aimClear® Search Marketing Blog

Welcome back to aimClear’s continuing coverage of #SESSF. Keyword research is a primary cog in PPC and SEO systems alike. There is no question, leveraging intent-based semantic insight for prospective customers can directly influence lift in the bottom line. Over the past year, though, the addition of Google Instant and intent-based Bing search results has made it necessary to revisit the keyword research process and adapt it to meet new standards.

Bill Hunt, President of Back Azimuth Consulting in his solo session Advanced Keyword Modeling looked at using keyword research data oftentimes pinned against organic and/or PPC keyword performance to determine success and opportunity. He examined several reporting formats and concepts that showcase keyword data in a way that yields results. At a very high level, this process is about conceptualizing how the data you have available whether from keyword suggestion tools, historical PPC performance or the recently altered search engine result pages (SERPs) can be organized, segmented and classified to best give insight into new opportunities. Read on for the full scoop. Read the rest of this entry »

AdWords Keyword Tool may be viable again for SEO. The debilitating short-tail-only problems seem to have been fixed. Long live SEO!

On October 7th 2010, we published a post in aimClear Blog entitled, “R.I.P. Google Keyword Tool. Long Live SEO!” Baris Gultekin, Group Product Manager, Google AdWords, Google, Inc. had just dropped a big stink bomb at #SMX East, confirming what many of us had already figured out.  The omnipresent AdWords Keyword Tool had changed and only was returning keywords Google deemed “commercial.” Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the AdWords keyword tool has been dumbed down, we’ve received many inquiries seeking updated advice regarding keyword research best practices.  For those depending solely on Google’s free tool, the new reality is stark.  In truth, it’s not that radical a change for many pros, because we’ve always used an assortment of tools– mild to wild–to build out our KW baskets.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing alternative keyword research tools and techniques. This post is the first and highlights a radical, arguably black hat, tool that blew the audience away when I demonstrated it live at #PubCon earlier this month.  So, hold onto your hat (whatever color it may be) and let’s have a look at ScrapeBox’s fabulously intuitive UI for mashing up mainstream search suggest boxes query results for keyword research. Read the rest of this entry »

Attendees sat stunned at #SMX East as Baris Gultekin, Group Product Manager, Google AdWords, Google, Inc. clarified that the ubiquitous AdWords Keyword Tool now only provides keywords Google deems “commercial.” It’s been obvious anyway by degraded results over the last few weeks. This represents a shift of seismic proportions to those who utilize the tool for demographic research purposes, in and outside of AdWords. Here’s an overview of what we just lost and how to get the data anyway. [Author's Note 1/1/2011: The KW tool has been updated. After reading this post, head over to our coverage of AdWords keyword tool fixes.] Read the rest of this entry »