IndustryAdvanced Keyword Modeling: How to Calculate Success on Google & Bing

Advanced Keyword Modeling: How to Calculate Success on Google & Bing

Are you capitalizing on the intent of each user’s query? Here's how to create a strategic, tiered keyword list by drilling down to the molecular level to analyze how your keywords and snippets match a user's search query and that user's intent.

ses-san-francisco-bill-huntAre you capitalizing on the intent of each user’s query? In his session on Advanced Keyword Modeling at SES San Francisco, Bill Hunt from back-azimuth.com drilled down to the molecular level to analyze how your keywords and snippets match a user’s search query, and more importantly, that user’s intent.

“Analyzing the keyword data you have, then creating a strategic, tiered keyword priority list based on ROI is essential to growing your profits and saving wasted CPC costs,” said Hunt.

Here are some of the highlights from the session:

Search Types

First as search marketers we must understand the three types of searches.

  1. Informational
  2. Navigational
  3. Transactional

What percentage of users that search for your products or services are looking for information, looking for a “how to,” or looking to buy?

What is the net value you can get by targeting each one of these segments in your business?

For example you may get lots of traffic and high rankings when targeting informational queries, but the conversions may be slim and you find that boosting your keyword targeting for those that are transactional gives you a bigger bang for your buck.

More importantly, are you presenting the searcher with the right type of content they to satisfy the intent of their search?

Listen to Your Audience

It’s not how you talk about your business, or what you want your audience to see, it’s how they want to talk about your industry, what they want to see in terms of that language on a SERP, and how they want to go about buying it.

Example:

Say you’re an online retailer that sells furniture. There are many steps a online shoppers goes through in order to conclude that your item is the one they want to purchase.

This may entail a process such as:

  1. The shopper realizes there is a need for a piece of furniture.
  2. They decide whether to search for that product online, or go to a brick-and-mortar store.
  3. They evaluate the options.
  4. They select a vendor.

If your a B2B company, you’ll have a different conversion process by the client.

  1. The prospects check with their network for recommendations.
  2. They contact a recognized brand.
  3. They evaluate the options.
  4. They select a vendor.

This is a general model that most customers go through, but again there are variations depending on the demographics of that individual.

Is she/he rich? Poor? A business owner? An executive? A low level employee trying to make their mark?

All of these variations and differences in intent influence what keywords you’re targeting.

After intensive analysis on what this customer is and how they go about buying your product or service, prioritize your keywords into three tiers that fit those different sets of individuals, their intent, and what stage of the buying funnel they’re in.

How to Find What Tier Your Keywords Are in

I put this little equation together myself and it’s far from scientific, but it will help you understand how to assign value to each of your keywords. All the theory behind it belongs to Bill.

 

Keyword(s) search volume

X

Your organic ranking for that keyword(s)

+

PPC ranking of that keyword(s)

X

User’s intent with that keyword

=

That keyword(s) value to your company.

 

The keyword’s search volume can be found using Google’s Keyword Tool.

Your organic & PPC ranking of that keyword can be calculated in some variation of the following:

  • 1 = ranking 1
  • .5 = ranking 5
  • .1 = ranking 10
  • Etc.

You can calculate a user’s intent behind that keyword by using a similar numerical system.

  • 1 = looking to buy (long-tail queries)
  • .5 = researching services
  • .1 = looking for information

The above equation is more of a guideline, not something to literally use.

In some instances you will have four of the top five organic rankings and a top PPC ranking, which can balloon the value that each keyword appears to possess.

The intent of your audience and the differences between starting at the information level or the looking to buy level differs between each business, so the values you assign will be different as well.

After you figure out which keywords are most important, you can construct a keyword model that represents your company’s strategy:

keyword-model-diabetes

And using this model you can pinpoint the areas that add the most benefit to your business.

Conclusion – Advanced Keyword Modeling

  1. Analyze who your customers are.
  2. Analyze how they go about buying your product.
  3. Analyze where they are in the buying funnel.
  4. Prioritize your keyword strategy in terms of PPC (and SEO!) to maximize your ROI.
  5. From here you can analyze where you’re weak and where you’re strong and continue to adjust.

Resources

The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index
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