Strategic Internet Marketing for Your Private Practice: Using Keyword Metadata, Part 2

Using Real Keyword Metadata

The most accessible source of metadata on real search keyword use is WordTracker. The service enables you to discover what keywords people are really using, and to rank them quantitatively in such a way as to identify which can make a real difference to your search engine positioning -- and which you should probably treat as irrelevant to your private practice marketing efforts.

How does it work? The service maintains an extensive database of metacrawler data, recording what keywords were used in real searches at several of the leading search engines. The last time I checked, it covered somewhere around 370 million searches conducted over the preceding 60 days. This represents a vast pool of data from which you can learn about real searching patterns.

There are many different tools available at WordTracker; the explanation below will describe just one of the most popular and effective tools for conducting keyword research.

Generating Keyword Lists

The first step in your keyword research will be to enter a particular root phrase, related to the service you're offering, which will serve as the starting point for exploring the universe of possible keywords.

Next, the service will return a list of keywords and phrases which it has determined statistically are related to the original keyword or phrase you entered. These keywords all relate in some way to your original keyword or phrase, whether or not the connection is immediately obvious to you, and whether or not the connection is actually relevant for your particular purposes. (However, noticing which keywords are not relevant can be useful in and of itself: it can offer some insight into how many people may be using similar phrases to search for something completely unrelated to your own practice.)

Along with this list of new keywords comes WordTracker's initial raw data about how many times the particular phrase appears in its database of searches over the last two months, as well as a prediction of how many visitors you might expect were your phrase to occupy a top positioning in Google results for that phrase.

Keywords which have not been searched for very much should probably be ignored at this stage (although they can still be very useful for some more advanced purposes, beyond the scope of this article). You can also get immediate feedback on whether you're looking in the right sort of place, considering a particular keyword or phrase. For example, some mental health practitioners might imagine that a great many people will search for the word 'counselling'; however, as seen in this example screenshot, there were actually not that many searches conducted on the term during the time being examined.

The purpose of these original lists is to enable you to select specific keywords or phrases which you'd like to analyse in greater detail: just pick what you'd like from the list, and continue to the next step...

Evaluating Keywords and Search Niches

The end result of generating your list of keywords for analysis is a list of those keywords ranked according to effectiveness, where effectiveness takes into account both the number of searches conducted on a particular term and the number of sites already listed as relevant for that particular keyword or phrase. The list can be tailored to reflect the results specifically on Google, Yahoo!, MSN, or any of several other search engines.

This example screenshot shows, for instance, that over 10,000 searches were conducted on the word 'depression' -- but there were also around 27 million pages already available and relevant to that keyword.

By carefully examining the list of results, you can evaluate which keywords and phrases are both likely to be used in a real search by a real person and are not subject to too much competition from existing sites. It is those sites which are 1) relevant to your specific practice, and 2) actually get used in real searches, and 3) are not too competitive, which you can expect to offer the best results for your search engine marketing efforts, and which will likely offer the best increase in traffic to your own site.

Quantifying Bid Prices for Popular Keywords

One additional feature of this basic keyword research procedure I've been describing is the capability of ranking keywords according to the amount that advertisers are willing to pay for them on the paid-inclusion search engine Overture. Although Overture does not rank especially highly in terms of search traffic, it is unique in that it makes bid data available to the public. WordTracker, in turn, makes that bid data in a much more convenient and ranked form than is possible using Overture's own limited tools.

This gives an idea of competition for given keywords in the paid search space, as distinct from competition based purely upon the content of web pages. In other words, the first ranking described above included information about competition in terms of how many pages were relevant to a given keyword or phrase; the Overture bid list, in turn, provides information about competition in terms of how much advertisers pay to be listed for searches on that keyword. And while Overture itself may only attract comparatively modest search volumes, it is likely that the relative relationships between Overture bids for given keywords and phrases are not too different from the corresponding relationships between bids on other paid advertising systems, such as Google's AdWords.

Making the Most of Keyword Metadata

To get the most out of your own keyword research, you should plan to spend a good bit of time not just thinking about your own practice and your potential clients, but also learning how to use the technical tools effectively.

This article has zoomed through the basics of keyword research quite quickly; there's a great deal more to it, but with some effort you should be able to get useful results. Alternatively, please check into our own professional keyword analysis service.