How can you find out information about your chosen keywords?

In this post I present some simple techniques that I hope you will find useful when researching your own keywords.

The list below is not meant to be in any particular order.

Competitors
Keep your friends close but your enemies closer. Arguably one of the most valuable sources of keyword research is analysing your competitors. Enter your keywords into Google and investigate say, the top five web pages. Look at the web pages content and try to spot any phrases you do not have and the way in which they are being used. Additionally but equally important look at the placement of the phrases, you may spot a pattern. Also pay attention to any phrases and terms that have been highlighted in a particular way like italicised or boldened .

The point being here is that results returned at the top of Google are likely to have at least some SEO applied, but for very niche terms and phrases this is not always the case.

View Source Code
This task can be carried out at the same time as analysing your competitors web pages as mentioned above. It involves viewing the source code of a competitor web page to give more insight into the keywords being used.

How to view the source code of a web page

You are looking for the blocks of code that resemble the following:

1. <meta name=”description” content=”View the source code of a web page?”>

2. <meta name=”keywords” content=”internet, browser, source, code, information”>

The two “tags” above often contain a lot of valuable information that you can use in your own keyword list. The relevant information is contained in the content=”…” part. The blocks of code in question are located near the top the page when you view the source code.

Google
Search engines allow for special queries to be made. These queries enable a user to find out information about the term(s) they are investigating. This is valuable information because it lets you see how competitive the market is for your term(s), for example, by looking at the number of results returned by one of these special queries:

Example Query: “allinanchor:skip hire”

The above query will return web pages that have the exact phrase “skip hire” used in anchor links. This is because we have “allinanchor:” (notice the colon ‘:’) added to our search term. In other words the query will return pages that include click-able links with the text “skip hire“. As we know with Google, links are generally king so sites with a click-able link with the text “skip-hire” must have something to do with skip hire.

Generally speaking, the lower the number of results returned from the query the better.

Google AdWords tool
https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal
Strictly speaking this is a tool to aid your AdWords campaigns but I think it can also give you quick information regarding a keyword(s) you are thinking of using.

With the tool you can enter terms and phrases and check their search count for the previous month, globally and locally. This enables you to optimise keywords you use by spotting that, for example, the pluralised version of your term gets searched for more, or perhaps a misspelling is also notably used to search for. It also gives you a list of possible variations and you often find some niche terms to use that you didn’t think of.

I hope you have found something useful you can use by reading above or gained ideas. SEO is like throwing mud at a wall and seeing what sticks so hopefully more of your mud will stick now. Thanks for reading and good luck.

Also see: Simple SEO Rules.

Below are 10 brief tips for Google Adwords. The below may be good for a beginner who is using Adwords for the first time and needs to get up and running fast.

1. Use keywords in your ad.
2. Use same keywords on page your ad targets.
3. Display search phrase above fold.
4. Try not to distract user from goal on landing page.
5. Use gripping image with equally gripping teaser.
6. Target specific topics.
7. Include calls to action.
8. Include prices and promotions.
9. Target Seasonal offers.
10. Use keyword variations.

Chrome, Firefox, Mozilla and Safari 3 have all implemented this property but with the vendor extensions added like the CSS box-shadow property as mentioned in an earlier blog post.

The actual property for the above browsers is specified like so:

• Chrome
• Safari
  • webkit-border-radius: 3px;
• Firefox
  • moz-border-radius: 3px;
• Standard
  • border-radius: 3px;

The property actually takes 2 length values that basically put define the “slope” of each corner. For example if only one value is used or the two values are the same the “slope” of each corner would be a quarter circle. If the 2 values are different the corner is more of an ellipse shape.

It is also possible to apply the property to individual corners. Again we must specify different vendor extensions for each browser:

• Chrome
• Safari
  • -webkit-border-top-left-radius
  • -webkit-border-top-right-radius
  • -webkit-border-bottom-left-radius
  • -webkit-border-bottom-right-radius
• Firefox
  • -moz-border-radius-topleft
  • -moz-border-radius-topright
  • -moz-border-radius-bottomleft
  • -moz-border-radius-bottomright

We can use these wonderful features now! There is no need to wait around. If the above doesn’t fit your needs, here’s a list of 25 rounded corner techniques, choose the best one that fits your project. Good Luck!.