The Last Post on bg Theory
2011 is going to be an exciting year for our company. We have big changes planned, including moving the bg Theory blog and the AdWords Seminars to our new training and tool site, CertifiedKnowledge.org.
For our current subscribers, there is information at the bottom of this post that will let you know if you need to do anything to stay subscribed.
For those readers who are not intimately familiar with bg Theory, let me provide some background.
How bg Theory Came to Life
I started my marketing career thirteen years ago when I discovered affiliate marketing. It was a fun time as everything I did was for me. If I made money or lost money, I was the only one responsible. All of my stress was self-imposed. So if I needed a vacation – I just took one.
However, the success I had lead to others asking me to help them with their marketing. At first I resisted, or was highly selective of who I worked with, but the guaranteed revenue (assuming client’s get results and renew), was nice to supplement the risk of affiliate marketing. Eventually, my clients lead me to starting my first agency in 2001.
I ran that agency for a few years until I decided to join another company, LocalLaunch. I helped grow that company up to not just being another agency, but to also being acquired by RH Donnelley (now DexOne). We weren’t just another Yellow Page acquired agency though, we became one of the few Google and Yahoo resellers in the world.
However, agency life is focused around maximizing returns for your clients. One of my passions is teaching and empowering others to succeed. That’s why after years of agency life, I decided to form bg Theory and make education our primary focus.
Too Many Sites + Too Many Brands = Resource Draining
bg Theory grew quickly thorugh a variety of means. I wrote a book on AdWords which is selling very well. We work directly with Google to host AdWords Seminars for Success and have had several thousand attendees. We do some custom in-house training for companies. A few months ago, we launched an online training site called Certified Knowledge.
In addition to having a variety of training programs, I also tweet, blog, write for Search Engine Land, moderate at Webmaster World, guest blog, give interviews, speak at a large variety of conferences, host webinars, and I just started a radio show called Marketing Nirvana.
This combination of training and content creation has been successful for us. However, I also think it hurts us from a branding perspective because we are so spread out across the web (which sounds funny as that’s the goal of many companies).
Not only do we have multiple domains with unique branding, but we have created groups, pages, and profiles at the major social media sites for each of these brands. This has also caused not only a resource drain, but some brand confusion among our various followers. To amend these problems, we ultimately made the decision to focus on a single brand name and house everything under a consolidated company nerve center. As I believe strongly in the success of Certified Knowledge, we have chosen that to be our central brand going forward.
I will still be writing for SEL, hanging out at WMW, blogging, tweeting, and speaking at conferences. That part will not change. The part that will is where you will find our content, upcoming seminar registrations, and where we will be spending most of our time.
Changes at Certified Knowledge
When we first started Certified Knowledge, it was purely based around a subscription membership program. Over the past month, we’ve been tweaking the system to allow for both free memberships and paid memberships. Our goal is to create a comprehensive internet marketing training system on one site. We still have a long ways to go; but our AdWords training and tools are a good step in the correct direction.
You might be wondering with all of the VC funded social media sites and large community forums, why would we create a social network? I have bootstrapped everything, and we own 100% of our own company, but we don’t have millions of dollars laying around to build system.
As both a professional in the marketing world, and having a family, I have found it personally difficult to communicate with relevance across the social web. Of course, I wouldn’t start a site just for me, this is a sentiment that I heard echoed quite often.
For example I have a FaceBook account. My grandmother, my wife, my close friends, my marketing acquaintances, my conference friends, my old high school friends, and yet more people are all on it. It has made FaceBook very difficult to use as my family could care less about marketing and my marketing friends could care less that I’m outside building a snowman with my 20 month old daughter.
LinkedIN has potential, but its lack of integrated support between groups, events, profiles, and followers has made it hard to use as a true social network (I do like LinkedIN overall and hope it succeeds). Twitter, well, is twitter. A following is not a community – it’s an excellent place to communicate (and listen) – but its not a community.
Our new Certified Knowledge design offers a lot of the social networking tools like Facebook or Twitter (much smaller scale). However, it is just for marketers. You don’t need to worry what your grandmother thinks about your questions, or if you shouldn’t friend an EXs friend because they might find out. The site is all about marketing. If you’re not a marketer – then you’ll be bored at the site.
The above features are free to anyone.
We also have tools and lessons which are accessible through a monthly subscription.
I hope you take a look at the new site, register for an account, and help us grow a new community that’s created by marketers for marketers.
It’s still new. It’s still rough. It is steadily growing. But most importantly, if you want to find us or our content – it’ll be at Certified Knowledge along with the rest of the bg Theory team.
Your Subscription
If you are subscribed by email, then you will continue to get emails as we post new content. If you are subscribed to our FeedBurner RSS feed, then you will continue to receive new content.
If you are subscribed to the old ewhisper feed or the bgTheory feed, you *should* continue to receive your subscription; but that might depend on your RSS reader as some aren’t great at following redirects. If you’re unsure, feel free to subscribe on our new subscription page.
| Read Brad's Newest Book: Advanced Google AdWords | |
 |
Advanced Google AdWords will provide deep insight into AdWords functionality and advanced features, explaining how they work and providing tips, tactics, and hands-on tutorials that readers can immediately use on their own PPC campaigns. |
| Certified Knowledge: Online AdWords Training, Tools, and Community | |
 |
Certified Knowledge is an online tools, training, and community site brought to you by Brad Geddes & bg Theory.
|
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Introducing Marketing Nirvana – The newest Webmaster Radio Show
Marketing Nirvana is the newest radio show at WebmasterRadio.fm.
The show will focus on all types of internet marketing information, with a bent towards PPC as I’m hosting it.
The first show will air on January 3rd, 2011 at 3pm EST. The initial guest for the show were two individuals from BoostCTR (disclaimer: I’m on their board), a company that is crowdsourcing ad copy writing. Rob Lenderman, one of the co-founders of BoostCTR and Ryan Healy, the Director of Writer Development shared their knowledge about ad copy writing.
They were also kind enough to let us show one of the documents which has been uploaded to the Marketing Nirvana group docs collection. Once the show airs, I’ll link to the podcast for you to listed to at your convenience. For now, if you feel overwhelmed by ad copy writing, check out Boost CTR’s offer – it’s a pretty good one.
After the show, the link will be available to download in podcast form from iTunes. You can also listed to previous shows at WebmasterRadio.fm.
Our newest project, Certified Knowledge will host the Marketing Nirvana group and other information. You can visit the group here.
I hope you enjoy the show.
| Read Brad's Newest Book: Advanced Google AdWords | |
|
Advanced Google AdWords will provide deep insight into AdWords functionality and advanced features, explaining how they work and providing tips, tactics, and hands-on tutorials that readers can immediately use on their own PPC campaigns. |
| Certified Knowledge: Online AdWords Training, Tools, and Community | |
|
Certified Knowledge is an online tools, training, and community site brought to you by Brad Geddes & bg Theory.
|
Related posts:
- Introducing Certified Knowledge: PPC Tools, Training, & Community Over the past couple of months, I’ve made very few...
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Brad Geddes Interviewed on Clever Clicks
I did an interview with Philip Shaw of Clever Clicks for their Marketing Secrets podcast.
The podcast is focused around AdWords beginners; and some top mistakes – but there’s good takeaways for intermediate users as well (it is 44 minutes long).
As Philip is based in Australia; if you are from that area – it’s a good show to listen to so you get some regional info and not just US based info.
You can listen to the podcast at the Online Marketing Secrets site or read the entire transcript.
If you are looking for Australian PPC management, I’d recommend talking to Clever Clicks about their online marketing programs as they definitely know what they’re doing.
| Read Brad's Newest Book: Advanced Google AdWords | |
|
Advanced Google AdWords will provide deep insight into AdWords functionality and advanced features, explaining how they work and providing tips, tactics, and hands-on tutorials that readers can immediately use on their own PPC campaigns. |
| Certified Knowledge: Online AdWords Training, Tools, and Community | |
|
Certified Knowledge is an online tools, training, and community site brought to you by Brad Geddes & bg Theory.
|
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Escape to Miami this December with the AdWords Seminars & Affcon
December brings cold weather to the north, and the desire for people to escape to warmer weather for a week.
This year, we have the perfect destination for you – Miami.
Both the Miami AdWords Seminar for Success and Affcon will be in Miami the week of December 7th.
This is your last chance to attend a solid week of training this year; which will let you get a jumpstart on planning your growth for next year.
Affcon 2010
Affcon is one of the top affiliate conferences in the world. It is brought to us by the brains behind Webmaster Radio.
The best thing about Affcon is that it is free for for full time affiliates.
Affcon is a 2 day seminar with plenty of good speakers and sessions to help you grow your earning.
I will be speaking twice at Affcon. Once on an intro to AdWords, and the other as an intro to Google Analytics.
AdWords Seminars for Success
If you want more advanced AdWords info; then the AdWords Seminar for success is for you.
The AdWords Seminar for Success Advanced series are two days of interactive education that will help you make the most of the time and money you invest in AdWords. Officially sponsored by Google, you can trust that you are receiving the most accurate and up-to-date information on the best practices for advertising with Google AdWords.
The AdWords seminar in Miami will take place Tuesday & Wednesday (the 7th & 8th of December).
Learn more about the AdWords Seminars.
Start your week with the AdWords seminar and end it at Affcon.
| Read Brad's Newest Book: Advanced Google AdWords | |
|
Advanced Google AdWords will provide deep insight into AdWords functionality and advanced features, explaining how they work and providing tips, tactics, and hands-on tutorials that readers can immediately use on their own PPC campaigns. |
| Certified Knowledge: Online AdWords Training, Tools, and Community | |
|
Certified Knowledge is an online tools, training, and community site brought to you by Brad Geddes & bg Theory.
|
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Escape to Miami this December with the AdWords Seminars & Affcon
December brings cold weather to the north, and the desire for people to escape to warmer weather for a week.
This year, we have the perfect destination for you – Miami.
Both the Miami AdWords Seminar for Success and Affcon will be in Miami the week of December 7th.
This is your last chance to attend a solid week of training this year; which will let you get a jumpstart on planning your growth for next year.
Affcon 2010
Affcon is one of the top affiliate conferences in the world. It is brought to us by the brains behind Webmaster Radio.
The best thing about Affcon is that it is free for for full time affiliates.
Affcon is a 2 day seminar with plenty of good speakers and sessions to help you grow your earning.
I will be speaking twice at Affcon. Once on an intro to AdWords, and the other as an intro to Google Analytics.
AdWords Seminars for Success
If you want more advanced AdWords info; then the AdWords Seminar for success is for you.
The AdWords Seminar for Success Advanced series are two days of interactive education that will help you make the most of the time and money you invest in AdWords. Officially sponsored by Google, you can trust that you are receiving the most accurate and up-to-date information on the best practices for advertising with Google AdWords.
The AdWords seminar in Miami will take place Tuesday & Wednesday (the 7th & 8th of December).
Learn more about the AdWords Seminars.
Start your week with the AdWords seminar and end it at Affcon.
Understanding The AdWords Disco Dance
This is a guest post by Chris Thunder, the founder of TenScores.com.
Advertising is very much like a dance.
Two people (a business and a prospect) moving rhythmically towards a conversion. Ask any woman experienced in paired dancing and she’ll tell you there’s nothing worse than a bad partner. To listen is the way to lead.
How good of a dance partner are you with your customers?
The following is a concept I learned from Brad Geddes which has helped me increase conversions for my clients and myself. I put my own ‘twist’ to it and it goes something like this:
There are a series of steps a buyer goes through before deciding to purchase a product from a specific website. Some call it the sales funnel, the buying funnel, the sales process… let’s call it the Disco Dance: Discovery, Interest, Study, Comparison, Order.
Understanding each step of the Disco Dance and finding where a prospect is in the process – judging by the keyword they used or the web page they came from – helps tremendously in crafting the message that resonates most with him or her.
It helps decide whether to write a benefits driven ad, a features driven ad or one that combines both so you can lead your prospects seamlessly towards the conversion you both want.
Let’s dance!
Maggie is our stick figure and we’ll use her to explain the different steps in the dance so you can lead her to the sale.
DISCOVERY
Maggie becomes aware of her problem. At this stage she might not know much about the problem nor the solutions that are available, she uses very general terms to see what’s out there.
Your Ad – A benefit driven ad will most likely appeal to her. Tell her how you will solve her problem and make her life so much better. Do not confuse her with specialized terms she might not be familiar with.
Your Landing Page – Showcase benefits on your landing page and provide information about features leading her to the order. Since this is the earliest stage of the dance, you might want to simply ask for her contact information so you can slowly inform her through other means of communication. Most visitors from the display network (formely known as content network) are at this stage of the dance.
INTEREST & STUDY
Once she has found the solution you propose and has grown a little (or a lot) of interest from the benefits she now knows about, she studies the offer and the offerer. She starts digging in and gathering more information to help her decide.
In this stage of research, she might use more specific keywords.
Showing her features is a great choice since she already knows a little about the benefits… but she’s still early in the Disco Dance so it’s important to remind her about the benefits as well.
Your Ad – An ad showcasing both features and benefits should do well.
Your landing page – At this point you should move quickly into showing the best features of your product and move her to comparing your offer to your competition (if necessary) since this is the next probable step she will take.
COMPARISON
At this stage into the dance she knows quite a lot about the benefits and has decided to buy. It’s now a matter of who she will buy from. She’ll compare product features, prices, etc… She uses more specific keywords including comparison terms and product names.
Your Ad – An ad showcasing features and facts about your product will guide her better to the next step which is ordering your product. This is where you need to show what differentiates you from your competition, better prices maybe, a discount, free shipping, etc.
Your Landing Page - Provide details about what your product features are so she has everything she needs to compare you with others. Don’t leave anything out. A feature table can be great thing to do. Even better, you could have a comparison chart that highlights main differences between your product and those from the other guys… you know, the competitors (yes, those ones!).
ORDER
She’s made her choice, she knows what she wants and gets it. Congratulations, you’re a great dancer!
At this point, Maggie could keep the product, talk about it to her friends or… ask for a refund.
Preventing that refund to happen and encouraging her to talk about you to her friends is a more advanced dance class. See you when you graduate.
Conclusion
When you know where a prospect is in the Disco Dance, your ad and landing page can quickly lead them through all the remaining steps until the order. It can happen fast or it can take a little more time… but as long as you lead them by listening, they will come back for another dance.
About The Author: Chris Thunder is a Disco Dancer himself. If you liked the content of this post, you can read more in the Ten Scores book available free at Tenscores.com. You will also have access to free tools in beta testing such as the Adwords Quality Score Monitor and the Bid Optimizer Tool.
| Read Brad's Newest Book: Advanced Google AdWords | |
|
Advanced Google AdWords will provide deep insight into AdWords functionality and advanced features, explaining how they work and providing tips, tactics, and hands-on tutorials that readers can immediately use on their own PPC campaigns. |
| Certified Knowledge: Online AdWords Training, Tools, and Community | |
|
Certified Knowledge is an online tools, training, and community site brought to you by Brad Geddes & bg Theory.
|
Related posts:
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Understanding The AdWords Disco Dance
This is a guest post by Chris Thunder, the founder of TenScores.com.
Advertising is very much like a dance.
Two people (a business and a prospect) moving rhythmically towards a conversion. Ask any woman experienced in paired dancing and she’ll tell you there’s nothing worse than a bad partner. To listen is the way to lead.
How good of a dance partner are you with your customers?
The following is a concept I learned from Brad Geddes which has helped me increase conversions for my clients and myself. I put my own ‘twist’ to it and it goes something like this:
There are a series of steps a buyer goes through before deciding to purchase a product from a specific website. Some call it the sales funnel, the buying funnel, the sales process… let’s call it the Disco Dance: Discovery, Interest, Study, Comparison, Order.
Understanding each step of the Disco Dance and finding where a prospect is in the process – judging by the keyword they used or the web page they came from – helps tremendously in crafting the message that resonates most with him or her.
It helps decide whether to write a benefits driven ad, a features driven ad or one that combines both so you can lead your prospects seamlessly towards the conversion you both want.
Let’s dance!
Maggie is our stick figure and we’ll use her to explain the different steps in the dance so you can lead her to the sale.
DISCOVERY
Maggie becomes aware of her problem. At this stage she might not know much about the problem nor the solutions that are available, she uses very general terms to see what’s out there.
Your Ad – A benefit driven ad will most likely appeal to her. Tell her how you will solve her problem and make her life so much better. Do not confuse her with specialized terms she might not be familiar with.
Your Landing Page – Showcase benefits on your landing page and provide information about features leading her to the order. Since this is the earliest stage of the dance, you might want to simply ask for her contact information so you can slowly inform her through other means of communication. Most visitors from the display network (formely known as content network) are at this stage of the dance.
INTEREST & STUDY
Once she has found the solution you propose and has grown a little (or a lot) of interest from the benefits she now knows about, she studies the offer and the offerer. She starts digging in and gathering more information to help her decide.
In this stage of research, she might use more specific keywords.
Showing her features is a great choice since she already knows a little about the benefits… but she’s still early in the Disco Dance so it’s important to remind her about the benefits as well.
Your Ad – An ad showcasing both features and benefits should do well.
Your landing page – At this point you should move quickly into showing the best features of your product and move her to comparing your offer to your competition (if necessary) since this is the next probable step she will take.
COMPARISON
At this stage into the dance she knows quite a lot about the benefits and has decided to buy. It’s now a matter of who she will buy from. She’ll compare product features, prices, etc… She uses more specific keywords including comparison terms and product names.
Your Ad – An ad showcasing features and facts about your product will guide her better to the next step which is ordering your product. This is where you need to show what differentiates you from your competition, better prices maybe, a discount, free shipping, etc.
Your Landing Page - Provide details about what your product features are so she has everything she needs to compare you with others. Don’t leave anything out. A feature table can be great thing to do. Even better, you could have a comparison chart that highlights main differences between your product and those from the other guys… you know, the competitors (yes, those ones!).
ORDER
She’s made her choice, she knows what she wants and gets it. Congratulations, you’re a great dancer!
At this point, Maggie could keep the product, talk about it to her friends or… ask for a refund.
Preventing that refund to happen and encouraging her to talk about you to her friends is a more advanced dance class. See you when you graduate.
Conclusion
When you know where a prospect is in the Disco Dance, your ad and landing page can quickly lead them through all the remaining steps until the order. It can happen fast or it can take a little more time… but as long as you lead them by listening, they will come back for another dance.
About The Author: Chris Thunder is a Disco Dancer himself. If you liked the content of this post, you can read more in the Ten Scores book available free at Tenscores.com. You will also have access to free tools in beta testing such as the Adwords Quality Score Monitor and the Bid Optimizer Tool.
Priceless Keyword Research Data You Already Have – But Never Use
This is my latest Search Engine Land Article that originally appeared here.
One of the best sources for keyword research is your customer’s own words.
It is easy to lose sight of your customers when doing keyword research by relying on tools. These tools are not going to spend money with your company; tools just show you the most popular phrases regardless if your customer’s actually use these words or not.
There are a few simple ways to conduct research by just examining your customer’s information.
Gathering the Data
The first step is to gather the data in a single place so that you can analyze this information. There are generally a few places where you can find your actual customer’s words.
Email Communications
Every day you receive communications from your customers. These come in the forms of contact emails, support requests, request for services, etc. These communications contain the customer’s actual words.
Most companies use either forms or direct email on their website. These form fills or emails are sent to a CRM system or directly to someone’s inbox. Pulling data out of an email inbox is not an easy task. Instead, use a form system that saves the data to a database, and then forwards the information to the appropriate CRM or inbox. By taking this simple step, you can start to collect all of your customer’s communications in a single place.
Blog Comments
If you have a blog on your site, then you are logging comments to a database. It is a simple process to export the comments from your database. For most blogging platforms, just go to your host control panel and use the phpMyAdmin interface to export the comments.
Product Reviews
Many ecommerce sites allow their customers to post reviews about individual products. In general, I find reviews useful to examine, however, the words your customer’s use to name the product is often heavily skewed towards the name you gave the product on the product page. Each system has a different method for exporting reviews, so you will want to examine how the reviews are being saved in your system.
Social Mentions
Many social sites contain comments from your customer’s about your products. However, they do not always have an easy way to gather the data. If you are using a social monitoring tool, there may be a simple way to export the data.
If you are not using such a tool, then the low tech approach is to use Google alerts. Set up alerts for your brand names, products, etc and then save all of those emails in a single place. You can even have those emails auto-forwarded to a database system so they are easily aggregated into a single place.
Of course, you can always just go to Twitter or another social search tool and conduct a search for your brand name and then copy and paste the results into a file.
Forums
If you have forums on your site, this is another great place to mine for keywords. Forums are generally more free flowing words than product reviews, and are often longer than blog comments, which make them a great place to mine your site for keywords.
If you are using a free forum system, then you should be able to export the forums from your hosting control panel. Otherwise, examine how the forums are stored to export the data.
Analyzing the Data
Now that you have a structured lists of your customer’s own words, it is time to analyze the data. There are a two easy ways you can use to extract keywords from this data.
Keyword Density Analyzer
The simplest way to analyze the data is to use a keyword density analyzer. Plug your customer’s words into a tool and it will show you the most common words and phrases that your customers are using. Mine this list for new keywords.
Since this data may contain sensitive information that you do not want to use on a website, you might want to download a density analyzer that is run on your local machine to maintain the privacy of your users. In that case, Textanz is a good option.
AdWords Keyword Tool
Copy your list from your keyword density analyzer and paste it into the AdWords keyword tool. You can quickly find search volume, competition, and average CPC for all of your customer’s words so you can decide if you want to use the keyword for your paid search campaign.
The AdWords keyword tool can be used to spider your site. This is an easy way to find new keywords.
If you have forums, reviews, or blog posts that you were having a hard time exporting to structured data, you can instead have the AdWords tool spider those pages for keyword suggestions.
In addition, you can spider a social site to receive keyword suggestions. Twitter does not allow their search results to be spidered, and Google’s keyword tool respects the robots.txt file, so you need to get around this limitation to spider Tweets. An easy way is to first search on Tweetscan for your keywords, and then have Google spider the Tweetscan search results page.
Another way to find keywords among your customer’s data is to temporarily publish the data to the web and then use the AdWords keyword tool to spider that data for new keyword suggestions. Be careful what you temporarily publish. It is recommended you remove any personal customer data before uploading it to the web where a spider can find it.
Conclusion
When you use your customer’s actual words as keywords, you no longer have to guess at what words someone might use to find your products or describe your services. Your customers give you data every single day.
The first step to analyzing your customer’s words is to save it in a structured manner.
The second step is to analyze the data.
The third step is to add it to your paid search account and measure the results.
The steps are simple.
However, if your customer’s communications are not captured and stored in a manner that makes it easy to examine for keywords, then each day you are losing a valuable opportunity to find new keywords.
| Read Brad's Newest Book: Advanced Google AdWords | |
|
Advanced Google AdWords will provide deep insight into AdWords functionality and advanced features, explaining how they work and providing tips, tactics, and hands-on tutorials that readers can immediately use on their own PPC campaigns. |
| Certified Knowledge: Online AdWords Training, Tools, and Community | |
|
Certified Knowledge is an online tools, training, and community site brought to you by Brad Geddes & bg Theory.
|
Related posts:
- MSN’s PPC Keyword Research MSN’s pilot PPC program has a keyword research tool. The...
- 13 Sites to Jumpstart Your Keyword Research I recently wrote about the simplest way to jumpstart your...
- Yahoo Local – Controlling and Protecting Your Data Yahoo local has quietly become one of the best search...
Priceless Keyword Research Data You Already Have – But Never Use
This is my latest Search Engine Land Article that originally appeared here.
One of the best sources for keyword research is your customer’s own words.
It is easy to lose sight of your customers when doing keyword research by relying on tools. These tools are not going to spend money with your company; tools just show you the most popular phrases regardless if your customer’s actually use these words or not.
There are a few simple ways to conduct research by just examining your customer’s information.
Gathering the Data
The first step is to gather the data in a single place so that you can analyze this information. There are generally a few places where you can find your actual customer’s words.
Email Communications
Every day you receive communications from your customers. These come in the forms of contact emails, support requests, request for services, etc. These communications contain the customer’s actual words.
Most companies use either forms or direct email on their website. These form fills or emails are sent to a CRM system or directly to someone’s inbox. Pulling data out of an email inbox is not an easy task. Instead, use a form system that saves the data to a database, and then forwards the information to the appropriate CRM or inbox. By taking this simple step, you can start to collect all of your customer’s communications in a single place.
Blog Comments
If you have a blog on your site, then you are logging comments to a database. It is a simple process to export the comments from your database. For most blogging platforms, just go to your host control panel and use the phpMyAdmin interface to export the comments.
Product Reviews
Many ecommerce sites allow their customers to post reviews about individual products. In general, I find reviews useful to examine, however, the words your customer’s use to name the product is often heavily skewed towards the name you gave the product on the product page. Each system has a different method for exporting reviews, so you will want to examine how the reviews are being saved in your system.
Social Mentions
Many social sites contain comments from your customer’s about your products. However, they do not always have an easy way to gather the data. If you are using a social monitoring tool, there may be a simple way to export the data.
If you are not using such a tool, then the low tech approach is to use Google alerts. Set up alerts for your brand names, products, etc and then save all of those emails in a single place. You can even have those emails auto-forwarded to a database system so they are easily aggregated into a single place.
Of course, you can always just go to Twitter or another social search tool and conduct a search for your brand name and then copy and paste the results into a file.
Forums
If you have forums on your site, this is another great place to mine for keywords. Forums are generally more free flowing words than product reviews, and are often longer than blog comments, which make them a great place to mine your site for keywords.
If you are using a free forum system, then you should be able to export the forums from your hosting control panel. Otherwise, examine how the forums are stored to export the data.
Analyzing the Data
Now that you have a structured lists of your customer’s own words, it is time to analyze the data. There are a two easy ways you can use to extract keywords from this data.
Keyword Density Analyzer
The simplest way to analyze the data is to use a keyword density analyzer. Plug your customer’s words into a tool and it will show you the most common words and phrases that your customers are using. Mine this list for new keywords.
Since this data may contain sensitive information that you do not want to use on a website, you might want to download a density analyzer that is run on your local machine to maintain the privacy of your users. In that case, Textanz is a good option.
AdWords Keyword Tool
Copy your list from your keyword density analyzer and paste it into the AdWords keyword tool. You can quickly find search volume, competition, and average CPC for all of your customer’s words so you can decide if you want to use the keyword for your paid search campaign.
The AdWords keyword tool can be used to spider your site. This is an easy way to find new keywords.
If you have forums, reviews, or blog posts that you were having a hard time exporting to structured data, you can instead have the AdWords tool spider those pages for keyword suggestions.
In addition, you can spider a social site to receive keyword suggestions. Twitter does not allow their search results to be spidered, and Google’s keyword tool respects the robots.txt file, so you need to get around this limitation to spider Tweets. An easy way is to first search on Tweetscan for your keywords, and then have Google spider the Tweetscan search results page.
Another way to find keywords among your customer’s data is to temporarily publish the data to the web and then use the AdWords keyword tool to spider that data for new keyword suggestions. Be careful what you temporarily publish. It is recommended you remove any personal customer data before uploading it to the web where a spider can find it.
Conclusion
When you use your customer’s actual words as keywords, you no longer have to guess at what words someone might use to find your products or describe your services. Your customers give you data every single day.
The first step to analyzing your customer’s words is to save it in a structured manner.
The second step is to analyze the data.
The third step is to add it to your paid search account and measure the results.
The steps are simple.
However, if your customer’s communications are not captured and stored in a manner that makes it easy to examine for keywords, then each day you are losing a valuable opportunity to find new keywords.
Video: Learn How to Navigate the New AdWords Reports
My latest Search Engine Land column is out titled: How To Navigate Google’s New AdWords Reports And Avoid Losing Valuable Data.
I made a video for SEL and had SEL upload it to YouTube. However, the quality of the video isn’t great (think it has to do with the YouTube upload process). Since it’s an 11 minute video I wanted to make it available in a higher resolution so you can see everything in a bit more detail.
The video walks through:
- How to create reports in the new interface
- Limitations of the reports
- Segments and dimensions for the reports
- Saving the new reports
- A workaround for multi-conversion tracking in determining value/click data
Most of your previous data is still available if you know where to look. Some of it is in a new format, or requires you to combine reports to view the data that was previously available. Please see Josh Dreller’s column to learn more about vLookup so you can combine multiple reports together.
If you like this video, there are another many more like it in our Certified Knowledge product.
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