KEYWORDS: How can I find keywords to target now that the majority of searches have been hidden from keyword planner?
-
Hello Community,
I am not an expert and I need some advice. So thank you for your time
I read that Google is not showing the same amount of search volume data it was showing before (like up until 2-3 weeks ago, after the NSA scandal) and that now it's changed the way we should look at which keyword groups to target since we dont know anymore how many people actually searched for these terms.
Say I want to start a new site around the topic "french chocolate" (just joking, but say I want to).
How do I find out today which is the most searched term in that keyword group/cluster? I mean this in terms of volume of searches.
Please help, I need some guidance on how to approach my content developmente strategy from now on, I always heavily relied on keywords and that got me awesome results in less than a year!
Thank you again for your time
Best
-
Hey There
I know this question is a little old but just want to add some things. If we're talking about volume only - and getting accurate numbers from the Keyword Planner there are a few important things to know.
-
First of all - the changes are just calculating the numbers in slightly different ways. They are still accurate, so long as you know what's different.
-
For one, volume for desktop and mobile is now combined together - there is no separate report at the moment for desktop vs mobile so you're seeing these volumes combined
-
Next is they are now averaging volumes across the last 12 months (which before I imagine they may have pulled from the most recent month)
-
Now you can also not only get volume by country but also by city, state, region etc.
-
Lastly - they are showing you all exact match volume by default - which is what you want. Broad and even phrase match are not very ideal for SEO.
So when you go into keyword planner, it's actually easier in my opinion to get the right data. You don't need to set a match type. You don't need to add up desktop and mobile and they have average the last 12 months for you.
The only thing you need to do really is decide on your location. If you want to know how many people type "french chocolate" in France vs. the whole world or vs. Italy - that's the biggest choice you have to make really.
Full documentation from Google on the changes here.
Hope that helps
-
-
You can still get useful data directly from the AdWords keyword planner. In addition, you can see limited historical data from the Webmaster Tools report (CTR, Impressions etc), but be warned that this isn't the most accurate and reliable tool in the world. Sometimes the best keywords come from thinking about what your audiences' needs are and then using instinct to think about what search terms they might use to find your content. I will often use the AdWords tool to pick out a few keywords relating to the page and will then create variants that I believe are likely to be searched and are semantically relevant.
Often, content that is well thought-out and created from the sole perspective of quality (without keyword research) can perform amazingly. With semantics, it's becoming easier for content to rank based on the overall theme of the content, as opposed to individual keywords. Do consider the long-tail keywords that pop up in good quality content, too (this has always been hard to research anyway).
Good luck!
-
I would suggest you read the following post that outlines the pros and cons of keyword planner plus giving you some alternatives and ways to find out volumes:
http://moz.com/blog/keyword-volume-tools
Hope that helps!
-
Hi, with my first site that I started 1 year 2 months ago im up 33k visits per month only organic, 98% of it is from Google.
Im writing top quality content in Italian which is the country I operate in with my dev agency.
Now I want to make a new site that can double that number of visits just by targeting different niches that I find interesting and potential. I know I have awesome content to pull out and only need to understand if there are new ways to find awesome keywords with tons of traffic.
Do you know of any new ways? Has anything changed on the keyword tool in order for us to determine what are the highest searched words?
Thanks again
-
Are you starting it just to rank best? I will rather suggest start something that you like writing about; let it be chocolate or banana shake. Let's say you love "chocolates" search for the ideas.. go for a keyword with relatively low competition. Grab bits and pieces and grow on them.
Cheers!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
I can get hundreds of natural links from real estate agent sites, but should I?
I have a website that generate leads for real estate agents nationwide. I have an auto email that sends out the referral agreement and in the email I ask them to place a link to our website on their site somewhere to be a part of the program. I can get as many as 10-15 links in a few hours in every major city in the U.S. Most realtor websites have websites that are new, or haven't posted blogs and have a Moz domain score of 1 and trust score of 1. I have been thinking of only selecting websites with descent Moz rankings instead of having all agents link to me, even ones with a low moz score. Is it a bad idea to get a bunch of links from legitimate websites that have low Moz scores?
Industry News | | esv21110 -
Multiview - Are they worth or can I do it myself?
Hi, I'm new to the Moz Community here although I have visited this site quite a few times. Recently my company has been contacted by MultiView for a B2B marketing strategy to get our business in front of targeted and potential customers - based on behavior of website visitors - basically behavior based marketing and inbound lead summary. Are you all familiar with what Multiview does? If not, I can explain some more. But, I have a couple questions: Are they actually what they claim to be? Are they a trustworthy company? Is there a way I can do everything they are telling me with the getting particular ads in front of people based on behaviors (similar to AdWords, but this seems more in depth) and detailed info for the visitors to my site (actually see who they are)? I realize this may take more work on my part than having them do it. But, is there a way I can collect this info myself and do all this work myself? Behavior based campaigns and this sort of thing are new to me, as I haven't worked with this before for my company. So, any and all info is appreciated! Thanks!
Industry News | | QFish0 -
Meta keywords confusion: include none, 3, 5, 20?
Over the last few months, I have come across a great variety of opinions on the use of meta keywords in the SEO plug ins or tools I fill out for customers. Some people and organizations advise to leave that field empty, others suggest to use maximum 3 keywords, but I have also heard 5 or maximum 20. I am quite confused about this? Does anyone know Google's latest opinion on this? And what about the other search engines Yahoo and Bing?
Industry News | | MarketingEnergy0 -
Did Google Search Just Get Crazy Local?
Hey All, I think it's a known fact at this point that when signed into a personal Google account while doing a search, the results are very oriented around keywords and phrases you have already searched for, as well as your account's perceived location; for instance when I wanted to check one of my own web properties in SE listings I would sign out or it would likely appear first as a false reading. Today I noticed something very interesting: even when not signed in, Google's listings were giving precedence to locality. It was to a very extreme degree, as in when searching for "web design," a firm a mile away ranked higher than one 1.5 miles away and such. It would seem that the algos having this high a level of location sensitivity and preference would actually be a boon for the little guys, which is, I assume why it was implemented. However, it brings up a couple of interesting questions for me. 1. How is this going to affect Moz (or any SE ranking platform, for that matter) reports? I assume that Google pulls locations from IP Addresses, therefore would it not simply pull the local results most relevant for the Moz server(s) IP? 2. What can one do to rise above this aggressive level of location based search? I mean, my site (which has a DA of 37 and a PA of 48) appears above sites like webdesign.org (DA of 82, PA of 85). Not that I'm complaining at the moment, but I could see this being a fairly big deal for larger firms looking to rank on a national level. What gives? I'd love to get some opinions from the community here if anyone else has noticed this...
Industry News | | G2W1 -
URL Search removal tool.
Hi All! I have tried to request a URL removal from Google search for an old testing site they still have listed. Ive tried requesting removal of the domain and of individual pages, all requests are getting rejected. Any help would be gratefully appreciated 😄 Many Thanks Anthony
Industry News | | Anthonykal-group0 -
My site was hit by the Penguin Update, Now What?
My site is very young, having only been up for about a month and a half. Despite being nascent we were seeing a ton of organic traffic. Enter Google Penguin update.... Traffic is down 40% or so over the past week. So, assuming the damage has been done, the question is, what do we do next to start moving back towards where we were? If we're doing everything everything right do we just chalk it up to the fact that our site is very new and stay the course on original content and link building? I know you can submit your site for reconsideration which is something that we are going to do this week, but I wonder what else we can do to start edging back to where we were pre-penguin update. Maybe this would be a good Whiteboard Friday topic.
Industry News | | knowyourbank0 -
Keyword Ranking Tool
Hi guys, Can anyone help with a software (online or offline / paid or free) that can help us get the keywords and the rankings our websites are ranking for? *** NOTE: We already use some software to get our rankings for a list of keywords we submit. We are interested in a software that can pull our keywords and rankings WITHOUT having to submit a keyword list. We want to know where and what for do we rank (especially long tails).
Industry News | | tolik1
Also, we know we can use a turn around (by exporting the keywords we get traffic from from Analytics and using Market Samurai to get the rankings, but we prefer an independent software that does all this automatically for all the links on our entire domain. I remember I accidentally got into such software a couple of months ago, but lost the track of it :). Please let me know if you know about such software. I hope I am not chasing after shadows 🙂0 -
What does the New Frontier of Search Look Like? (Mobile and Tablet)
I'd like to start a discussion thread on the direction of search as it applies to mobile and tablet. Jeff Haden, one of our Inc.com contributors, wrote an article headline stating that SIRI would be the end of SEO. However, what the article really talks about is the direction mobile search is likely to take: 1. Search results will be bypassed 2. Even more emphasis on local 3. PPC will be irrelevant 4. Emphasis on social media I think these insights are fairly intuitive and it will be really interesting to see how the medium for mobile and tablet develops. It will be interesting to see what technologies will shape the means by which users find information and not just the search intent of the user. Please add any insights you may have or good reads you'd like to share here.
Industry News | | inc.com0