5 SEM Spying Strategies You Can Use Today to Generate More Profit

Internet Marketing is getting more and more competitive and if you want to run profitable campaigns, you need to know what your competition is doing. We have all done market research on our competitor's website, keywords and ads, but how actionable is that data?

I'm going to show you what spying data can actually help you improve results.

If you're doing paid search, you typically want to know which keywords your competition is using, what ads and landing pages they serve up, and how much they are spending.

If you're doing SEO, you want to know who is ranking for your important keywords, how many links do they have, and from where. Some popular spying tools for SEO include www.moz.com,www.majesticseo.com, www.similarweb.com, and www.raventools.com.

Remember, begin with the end in mind.

You can't be successful at marketing if you don't know who you are marketing to. Ask yourself, Who is my ideal, best or most profitable customer? What keywords would they be searching to find my products or services?

Once you've clearly defined your target market, important keywords and specific PPC and/or SEO competitors, the spying can begin!

1. Keyword and Competitive Research Tools

Most marketers have used a keyword spy tool before, usually entering in a keyword or domain to see what the tool reports back. I highly recommend doing this for anyone involved in marketing and especially the organization's executives. 

Here is a good post that lists and reviews competitive analysis and keyword research tools.

We break the spying down into three components:

1. Visibility for keywords searched and content sites that your target market is using.
2. Ad Creative and effectiveness.
3. Continuity between the keyword searched and the ad, also the ad to the landing page.

There is obviously different data to collect within the three strategies, but it's really important to define each metric and how it can be used to improve your results.  

Use this example of metrics to benchmark your efforts against the competition and measure visibility, creative, and continuity.

This post will cover some specific examples from a tool called www.ispionage.com and a few specific examples of how to monetize this data. The same principles and strategies apply no matter which tool you're using, so go ahead and apply them with any keyword and competitive analysis tools.

Keyword Research

Entering a keyword, for example "iPhone cases", reveals that this keyword has more than 4 million monthly searches and the average CPC is $.88.

Also, you can quickly begin to see who you're up against. You can analyze how many PPC advertisers, which keywords they are using, which ads have been shown, how many SEO competitors, and any social mentions for this keyword.

By trying different combinations of keywords that are important to my business you can find opportunities and threats. By shifting money into these opportunities, avoiding extremely competitive terms and finding more profitable keywords, you bring the overall campaign ROI up.

In the example below, the keyword phrase "Search Marketing Agency" has 8,100 searches per month and a CPC of $16.76. It shows the 1,420 ads that have been used for this keyword, the 262 PPC competitors and 357 SEO competitors.

If we change the keyword phrase slightly to "Search Marketing Consultant", there are still 5,400 searches per month (2,700 less) but a CPC of $13.99 (17 percent less). Most importantly, there are only 40 PPC competitor (85 percent less) and 94 SEO competitors (66 percent less) for this phrase. By doing this simple exercise, we can find less competitive keyword that we can focus on to drive more profit.

If we look at the more competitive keyword, "Search Marketing Agency" I can evaluate the top competitors, how many keywords they are using and the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) to determine which keywords are working for them. The KEI works by analyzing when they starting using that keyword and how recently they have used that keyword.

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The Tale of Too Many Keywords: Optimization in Content Marketing

Once Upon A Time, Keywords Ruled

When SEO was young, it was a kingdom ruled by keywords. If you wanted to be the king on any search engine results page, you had to research and insert specific keywords and phrases into your web pages and online content. It didn’t matter if the keywords read perfectly in the sentence or not. They had to be exact – otherwise rankings fell.

Google Panda was the game changing algorithm update here. In late 2011, a big change was made from ranking keyword-focused content to higher quality, more reader-friendly content. What exactly was the big change?

According to HeBS Digital, Google said goodbye to keyword-centric SEO and changed the very direction of search engine queries in relation to websites. The change directly affected marketing strategies. Instead of providing searched for keywords to website analytics tools, Google moved to a nondisclosure policy. Says HeBS Digital , “Google is not disclosing to website owners the keyword terms visitors use to find the site, e.g. ‘downtown Houston hotels’ or ‘Hotel near Times Square’.”

At first, this change felt like doom rolling into the SEO kingdom. Businesses gasped in horror because a strong percentage of their sales came from website revenue, revenue that was directly related to the influx of traffic via keyword placement!

“The major shift on behalf of Google marks the end of the keyword-centric era and ushers in the page-centric era,” wrote HeBS Digital. “This new initiative is in tune with [the] Google Panda Update, which punishes low-quality content that provides poor user experience and engagement.”

The New Hero, Quality Content

As the Keyword King was dethroned, the new fearless hero made an entrance. However, this hero wasn’t really a new face. According to HeBS Digital, “Without keyword-specific data, SEO marketers must focus on what [we have] been supporting all along: relevant, editorial-quality website content.” Instead of depending solely on keywords to drive and corral the audience, it was time to use the more precise tools of the newly, officially crowned hero:

• Create engaging content
• Use professional copywriting
• Develop a content creation plan
• Use SEO monitoring technology

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of web spam, expanded on the new way of doing things. Cutts said, “A lot of people [think] there’s some one recipe, and you can just follow like baking cookies, and if you follow it to the letter, you’ll rank number one.” However, this way of thinking was shockingly incorrect. No single, perfect recipe for quick bake SERPs exists—not then and not now.

How does the Google expert say to use keywords? Instead of haphazardly stuffing content, Cutts says, “Think about the keywords that you’d like to have in your copy. Make sure your copy is long enough that you can work those keywords into your copy in a natural way and not an artificial way. And my recommendation is to either read it aloud or read it to someone else or have someone else read it, and sort of say, ‘Do you spot anything that’s artificial or stilted or that doesn’t quite read right?’ And if you can read through the copy, and have it read naturally where a person isn’t going to be annoyed by it, then you’re doing relatively well.”

Why the change? Wouldn’t stuffing keywords be easier than actually writing editorial-quality copy? The biggest reason for this change was to cut down on the spam in keyword-focused pages. Keyword-focused pages might well have increased website traffic and led to a statistical increase in several key areas, but they also accomplished on major thing that even Cutts said to avoid: they annoyed readers.

The old keyword techniques just don’t work as well as they used to. “When was the last time that anyone wanted to read copy that included many repetitions of a word that didn’t provide any additional context or information which helped the reader? Not very many,” says Search News Central.

Google’s Panda upgrade permanently dethroned keywords. And it all happened for one simple reason, which Search News Central sums up by saying, “The biggest reason [for this change] is that documents that lace themselves with hundreds of keyword repetitions looks like spam. So much so that it becomes unreadable for the normal human being.”

Plot Twist: Your New Focus

Since keyword research is clearly no longer a driver in SEO, what should you focus on? Well-researched content that delivers stellar readability is HUGE. This will do so much more for you than content that solely focuses on keyword optimization.

1.      Instead of zeroing in on a keyword, make it the last thought as you write your content. You might say it’s time to start thinking of keywords and phrases as takeaway points. They are that tidbit of information you want the audience to remember. It’s likely your keywords are all related to your niche. By infusing the takeaway moment with your keyword or phrase, you’ll silently train your audience to come back to and look for your content in regards to that topic or key point.
2.      Write to educate, inform, and share knowledge. What lasts longer than the latest and greatest product or service? A way of thinking. Your goal should be to generate the kind of well-researched and well-written content that educates, informs, and shares knowledge with everyone who reads it. Share facts that are backed up by research. Incorporate precise numbers such as exact statistics or results from a case study. Above all, reference and link your research. As a result, you’ll promote your way of thinking. Arming the audience with fact will only benefit your credibility, authority, and sales.
3.      Keep your angle fresh. This can be easier said than done, especially when you simply cannot find a fresh angle to approach your content from. In an article about content for search engine rankings, SearchEngineLand.com says, “Sites can take advantage of [a] freshness boost by producing relevant content that matches the real-time pulse of their industry.” In other words, trend with your industry and present the latest and greatest relevant information with your own spin. No one has a voice exactly like yours, which is why your spin will help preserve freshness and uniqueness.
4.      Write to engage. According to SearchEngineLand.com, “Quality content should produce meaningful interactions with users.” You can consider your content successful when it generates chatter. You want to see comments from your readers. You want to see them sharing your content via their social networking channels. You want to create a reaction. Write to engage by harboring a conversational style, incorporating real-world experiences, and telling a story.
5.      Market your content. You can accomplish this in a number of ways. Moz offers two excellent suggestions in a piece on how to write great content: 1) “Post your post on a popular blog,” and 2) “[Use] your own social media [channels].”

A Final Word Regarding Keyword Research

Obviously, keywords are not dead. Instead of being a focal point, they are now that coveted secret ingredient to your favorite recipe (but remember that there’s no one recipe for rankings!). Keyword research is still a part of SEO. So, how should you perform such research for web content? Here are some ideas straight from an expert, Copyblogger:

1. Choose possible keywords to kick-start your research.
2. Determine the popularity and competition score of each of your keywords.
3. Discover (and research) other related keywords.
4. Check the trending data on your keywords. You can do this by using Google Trends.
5. Do some research on how your keyword(s) is/are being used in trending social network conversations.
6. Examine your research results, and ultimately choose the keyword(s) you want to target for your site.
7. Don’t be afraid of hiring help. If keyword research boggles your brain and leaves you short of breathe, don’t be afraid to enlist the help of a trained professional. Most copywriting agencies are equipped to lend a hand or point you toward a seasoned pro.

In summary, keywords have now become that little something extra that we add for emphasis and throw in for good measure. They are no longer the focal point of search engine optimization. Moving forward, it’s important that you use them wisely (and sparingly!) while focusing on the new SEO trend of editorial-quality copy. Do this and you will be well on your way to learning and applying the moral of The Tale of Too Many Keywords.

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What to Look For When Completing an SEO Analysis

Oftentimes when people approach SEO for the first time, it’s all about link building. Everything is about outward changes and reaching outward to different industry leaders and trying to build links and relationships. While this is indeed a huge part of any SEO strategy, it’s important that companies realize that your internal processes might need to change. You (or more likely your SEO agency) have to audit everything about your website and be prepared to change major components of your website if necessary.

When it comes to completing an SEO analysis, there are some things that an SEO agency will want to evaluate that could affect your website in ways you may not have anticipated. Some of these most popular aspects include:

• Domain Problems. In some cases, there might be domains and sub-domains out there that can be linked with the domain name you’re used to using. For example, there could be a 301 redirect on something like “https://www.domain.com” that could be affecting your traffic. SEO agencies need to go through all of the different options and potentially get rid of these “extras.”
• Check Sitemaps. An XML sitemap is a great way to make sure that all of your pages are cached quickly so that your visitors are seeing the most updated version of the page and so that SEO can begin to build for that page. This involves creating a list of your site’s URLs to make it easier for the bots to access. 
• Collect Your Analytics. Your SEO agency is going to need to collect data for your website, and this involves checking the search traffic and keywords, referral traffic for each landing page, anchor text information and overall monthly traffic information.
• Analyze Targeted Keywords. Of course, keywords are what most clients focus on when going out to hire an SEO agency. You want to research keywords and use those in tags such as the title tag, meta tags, and description tags.
• Check for Indexed Pages. You can actually check to see which pages are indexed by typing “site:www.domain.com” into the Google search bar. This will show you all of the pages being indexed by Google, so it’s definitely one of the first things an agency will want to do for your site.

In the end, understanding some of the most fundamental things that need to be assessed can help both an SEO agency and a company both become successful. This helps you see exactly why an SEO agency might need to change some of the processes that have worked for you in the past and why your site architecture may need a little bit of SEO TLC.

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