Google’s Insight for Search program is closely related to their Google Trends product. With Insights for Search you can compare and contrast search volume patterns across specified regions (like USA or Japan), categories (such as health or sports) and time ranges (last 30 days, for example).

No matter what business you’re in – small business owner, marketing/advertising agency or even a giant corporation – Google Insights for Search can help you determine the interest in different search terms. The reason is that Insight for Search shows you A/B comparison between keywords so that you can choose the best keywords for your needs. It also shows you the top related keywords as well as which keywords are on the rise in your market. Additionally, you can see which cites, states and even countries in which a keyword is popular.

A note of caution, Google Insights for Search works much like Google Trends in that it defaults to the broad matched version of a keyword. This means that a word like credit will show more volume than credit cards, event though credit cards gets more search volume. The reason is that the term credit card counts towards the search volume for the word credit. Also good to know, keywords are weighted so that their top volume day is anchored at 100 and other days represent a relative percentage of that search volume.

All in all, this is another powerful tool in Google’s toolbox that is well worth taking a look at to determine how it can fit into your marketing plan.

This product review of Wordtracker is by Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com
and covers some useful keyword research techniques.

Basically, keyword research should begin with looking at your current web logs or analytics reports since basically these keywords should have some type of ranking. The logic is that you can probably rank for similar keywords.

The key to using a keyword research tool is to start with general themes like ‘chocolate’ and then find other keywords like ‘white chocolate’ and ‘chocolate truffles’. Once you identify some of these, you should visit competition to see how they have ranked.

According to SEOQuake, the more keywords in a search results the better lower quality sites did in the results. This long tail strategy can be good for sites that don’t have the authority to rank for competitive keywords.

Quintera shows keyword phrases that people might be using by relating keywords from the top Google SERP results.  There are lots of keyword tools that can be used for ideas as part of the discovery process.  Be sure to review keywords volumes as part of the input, but don’t rely on the data from any of the tools.

Google’s keyword tool not only provides keyword variations but you can also plug in a url and Google will use the content of the home page to pull relevant keywords.  Compete also provides a traffic / ranking based keyword terms that allows you to ’spy’ on your competition.

Picking the right keywords can lead to traffic quickly if you the right modifers.  Only half of the search queries on Google are unique, so be sure to use modifiers that might include product names, brands, and action items like ‘buy’, ‘price’,'order’, ‘cheap’, etc.  For another example, clothes might have modifiers like ‘loose’ or ‘tight’.  Aaron Wall gives a lot of good ideas regarding the type of keyword modifiers that might be used and these items could potentially be used for on-page body copy.

Rand at SEOMoz does a good walk-through of the Keyword Research Process and how site hierarchy should be more important than just Keyword Demand. This is a common question that we come across as we try to interpret keyword volume research and overlay it into a website.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Implementing Keyword Research from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Once keyword research is complete, it is time to overlay the identified keywords into the meta data and on page body copy (a writing task) and modify the site architecture and link structure (a development task). While not specifically mentioned, this is an excellent time to evaluate Page Rank sculpting and attempting to silo content.

Rand is putting this all under a Keyword Research and Implementation, while we tend divide this overall process into several smaller steps:

• Keyword Research – Brainstorm, research, presentation and sign-off by client.
• Meta Data – Mapping of target keywords to the website pages.
• SEO Content Optimization – On page body copy improvements to support target keyword by page.

While we break this up into some small deliverable items, we do view the overall process as one complete exercise to improve the on-site factors that affect SEO.

“Insight for Search” is a new tool Google has recently introduced in to add to the current Google Trends and AdWords tools. Google claims Insights for Search will help you “see what the world is searching for.”

Basically, the tool should help people better understand what is being searched for on Google as well as to see the details for certain keywords across various geographic regions, verticals and time periods for more insight.

Internet marketers or bloggers that what to determine what kind of content is engaging to more people should consider looking into the tool. One of the most powerful uses it offers is that you can actually narrow your search by categories to figure out which keywords are more popular in certain categories.

Additionally you can simply click the “search” button without entering any words in the search field to find the most popular rising terms for all categories and regions. And, by narrowing your empty search to a specific category you can see the most popular search terms for the category for its history.

This has the potential to be quite a powerful tool for anyone in the online marketing arena because essentially now you know which article topic will be more popular or which keyword is searched for more often in certain areas.

A competition analysis allows you to measure the strengths and weaknesses of your business, current competitors and potential competitors.  The analysis helps a business assess opportunities and threats as well as providing help creating business strategies, including the implementation and monitoring of them.

Although competition analyses are different depending on a variety of things they do share common points. A competition analysis should show you who are the major competitors in a market along with what share of the market they hold. Another point included in an analysis is if any significant changes have been seen in the market shares of the competition over the past few years. You should also identify which competitors tackle the various segments of your market and who is the strongest in each field. Finally, a competition analysis should tell you about your competitors’ strategies in reaching your target market.

You can find this information in a variety of ways. First you can check out your competition personally. Visit the business if it’s a brick and mortar place and see whom they cater to and how they do business. You can also research your competition online. There are tons of free ways to do this research such as following any press your competitors receive. The government also offers free research options.  Another option is to join a trade association in your field. Trade associations tend to have a lot of information about their fields and with the price of membership you can usually have access to it. Finally, there are plenty of paid searches you can do to find out specific data.

Make sure you know your target market before beginning a competition analysis and don’t forget to identify direct and indirect competitors. The solid base of information that comes from a strong competitive analysis can provide insights to your product and positioning, your company’s strengths and weaknesses and help you determine which areas in your market you can succeed the most as well as what places you shouldn’t worry about. And that is one of the best ways to successfully run a business.

When you research keywords to use in your web site or blog, it’s important to find words that people really search for, while avoiding keywords that you cannot realistically compete for. Here are some suggestions on how to research keywords more effectively and efficiently.

1. Create a list of potential keywords and phrases related to the subject of your web site. Try using a thesaurus to obtain more related keywords you might find desirable. The keyword research tools referred to in the next step are also useful for finding related keywords. Some sites effectively obtain traffic by creating content centered around commonly misspelled words.

2. Research how many people are searching for these keywords. You can use Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, and various other keyword research tools to easily and effectively obtain this sort of data. Some of these tools are free, others require a subscription fee. If no one is looking for a particular word or phrase on the search engines and you don’t have any reason to believe that will change, it probably isn’t worth producing content on that subject.

3. Use a major search engine to query keywords you are interested in; if all of the first and second page results are supplied by major (high PageRank) web sites, your site will have difficulty surpassing them in this subject (unless the site is already very well known). It is a good sign if there are few results or most listings aren’t specific to the keyword of interest; you may be able to effectively serve this niche.

4. Keep in mind that your goal (probably) isn’t just to increase hits to the web site; you want to effectively attract interested visitors who will click advertisements, purchase products, or otherwise benefit the site. For example, if a laser printer dealer were to go to the effort of attaining high rankings for words like “printer” and “printing”, it would needlessly attract many users who are only interested in other types of printers (also wasting bandwidth).

Unfortunately, no matter how effectively you research keywords, not all of them will produce a lot of traffic. Search query data isn’t always accurate, the things people are interested in vary from time to time, and new competitors may appear. Generally, the best strategy is to target niche keyword phrases which specifically relate to your site’s content and aren’t overly competitive.

Wordtracker is a valuable online keyword research tool which offers several benefits for web site and blog operators. Both free and paid options are available, along with a variety of useful SEO related content. Here are some more details on Wordtracker’s benefits and how it can be used:

When a keyword is entered, Wordtracker responds by indicating the approximate number of daily searches people make on that specific word. This benefits Wordtracker users by letting them know if it is constructive to create web content focused upon that keyword. It can also be utilized when starting a web site or even designing a new product, to see what people are interested in finding. The Wordtracker search query data comes from two relatively popular search engines, Metacrawler and Dogpile, allowing it to accurately indicate the popularity of a given word or phrase.

Another one of Wordtracker’s benefits is that it lists a number of related words and phrases below the keyword in question, along with the number of daily searches for each of them. This makes it easy to get ideas about different keywords to use, reduces the amount of keyword searches necessary, and lets users instantly compare the popularity of various words and phrases. It also has an optional adult content filter. Both of the above-mentioned benefits are available using the Wordtracker Free Keyword Suggestion Tool, although it is limited to showing the top one-hundred related keywords. It is one of the more useful free keyword tools.

Other benefits include an affiliate program, an e-mail newsletter, and the free “Wordtracker Academy” section, which provides articles and case studies regarding SEO keyword research. The affiliate program pays a fifteen percent commission on the sale of Wordtracker subscriptions, with payment offered by PayPal or check. A paid subscription includes additional benefits such as being able to easily query results on a word from several major search engines, and the ability to save lists of keywords in the system. A seven day free trial of the paid Wordtracker subscription is offered to let potential customers assess the site’s full benefits; it also includes a free bonus guide and video.

Overall, Wordtracker provides a convenient way to determine which keywords and subjects to target when creating new web site and blog content, along with learning more about how to use keywords effectively. Other sites with some of the same benefits include Keyword Discovery and Nichebot.

Competitive research is an important part of any search engine optimization plan. Luckily, there are several tools that can help improve your results.

The first step in any competitive research plan should be keyword research. Otherwise you might as well be throwing your money away. Keywords can bring high search volume and cost a lot of money if they are highly competitive. Doing your research using a tool like Keyword Discovery or Word Tracker can help you determine which words will make enough of a profit for your business to offset the costs. These tools can also help you find low search volume words that also make you a profit.

Another tool you should have is some sort of analytics program. Google offers a pretty good one for free. This will help you track how people are finding your site and how they behave once they are there. All of this information is invaluable when deciding things like where to advertise, who to link to, even if you should redesign your web pages to make them easier to navigate.

Compete.com is a third great tool. This site will show you the traffic trends for your competitor sites. You can list up to 3 sites and see the results of how they stack up against your site and each other. This information is priceless and free.

While these 3 tools are just the tip of the iceberg they are a great place to start your competitive research. With the help of each your SERPs will increase and your site will be more successful in the long run.