#pubcon Lateral Keywords for Writers ( When the Google Keyword Planner isn’t enough) Presented by: Ash Nallawalla SEO Strategist, Suncorp Insurance

#pubcon About Ash SEO consultant, currently at Suncorp Insurance (eight brands) Moderator at Webmasterworld forums Previously in enterprise SEO roles, notably NAB, ANZ Bank, Ubank, Optus and Yellow Pages 2

#pubcon KEYWORD RESEARCH BASICS No longer enough

#pubcon Everybody’s doing it Most of us use the Google Keyword Planner to get a feel for the most searched terms. Our competitors do that too. 4

#pubcon Search volume alone isn’t enough But we need a starting point. 5

#pubcon Give researched keywords to writers A keyword matrix ensures a good spread of keywords across the site and saves the writer from guessing keywords. 6

#pubcon Search intent is important Intent can be Navigational, Informational, Commercial, Transactional. Yes, check out some tools. 7

#pubcon CHECK OUT THE COMPETITION So who is winning in your niche?

#pubcon Start with a ranking check Use your preferred rank-checking tool to see who is ranking for each keyword. We want to check which company’s content is consistently coming up on Page 1 for a number of similar keywords. 9

#pubcon Count ranking keywords First get the count of keywords that rank. 10

#pubcon Derive the mean position Get the “average” position for each company. 11

#pubcon Invert the mean position “Inverting” means deducting the rank from 10, so that a higher number denotes a higher rank. 12

#pubcon Derive a “score” Score (say Allianz) = (C3*C5)+(D3*D5) Score = (6.1x21)+(4.0x3) =

#pubcon Ranking spreadsheet “Visibility” is important, but what is your way to measure it? Which competitor is more visible? 14

#pubcon The content writer’s dilemma The spreadsheet shows the “winners”, not the “losers”. We can see who is using the most searched phrases. Others are using the same tools. So what content are they using that you are not using? (Note: Ranking involves many other factors and this is also about Selling!) 15

#pubcon DEEP DIVE – TERM FREQUENCY Looking for that lightbulb moment?

#pubcon Hat Tip to Eric Enge See his articles in Moz: –Just Google “Eric Enge TF-IDF” for the URLs. (click the image below if you have the PPT) 17

#pubcon Inverse Document Frequency 18

#pubcon TF-IDF example Say, a document with 100 words contains the term “cat” 3 times. The TF is 3/100 x = Google has, say, 30 trillion pages and the word “cat” appears in 1.7 billion pages. The IDF is log(30,000,000,000,000 /1,700,000,000) or log(730, ) = The TF-IDF (or TF*IDF) weight is the product of: x =

#pubcon Term Frequency – Two ways to measure 20

#pubcon Getting back to Term Frequency… 21 Search for your keyword. Visit the page/s of the highest ranking company and the next four top rankers. Note their URLs. Note the URL of your own page. Do a Term Frequency analysis and, perhaps Inverse Document Frequency analysis (TF-IDF).

#pubcon Get n-grams Use one of the old “keyword density” tools to get 1- word, 2-word, and 3-word pairs from your site and the five competitors. Collate, de-dupe n-grams and place in Eric’s spreadsheet. 22

#pubcon TF – one worksheet per keyword Six sets of n-grams on the left and de-duped list in grey zone. 23 Eric’s spreadsheet

#pubcon TF – close-up Get a count of each word or phrase used by the top five pages and by yours 24

#pubcon TF – close-up 25

#pubcon TF – close-up Use conditional formatting to pick a range of TF values and compare your TF column with the average TF of the competitors. You will now see “significant” words to consider. 26

#pubcon The extracted words The pages I was analysing did not contain some “obvious” words – this is the beauty of this technique. 27

#pubcon The future? Working on a web version Takes minutes, not hours. 28 Sliders Gems Beta:

#pubcon Summary Keyword research requires more than the Google tool. Do lateral keyword research. Do consider Term Frequency at least. Also look into Inverse Document Frequency. Download full PPT from: Ash Nallawalla Web: