How to Improve Your SEO with the Bing Keyword Research Tool

The SEO world is always Google this and Google that, but many websites find that focusing on different search engines is actually more worthwhile. Although Google is quite obviously the most popular search engine and YouTube comes in second, the third place holder, Bing, is not to be ignored. With the recent privacy changes Google made, more and more people are beginning to make the switch. There are varying numbers available and traffic to a website completely depends on the website, but Mashable reported in 2011 that Microsoft’s Bing controls 30% of the U.S. search market. Bing is less competitive, so for some small businesses this search engine is just enough.

If learning more about Bing keyword research is something you’ve been considering, now is the perfect time to dive into the deep end. Bing recently announced that their Webmaster Tools is launching an organic research tool that can offer up to six months of historical data. All the data that will be gathered from this keyword research tool will be focused on SEO, not PPC, and there is no rounding or averaging when it comes to results.

How the Bing Keyword Research Tool Works

If you are familiar with the Google’s keyword research tool, you will find that Bing has many similarities. Below is a step by step guide to help you get started:

            Step #1: Sign up for a Windows Live ID

The first thing you need to do is sign up for a Windows Live ID. If you have strictly been using Google for all things SEO, you likely do not have an ID for Bing. Fortuantely, signing up is very easy. Visit the sign up page and then you’re ready to get started. It will then ask you if you have an email address, in which case you just type in whatever address you want to use for your Windows Live ID account. You will then be prompted to fill in information including a password and a security question.

You will then have to verify your email address, and then you will have the option of reading the terms and agreements. If you accept, you simply type out your email address and hit accept. Signing up is as easy as that!

Step #2: Type in your keyword and select the country and/or language you want to be part of your results.

You will have the option to choose the country and the language that you want to be included in your results. You then type in the keyword and will get information that looks like this:

As you can see the interface is clear and quite similar to Google. Many businesses find that the option to choose the country and the language helps provide more meaningful results, and clicking the “history” button will show someone the last 25 search queries performed and give the option of generating them once again.

            Step #3: Consider using the “Strict” button for filtered results.

Bing gives you the option of filtering results that are specific to that exact phrase. If this is something you’re interested in, you must click the “strict” button shown above. For example, if I searched for credit card processing without checking the strict button (like I did above), then I am going to get the total query volume number that includes all of the phrases containing the words credit card processing.

Step #4: Hover over the results to see what your average bid and resulting CEPC would have to be if you were going to advertise.

On the left hand side of the screen, Bing provides users with a little box on the left hand side of the screen that changes as you hover over each keyword result. This will tell you how much you would need to bid and what your CPC would have to be if you wanted to advertise for that keyword. Below is a screenshot of this little box when my cursor is hovering over square credit card processing:

This tool uses the terms MainLine to discuss the ads that appear above the organic results and SideBar to talk about an ad that appears on the right side of the results.

The biggest problem with Bing’s keyword research tool is the idea that you can only search one phrase at a time. This isn’t a huge problem for very small companies, but this has many larger corporations frustrated. However, finding a way to make this tool work and help your content rank well on Bing could potentially become important in the near future.

Photo Credit: thelinkbuildingnews.com

How to Find Keywords You KNOW Your Readers Are Searching For

"Hands-free" isn't always a good thing...

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never liked doing keyword research.

Let’s face it: it’s tedious, time-consuming, and overwhelming, and that’s not even the biggest problem.

The core aspect of keyword research that many webmasters get wrong is finding keywords that THEIR readers search for when looking for information about their niche subject.

There’s a huge difference between THINKING you know what your readers are searching for and KNOWING what they are searching for, wouldn’t you say?

The following keyword research method is the easiest way I’ve even found to identify such search terms.

Oh, and did I mention it’s entirely hands-off, apart from setting it up, and entirely free?

Google Site Search

Chances are you have a search box on your site, and it’s most likely used by your readers to look up the kind of information they would expect to find on your site. Also, chances are your search box is powered by Google Site Search.

If you DON’T have a search box, stop right here and install it immediately! There’s nothing more frustrating than being on a site and not being able to find the information you are looking for. Search boxes keep your readers happy and your bounce rate low.

So, now that you definitely have the search box on your blog, have you ever checked what your readers are searching for?

If not, you are missing out on a vital piece of information that could tell you exactly what kind of content your readers want to see on your site.

In other words, TARGETED keywords.

Now let’s get down to business and set up a way for you to tap into this valuable information by tracking it in Google Analytics.

How to Track Site Search in Google Analytics

Setting up this process is very simple.

Note: since the new Google Analytics interface will soon become the default one for everyone, that’s the version I’ll use in the instructions below.

1.  From “Profiles” go into “Profile Settings”.

2. Scroll down just a bit till you see”Site Search Settings” and set up the parameters like you see them in the screenshot below:

Note: set “s” as the Query Parameter.

Just in case you are wondering why, “s” stands for “search” and is found in any search URL.

For instance, when I do a search for “web traffic” on my blog, this is what the URL for the search looks like:

4. Click “Apply” and you are all set.

I told you it would be easy, right?

Site Search Results

Depending on how busy your blog is, it might take some time to accumulate any actionable results.

My blog gets about 400 site searches per month, which is plenty enough to determine what kind of content my readers tend to search for.

Here’s where to find these stats in Google Analytics:

Marketing Takeaway

And there you have it.

Not only do you know now what content you need to write about, but also what content you might need to make more accessible to your readers, for instance in your sidebar.

Easy, perfectly targeted, hands-free keyword research – check.

How Many (Not Provided) Keywords Are There Really?

It’s been about the month since Google made the switch to SSL search for users signed into their Google accounts. With this change came the loss of receiving keyword data from organic search which now shows in your Google Analytics under Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic as (not provided) keywords.

Initially, Matt Cutts said webmasters would only see (not provided) keywords in single-digit percentages which made it sound like it would be something that would be hardly noticeable. Maybe what Google didn’t factor in was how many people would be staying logged in to their Google accounts thanks to Google+, but regardless of whether it is a single-digit percentage or not, it is noticeable.

After a month, I decided to take a look at my own analytics. Compared to the keyword data you are still getting using an Advanced Segment for (not provided) traffic vs. all visits, it doesn’t look so bad and is as promised, a single digit percentage of 4.59%.

What bothers me is this…

The fact that (not provided) is now my top referring keyword. That’s 1,129 visitors in the last 30 days that I cannot analyze correctly. That’s 1,129 keywords whose bounce rate averages out to 83.97% that I won’t be able to work on.

Is it really about privacy?

Another thing that gets me is that this doesn’t really seem to be about user privacy. For one thing, if I was paying for Google AdWords, I would still get to see the keywords that users searched which led to paid search results. So if I was paying for it, I’d get it.

Then there’s the fact that Google is still logging your search activity. Sure it’s just for your own “personal” web history, but I’m sure whether or not you turn this setting on or off, they are still keeping tabs on your organic searches.

According to the Google’s document on Web History and Privacy…

“Over time, the service may also use additional information about your activity on Google or other information you provide us in order to deliver a more personalized experience.”

To see your web history since you first logged in to your Google account, click on this link when logged in. This is where you can “pause” and remove all web history items if you so choose to.

Of course, if you read further into the Privacy FAQ…

“You can choose to stop storing your web activity in Web History either temporarily or permanently, or remove items, as described in Web History Help. If you remove items, they will be removed from the service and will not be used to improve your search experience. As is common practice in the industry, Google also maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users. For example, we use this information to audit our ads systems, understand which features are most popular to users, improve the quality of our search results, and help us combat vulnerabilities such as denial of service attacks.”

Want see more real not provided numbers in Google Analytics?

The following are additional articles with real Google Analytics numbers related to the (not provided) keyword.

• How Much Data Will Your Site Lose With Google Encrypted Search Default? – Analysis after less than a week of this change going live shows how even .97% can equal the loss of keyword data for 195K searches.
• Quantifying the Impact of Google’s Keyword Referral Data Shutdown – shows a visualization of 60 sites’ analytics data plus SEOmoz’s own missing keyword data.

How has the new SSL search for logged in Google account users affected your Google Analytics? Do you believe privacy is the real motivator? Please share your thoughts on not provided in the comments!

2 Reasons to Go Niche or Go Home

Awhile back I read the Four Hour Work Week. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s written by this guy named Tim Ferris who redefined his life in order to take a series of mini-retirements all year long rather than wait until he’s 60 and sick to enjoy life. He did so by placing himself on income autopilot.

Yes, it sounds way too good and too easy to be true. BUT, I learned a variety of lessons from the book. One of which is the power of the niche. He talks about developing a product designed specifically for a small group of people, then advertising it in various trade magazines.

Of course, he’s not the only person I’ve heard recommend this sort of thing.

But why niche? Well…

1. The people who find your product are more likely to want it—Some people are concerned that if they market to an extremely specific niche, then they will cut down their sales possibilities to a small number. And while it’s true that less people out there will probably want your product overall, but we can assume that the people that DO find it will be more likely to want it. In other words, say you sell guitars. If people come to you searching for any old guitar, you may or may not get a sale. After all, what are the odds that you have the exact style and model they are looking for? But what if you marketed yourself as a seller of left handed guitars? They are much harder to come by and if someone is frustrated looking for one, by the time they find you they are more likely to buy. Now let’s take it a step up—what about left handed bass guitars? More niche, more high quality traffic. I’d venture to say your conversions would be higher.
2. It’s more reasonable to assume you can hit top search rankings quicker—Say you’re a web designer and you’re looking at targeting that keyword (let’s assume you’ve already hit it locally). The term “web designer” gets about 4,090,000 global searches a month. Wow. Good luck getting on page 1 for that! On the other hand, let’s say you decided your specialty was the restaurant industry. If you build a niche website and hit it with a keyword like “restaurant web designer,” you are looking at closer to 2,900 global searches a month. Not very many, right? But I’d venture to say it would still pay to get the top spot for that keyword—and it would happen much quicker too.

I know what you’re wondering, have I put this to the test personally? No, not exactly. But I am in the process. I recently wrote an ebook directed specifically at new, first-year teachers. The plan was to have it go live this past summer, except I hit a snag. State governments everywhere started slashing the hell out of budgets and suddenly the steady inflow of new teachers shut off. So much for that product.

What I learned in this instance is that not only is finding the right niche important, but timing is almost everything too. So I’m holding onto it for whenever the hiring starts up again. Who knows, I may just go ahead and release it toward the end of this year and see what happens. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

So am I writing about something I really don’t know anything about? Nope. Because I have seen example after example of this line of reasoning working out. Car dealer website designers, MMA website designers, Civil War painting salesman, hospital wayfinding designers—you name it. It’s hard to argue with tangible results. So start to create niche sites today!

So my question for you is—what’s your niche?

The Number One Keyword Metric: Profit

This is a guest post from Jason Capshaw. It is part of The “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest.

It is tempting to make SEO-related decisions simply based on search data, such as traffic volumes and competition. Yet, there is a far more important factor involved–profitability.

I have seen webmasters rank for ridiculously competitive keywords with tons of traffic, and have it bring very little value to their business. On the other hand, I know webmasters who rank for low-competitive keywords that convert better than their head keywords, and as a result, bring in much more profit.

There are a couple of factors that can cause this phenomenon:

1. The site’s product offerings do not match the searchers’ intent
2. The site offers good information, but does not brand itself well, so the viewers do not come back when they are ready to purchase

I have found that a large number of searchers type generalized keywords when they are conducting research in the early stages of the buying process. If you can provide that information and facilitate all the buying stages, you will do well with generalized keyword searches.

However, searches that are done in the later stages of the buying process are usually more specific, and these searches will include specific keywords that indicate their intentions, such as “buy,” “discount,” or “price.”

Identifying these keywords in your research and targeting them on your landing pages will help you cherry pick the best traffic from the search engines–traffic that converts well.

The Use of Brands in Searches

I have a close friend that runs a start-up ecommerce store that is a little over a year old that sells equipment to builders and construction workers. Let’s just call this equipment the standard “blue widget.”

He has good top ten rankings for both the head keyword “blue widget” as well as other mid-level keywords: specifically, “brand-blue widget”, where a specific brand or model number is used in the search. Originally, all he cared about and obsessed over was his head keywords. However, he didn’t see quick results for his new site, so he relegated himself to mid- level keywords.
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