Use Yelp For Local Keyword Research

I was doing some research for a Des Moines SEO case study and came across this nifty feature in Yelp. Finding and targeting local keywords is essential in a local internet marketing strategy. Yelp gives you a good insight into what people are searching for locally in your area.

To find these results you need to navigate to a city and scroll down to the bottom where the business listings are… Click on “Top Searches”

See what people are searching for in Des Moines, IA.

Do you have questions about using Yelp for local keyword research? Not sure what local keyword research is? Leave us a comment or jump into the forums!

Small Business Keyword Research – An Interview With Larry Kim

In this video I get the pleasure of interviewing Larry Kim, founder of WordStream about using his free keyword tools for small business online marketing. We also talk about some of his fantastic premium products that change the way internet marketers hone and craft their PPC advertising campaigns. We also talked about the power of long tail keywords and how you can use WordStream to find the best ones.

[RSS Readers, click through]

Here are some of the topics discussed in this interview…

1. Who are you?

2. What is your background?

3. What is WordStream?

4. What tools do you offer?

5. How can this help small business

6. We share a lot of internet business models with our readers. Your model of freemium – giving away free tools with defined upgrade paths to premium tools – is one that interests a lot of our readers. Can you give us a high level view on how you run your business using this model?

7. How can people get ahold of you?

Check out WordStream’s killer tools, their internet marketing blog, and follow them on Twitter. You can also follow Larry on Twitter @LarryKim

Have any questions? Leave us a comment or jump in the forums!

How To Find Long Tail Keywords

Last week we told you about the strategy to target long tail keywords as part of your web strategy and content strategy plans. We also showed you why you shouldn’t ignore this advice and pay attention to long tail keywords.

Here we show you how to find long tail keywords…

Have a question about long tail keywords? Jump into the forums or leave us a comment!

The Long Tail Of Search Keywords Visualized

These charts from SEOMoz are based on research from Bill Tancer of Hitwise called “Sizing Up The Long Tail Of Search”. The basic idea is that the long tail of search generates exponentially more traffic than the most popular keyword phrases out there. From Bill’s research…

• Top 100 terms: 5.7% of the all search traffic
• Top 500 terms: 8.9% of the all search traffic
• Top 1,000 terms: 10.6% of the all search traffic
• Top 10,000 terms: 18.5% of the all search traffic

This means if you had a monopoly over the top 1,000 search terms across all search engines (which is impossible), you’d still be missing out on 89.4% of all search traffic. There’s so much traffic in the tail it is hard to even comprehend. To illustrate, if search were represented by a tiny lizard with a one-inch head, the tail of that lizard would stretch for 221 miles.

Does that make sense? The basic idea is that more people search for obscure, multi-keyword phrases than they do popular keywords. This has a lot to do with search users becoming smarter over the years to where most people search by phrase rather than by keyword – because they’ve been trained this behavior narrows results.

What does this mean for your business? Well you should start targeting long phrase, long tail keywords in both your content and SEO strategies. Using this method you can target multiple long tail keywords and still have a better chance at generating more traffic than optimizing for a single, popular keyword.

Here’s an example… A couple weeks ago I was talking to my good friend TJ about optimizing his e-commerice site RIPTApparel (cool t-shirts by the way). We were discussing keyword targeting. My advice was to quit targeting the keyword “t-shirt” and start targeting long tail, multiple word keywords such as “cool graphic tees” and “limited edition t-shirts”. Not only do you increase your chances of being found by targeting the long tail – there is much less competition for those terms in both organic and paid search results.

So if you find that you aren’t “being found” online, try some long tail and localized keyword targeting to increase your chances… Look at the keywords coming through in your web analytics to see what long tail keywords people are using to find you and start optimizing for those. And if you have any questions at all on targeting keywords – jump into the forums and ask away!

Charts via SEOmoz | Illustrating the Long Tail.

Keyword Research and Google Analytics

We told you about the awesome easy keyword research tool from WordStream. They’ve recently updated this tool to integrate with Google Analytics. What’s this mean? Better keyword targeting for your site.

Here are more details

Free and Easy Keyword Research

Last week WordStream released a free keyword tool called “The Free Keyword Tool” (great branding) that is extremely simple to use and we recommend checking it out for your initial round of keyword research.

Click To Enlarge

This is one of the most self-explanatory keyword research tools out there and is simple enough for a n00b to jump into.

Step 1: go to http://www.wordstream.com/keywords/

Step 2: enter your keyword phrases, one per line

Step 3: click “Submit Keywords”

After you submit your keywords the tool will show you potentially related keywords that you can add into the results. The results themselves are are ordered by relative volume – which is an estimate on how often people search for that keyword – it’s popularity.

Higher relative volume can be both good and bad. The higher the volume the more people are searching for it = good. But with high volume searches comes more competition in both organic rankings and PPC bidding = bad.

Using this tool you can get an idea on how to better write for SEO and which keywords you should start targeting in your PPC campaigns.

Want to know more about keyword research and PPC? Check out this episode of our internet business podcast.

Do you have any questions on this keyword tool or keyword research in general? Something you would like to add? Let us know in the comments or jump into the forums!

2 Tips Before You Launch Your Internet Marketing Campaign

Before you launch a product or website you should do some research in the niche you are targeting. Here are two research techniques to hone your internet marketing campaign – before you launch…

1. Keyword Research

• Google Insights
• Google Keywords
• Search For Competition

2. Social Media Research

• Twitter Search
• Facebook Search
• FriendFeed Search

These techniques can help you determine the need in the market and if there is heavy competition – both very important to know before you start your long uphill battle.