Thursday, October 28, 2010

How to Find Out Keywords Your Competitors are Targeting

You can get to know what your competitors are targeting at, by getting to know what their keywords meta tags are like. Though it is a common start altogether, the only best idea to do so is because every action has its own reaction. In addition, keyword meta tag is not the only dependable basis for information and has its own cons as below:

The first and foremost thing is, nowadays most sites have stopped using the keyword meta tag technique. As most search engines avoid them so there is no point in using them. Secondly, through keyword meta tag you only get to know about the keywords that a site owner optimizes a page for and not about the keywords measured as valid by Google.

Luckily, one of Google's tools can give you a bird's eye view of any web page. All you need to do is to get signed up with Google AdWords in order to use it. Moreover, you just have to make a payment of $5 to start using it, which is affordable enough.

Google's Site-Related Keywords Tool assists advertisers in searching pertinent keywords for their AdWords promotions. Below is how it works:

You need to set off the ad to start; with which you get access to AdWords’ most helpful keyword tools. All its going to charge you is that $5 fee you paid in the beginning, not much.

After creating your ad group, click on the link keyword tool. This gets you access to Google's keyword variations and site-related keywords tools, which are some of the most powerful methods for keyword research matters.

Enter a random URL on any page of the internet. The keyword categories will be returned to you if they are relevant to your pages and after Google has crawled them. Under those categories you will be provided with a list of keywords those will be significant in increasing traffic according to Google.

No tool is perfect; similarly this tool comes with some flaws of its own. For instance, it is unable to show all the keywords Google searches on a page, whereas, it tries to place your page under a highly trafficked category and show you the keywords that you must aim at to get a decent amount of traffic to your website.

The primary aim of the tool is to help AdWords advertisers in bidding on the highest trafficked keywords in a category, due to which Google is at profit, because the more the clicks, the more revenue for Google. All this indicates is that the tool is not entirely spotless when trying to find out the keywords any competitor is targeting, adding to that, if the page has meager content then the tool will not work properly.

On the other hand, it shows you those highly trafficked categories according to Google that are considered relevant to pages. Considering this, the keywords within those categories will attract more customers to the page. This becomes a terrific way that will help in finding out some really significant keywords which will turn out to be cost effective for you.

Some more helpful tools from Google

Yahoo and Google have high-end search tools which help in showcasing the extent to which your competitor's pages are optimized. Nevertheless, there are always tools available in the market that will give a slight clue of what and how enthusiastically your competitors are optimizing a specific keyword for their websites.

Most of you may be aware of the fact, that having keywords in the anchor text of your incoming links is a very beneficial aspect when it comes to ranking your pages at the top of search engines. Also keep in mind not to over do this. If you want to know which keyword is within the anchor text of the incoming links, then you may make use of Google's inanchor search command that provides this benefit of showing you every single such page.

In order to use Google's effective inanchor search tool, type the following in Google:

inanchor:"real estate"

This lists down an approximate of 234,000,000 pages that have this keyword in the anchor text pointing at them. In which, Realestate.com has maximum such links pointing at it. Undoubtedly making it highly ranked for this keyword. (Search results may differ from day to day.)

Note: Make sure you use quotes when searching for multi-words like 'real estate' to get relevant results.

Google's allinanchor search command is here to help you search for a combination of words in the anchor text. For example, if you want both words 'real estate' and 'Chicago' to appear in the text, then type the following:

allinanchor: "real estate" chicago

Apart from placing your keywords in the anchor text of the inbound links, there is another important place where you must incorporate your keywords i.e. in the titles of the web pages. Google is your savior again. With its intitle search command you get to find out those pages containing your keywords in their title tags. To understand, we'll stick to the 'real estate' example for now:

intitle:"real estate"

We get some 44,500,000 pages that use 'real estate' in their title tags.

Lastly, Google's 'intextcommand' shows that the searched keyword is used somewhere or the other on some 988,000,000 pages:

intext:"real estate"

The 'allintitle' and 'allintext' search commands can also be used for searching multiple keywords in one go.

All these three effective commands can be combined to get a collective search result and get to know about sites that have made effective use of keywords at all these three positions – incoming link anchor text, title tags and webpage body content:

intitle:"real estate" inanchor:"real estate" intext:"real estate"

You will get an estimate of 38,000,000 pages that match this criterion. Here, it proves that 'real estate' is a very competitive keyword therefore finding a less competitive keyword will help you in rapid progression.

Note: You cannot unify the allinanchor, allintitle and allintext search commands. Still, if you want to search for several keywords or phrases then you may need to make a compound of the inanchor, intitle, and intext commands, as below:

inanchor:"real estate" inanchor:chicago intitle:"real estate" intitle:chicago intext:"real estate" intext:chicago

The search results dwindles significantly to as low as 115,000. Definitely, this means it would be better to target with a more specific keyword like 'Chicago real estate' than with a wide term like 'real estate'. (The search results may vary from time to time).

Social Media Consultant talks about the ways to find the keywords your competitors are targeting. To know more about SEO visit Semaphore Software, a leading SEO service provider.

No comments:

Post a Comment