Starting keyword research without a direct competitor to analyze
-
I work for a non-profit who has always had the luxury of being a monopoly when it comes to the service we provide. Without getting into the boring details, we have an international audience that needs to get certified through us to continue their educational pursuits in the US. Easy as it gets in terms of SEO.
Now, we have a for-profit venture based on our existing verification services where we offer those same services for international organizations. After a lot of research, we haven't been able to find someone else out there similar enough to be considered a direct competitor - at least to the point where I could look at what they're optimizing for.
My question is this: without a clear-cut competitor to identify and analyze, where should we start for keyword research? We think we know how people would find us, but analytics data for the better part of a year shows all traffic as brand-related. Fortunately, we have many long-standing relationships with international organizations, so obtaining links has come naturally after linking to the new venture from our home page, news, SM, etc. But as far as providing our editorial staff - who, up until now, had never been concerned with keywords - a place to start for keyword research so they can then employ a basic SEO checklist... where would you start?
-
If you go down the adwords route, checkout Google Grants (free advertising for non-profits).
-
Adwords. Create an account and use the Keyword tool, then just start typing in every possible keyword combination you can think of and looking at monthly search volumes for each. It will also suggest some ideas based on what you're feeding it to help you think of more.
Good luck!
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
-
International SEO - Alternatives to Automatic IP re-direct
Hello, When doing international SEO I've read that it's not good practice to automatically re-direct users to the correct part of the website based on their IP address. But what alternatives are there to this? Let's say you're targeting the US and the UK through multiregional SEO. What can you do to ensure that users from the US go to the US sub-directory and that users from the UK go to the UK sub-directory? In Moz's international SEO guide it says that: "If you choose to try to guess at the user’s language preference when they enter your site, you can use the browser’s language setting or the IP address and ask the user to confirm the choice. Using JavaScript to do this will ensure that Googlebot does not get confused. Pair this with a good XML sitemap and the user can have a great interaction. Plus, the search engines will be able to crawl and index all of your translated content." Can anyone explain this further? Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance
International SEO | | SEOCT0 -
Bad ranking and drops on main keyword
Hi Guy's, I have a question about a website that ranks between SERP 10 - 20 and often drops out of the search results. Looking at authority it should score in atleast in top 10. Netherlands + Belgium - Dutch language
International SEO | | Happy-SEO
https://www.vaneyckshutters.com
Keyword: Shutters (in all languages) Netherlands: SERP 10 - 20 and drops
Belgium Dutch language: Top 3 position
Belgium French language: Top 3 position History:
In the past, the website was live on domain extensions: .nl (Dutch) .be (Belgium) Later they switched to .com/nl/ (Netherlands + Belgium - Dutch language) .com/fr/ (Belgium - French language) And finally they swtiched to .com (Netherlands + Belgium - Dutch language) .com/fr/ (Belgium - French language) *All switched where provided with redirects In 2016 Q3 a new website was launched provided with https://, there where some issues with redirects but that's mainly fixed now. After launching the new website the positions where terrible. The website didn't score on the keyword: Shutters, and some times not even on there own brandname. After a while it stabilised but still sometimes the website dropped out of the search results. A few weeks ago we made some technical changes and now we see drops again. Strange things Still we see strange things happening. Mainly the fact that Belgium NL and FR score good, but that could also be because of lower competition. What about the search result: site:vaneyckshutters.nl (indexed) site:vaneyckshutters.be (indexed) i came across this article, and looked at: vaneyckshutters.nl/robots.txt (present) vaneyckshutters.nl/robots.txt (present) Strange that the meta titel is ignored bij Google:
".com" meta title is the same as the indexed ".nl" and ".be" At some point a saw a redirect from the old website to the new:
302 permanent redirect (made me think there was some tweaking going on) I asked a friend if he could provide some SEO advise and gave suggestions: - In the robots.txt is see "disallow:[empy]", is that smart? Canonical on home is set to: "/" but redirect without "/" x-default in alternate is missing Advise Does anyone see the issue or has an advise for us? Maybe we are missing the clues and is something going wrong on: Server/domain level (redirects) Authority level (still some 404's) Technical issues (hreflang) etc. etc. Hope someone can help us out! Thanks a million!0 -
My indexed site URL removed from google search without get any message or Manual Actions??
On Agust 2 or 3.. I'm not sure about the exact date...
International SEO | | newwaves
The main URL of my website https://new-waves.net/ had been completely removed from Google search results! without getting any messages or Manual Actions on search console ?? but I'm still can find some of my site subpages in search results and on Google local maps results when I tried to check it on google
info:new-waves.net >> no results
site:new-waves.net >> only now I can see the main URL in results because I had submitted it again and again to google but it might be deleted again today or tomorrow as that happen before last few days
100% of all ranked keywords >> my site URL new-waves.net had been completely removed from all results! but I'm still can see it on maps on some results My site was ranked number 1 on google search results for "digital marketing qatar" and some other keywords, but the main URL had been removed from 100% of all search results. but you can still see it on the map only. I just tried to submit it again to Google and to index it through google search console tool but still not get any results, Can any one help to know what is the reason?? and how can I solve this issue without losing my previous ranked keywords? Can I submit a direct message to google support or customer service to know the reason or get help on this issue? Thanks & Regards0 -
Huge increase in US direct visits to a UK site, why?
Hi all, My UK website usually gets around 10,000 direct (Direct in Analytics) visits per month however for August this has shot up to 24,000! However the majority of these direct visits seem to be coming from the US and as a result the bounce rate is through the roof, 84%! Why would my UK based site suddenly be receiving huge amounts of US visits? Any ideas?
International SEO | | MarkHincks0 -
Researching (and launching a site within) a foreign language market
Morning peeps, A client wants to clone their website for a foreign language market, obviously swapping all English content for whichever language/market they're looking to target. Any advice on how to research a foreign market (when I only speak English), or perhaps any pitfalls to look out for or advice you might have with a launch like this? thanks
International SEO | | Martin_S0 -
Using Javascript to alter ONE or TWO keywords in International Site
Hi, What is the best way to target a language that has slight variations in it without actually targetting specific countries? Scenario: Ecommerce site that sells mobile phones in Spanish, initially created to target Spanish from Spain. We call a mobile phone a "movil" Now we want to target LatinAmerican users, which also use Spanish with variations, the most notable being mobile phone called "celular". We don't want to create specific sites via new ccTLDs, nor subdomains, no directories for each new country, and we want to avoid having two sites - one for spain, one for latinamerica- given that the only major difference is we say MOVIL in spain and CELULAR in LatinAmerica. What is Googles take if we simply decide to modify THAT specific keyword in each page where it is mentioned? Either by: a) Server based. IP Detect. that is, render the page with either one or the other term b) Javascript based. i.e. Have BOTH terms on all pages but using Javascript show/hide according to user preferences. c) Display the keywords with different font sizes/emphasis, depending on the visitor. Any ideas?
International SEO | | doctorSIM0 -
Keyword Difficulty on Local Searches
I have got a site targeted for a New Zealand audience. The site is about property in Australia. The SERP for the keyword "real estate australia" is dominated by .com.au domains which are obviously set for Australia. Does google give .co.nz domains priority in the SERPs for New Zealand or are .com.au and .co.nz domains treated evenly for New Zealand based searches? http://www.google.co.nz/search?q=real+estate+australia&pws=0&gl=NZ Would a .co.nz domain have higher priority in this SERP?
International SEO | | OnPage10 -
Website optimization - highly competitive keyword in german
Hey guys, this is the website: www.mediavideoconverter.de We need to optimize this website for a bunch of keywords such as: VIDEO CONVERTER in google.de which is highly competitive and some others for ipad, iphone software's. Can someone give me a advise where should I start? I know the design isn't great, unfortunately in this part there is nothing I can do about it. Thanks in advance 😃
International SEO | | augustos0