AdWords Key­word Tool has its place in search mar­ket­ing, but it should never be the only – nor even the ini­tial – source search mar­keters turn to in order to broaden, deepen, and refine their SEM programs.