How accurate is the Google Keywords Tool for SEO?

Being SEO & PPC obsessives, we spend A LOT of time using the Google Keyword Tool to predict traffic and therefore sales for our clients. The information presented by the tool help us decide which phrases to target and which ones to avoid. In fact, it's fair to say that the data from the Google Keyword tool actually helps shape our clients future online!

The information from the tool only started to show Google search volume in the last few years. But it seems that the data has not got any more accurate at all. Being in the unique position of overseeing many thousand page one rankings in Google, we thought we'd share our data with our readers to prove just how accurate the tool really is.

Some points to note on how we've presented the information.

• We've decided not to use the exact search phrases here to maintain client confidentiality so have instead just made reference to the industry & location that they operate in.
  
• In addition, we have also split the phrases up by what we deem to be general and specific. General refers to phrases which don't contain any geographical search terms or additional words / phrases which would reduce the amount of results returned considerably. Specific phrases are those which target a particular county or place or contain something specific to what the searcher is looking for. Ok, this isn't an exact science but it helps as a guide.
• The majority of our rankings use correct META tags and don't contain ...'s in them which might potentially influence whether the listings are clicked or not. Same for TITLE tags and page names as well
• We use a piece of software to record our rankings. This information is pulled from Google UK data centres and is accurate for the large majority of the time.
• Our traffic data is collected using standard installations of Google Analytics.
• All search engine listings are in what we'll call the traditional SERPs. Very few, if any, of the phrases selected have news, local,product or video results as part of the results returned, thus making it a fair test in that respect.
  

Here are the statistics collected;

(Click image for large version)

Ok, so there are a lot of numbers here. Some of the predictions from the Google Keyword Tool do not seem to correlate when compared to real clicks, while others are fairly good. Here are some of the findings that we can draw from the information that we've collected;

• Google Keyword Tool groups related phrases together when showing search volume. It isn't very clear how this information is grouped. For example, several phrases entered all returned the same search volume prediction, yet the specific phrases received very different amounts of clicks. Where the same search predictions were returned we omitted some of the possible results
  
• Overall, the amount of clicks compared to the estimated search volume from the Google Keyword Tool was just about 1%. When making predictions on what sort of traffic you can get from SEO, don't be too optimistic!
• There is a big difference between the clicks to prediction on specific phrases when compared to general phrases. In our test, general phrases get less than 1% of searchers clicks compared to something like 12.5% on specific phrases. So just because a phrase doesn't look like it will generate click volume, it may well actually perform better in terms of clicks than some phrases with supposedly higher search volume. This is another good reason to try your phrases out using a paid (PPC) search campaign.
• Unsurprisingly, phrases which rank at #1 get more clicks than those that don't. Our data shows that when a phrase gets to #1, it tends to get 2x more traffic than those that don't. This is a general rule of thumb and is obviously different depending on the phrases being searched for, the amount of traffic etc. It does however highlight the fact that your SEO efforts don't stop until you hit the top!
• A few of the phrases that we focus on had huge amounts of clicks compared to the amount of estimated searches carried out. These phrases tended to be very time specific and on newer phrases (e.g. containing 2009, 2010). This suggests that on phrases which are new or gaining search traction are not accurately estimated by the Google Keyword Tool.
  

All in all, it seems that the Google Keyword Tool can be helpful but in alot of cases, isn't very accurate at estimating clicks from search volume. Let me put that another way, using a straight line formula when estimating clicks from estimated searches isn't very accurate. Generally, it is a fairly safe bet to assume a higher click through rate on specific or local phrases compared to general ones. Yeah, so what, you probably knew that anyway. But maybe our research here might make you think twice about your estimates and possibly your ROI calculations.

Further research in conversion rates and PPC clicks to estimates would be good and if we have time we'll look into this further. For now, if you've any comments, we'd be very pleased to here them!

4 ways to tell that a web design company DOESN'T know how to optimise

It still amazes me how many 'web design' companies there are out there who claim to offer professional SEO services. Having spent the last four years working in, and advising on SEO, I've seen a lot of 'must do' things come and go.

'You should add this to your website' or 'Everyones doing this today' trends come and go but the core principles of SEO haven't really changed since SEO first started (more on that in a later post). Given that SEO has changed very little from its fundamentals, I'm still shocked to see that some companies can't even do the basic right.

Here are four tell tale signs I've picked up which show that these companies don't (really) know what they are doing when it comes to SEO. Be warned!

1. Keyword stuffed page names
   I've always thoughts that having keyphrases and keywords in page names has always been a sensible thing to do. If you've got a page which sells blue widgets, then it makes sense to call your web page blue-widgets.html rather than product13.html. After all, you want your page to be found under blue widgets, the page has good content on it mentioning blue widgets, so why not call the page name blue-widgets?
   However, when you see SEO companies calling their pages web-design-seo-ppc-online-marketing-england-uk-services.html, alarm bells start ringing. A page name should be short and concise and not some mess of phrases and words stuck together in the hope that somehow Google will come along and put them #1 of the pile for the random selection of words that no one will ever type in.
   
   
2. TITLE tags stuffed with keywords
   As with point #1, too many keywords in the wrong places sends out the wrong message. It has been widely rumoured for along time that less is more with TITLE tags. The W3C recommend 64 characters, and if you look at Google and other search engines, they only show a similar amount of text on the searh engine results pages (SERPs). If your TITLE is too long, then you get the dreaded ... at the end of your nice blue link on the results page. Why ruin your chances of getting that click from the search engine with irrelevant words stuffed desperately into the TITLE tag? I see this quite alot from some of the web companies in the UK and its always very disappointing.
   
   
3. Blocks of text stuffed with keywords
   Adding the words that you want to be found by your searchers (your key phrases/words) into your pages is obviously a sensible thing. A search engine is never going to rank your page under the phrases that you want if you don't mention the phrases on your pages. But search engines are clever beasts and know when content is well written and when it is obviously trying way too hard to try and get Google brownie points. Even Matt Cutts (who is THE PR man for Google) say to avoid keyword stuffing. If Google say it's bad, it's bad. Don't know what I'm on about? Look for something like this:
   
   We sell blue widgets to companies who want blue widgets in the UK. Our blue widgets are the best blue widgets available and we sell blue widgets in many places. We sell blue widgets in london, manchester, liverpool, birmingham, nottingham, leeds, exeter, sheffield, glasgow, bristol, cardiff, norwich, wigan, oxford and many other places. When you buy blue widgets, make sure you get your blue widgets from us!
   
   
4. No Internal links
   When a website has a reasonable (say, 20) pages then it makes sense to link the pages together so that users can find their way around the website easily. Links also help search engines. Websites which have lots of links pointing to them nearly always do better than those which don't. One of the things that good SEO companies will do is link internal pages together, as this helps the cross linking of pages and strengthens the website. Getting links from other websites is never easy, so why companies don't get links from other pages on their own website seems like missing the fish in the barrel. This should be one of the first things that SEO companies do and yet many don't seem to know or bother.
   

There are other signs that show that supposed SEO companies really don't know what they are doing but these are the ones which disappoint me (and also make me laugh). When hiring an SEO company make sure you check out the websites which they have worked on to see if they've committed any of the faux paus' highlighted above.

For a more comprehensive list of things which influence ranking in good and bad ways, read the SEOmoz search engine ranking factors list.

If you've got any more you'd want to add, please feel free to add them below.

IE6: Flogging a Dead Horse

Cross browser compatibility

For those of us unfortunate enough to be web developers or designers, cross browser compatibility is a constant thorn in our collective side. For the most part, said thorn exists in the form of Internet Explorer 6. As one of the most widely used browsers, web developers are forced by necessity to cater for this sinking ship. At the time of writing, IE6 still holds an impressive 25% of internet users in its demonic grip, while its younger, but equally frustrating sibling, IE7 maintains anywhere between 25% and 50%, depending on where you get your information.

Now anyone who is familiar with the topic knows what is coming next: I’m about to tell you about Firefox, an open source browser whose compliance with web standards makes life easier for developers. While the end user is unlikely to notice much difference, most developers not in the pay of Microsoft will preach the graces and virtues of this most pious of browsers. In fact, five minutes of reading various forums on the topic will have you believing that Firefox has descended from heaven to lead us all to the Promised Land. And while I am occasionally inclined to agree, I like to think my opinion is a little more subjective than that.

The fact is, IE6 is neither evil nor stupid. At time of writing, Windows XP and Windows Vista collectively occupy over 85% of the market. And since each copy of Windows comes conveniently bundled with Internet Explorer, it is the browser of choice for most casual users. So what’s the problem?

Web standards

The problem is web standards, or the lack thereof in Internet Explorer 6. For any of you scratching your heads right now, let me explain: there is an organisation called the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C for short, whose main job is to develop standards for how websites should be written. They are headed by a man called Tim Berners-Lee, the man heralded as the inventor of the World Wide Web.

Now when a web browser is created, it is supposed to interpret web pages according to the web standards set out by the W3C. Many browsers, Firefox most prominent among them, manage to maintain full compliance with the standards. Even Internet Explorer 8, currently only in the beta stage, is apparently standards compliant. What this means is that when a web developer writes a page, the outcome is predictable, no matter which browser the end user has installed. Unfortunately IE6 seems to ignore the standards in many cases, making extra work for the developer, who has to fix apparent “bugs” on the page. These aren’t problems with the page itself, but problems with the way IE6 is interpreting it.

The future

Now this argument is nothing new, but serves as a background for my main point. That is: IE6 is a lot of work for those of us creating web pages. It’s not only display bugs that cause problems, but lack of functionality. Many elements of CSS 2 remain unsupported in IE6. For developers, it’s like having a shovel to dig a hole but being told to use your hands – if you use any of these unsupported features then IE6 users won’t see them. For a long time this has been the case, and has become something developers get used to.

I’m sure that other developers, like me, are looking forward to the day when we can stop catering for IE6. After all, we used to complain about catering for IE5, which was even worse. And when IE8 is released, I’m sure we’ll complain about IE7. But as things stand at the moment, I am just about ready to throw in the towel anyway.

Why? Well I started thinking on the topic last week, when Google released Chrome. Along with IE6, IE7, Firefox and Safari, this makes 5 browsers for developers to test their websites in. On top of that, IE8 is on the horizon and will add even more testing to the mix. As a result, development costs for websites steadily increase. Clearly the most volatile of the above line-up is IE6. The question is, when is it ok to stop supporting it?

The day Microsoft releases a full working copy of Internet Explorer 8. At this point I intend in my personal projects to stop supporting IE6 for anything more than functionality. If the page “looks” broken in IE6 but still works, I will point my users to a small icon in the page saying “made for IE7 or greater”. Similar icons have been used in the past to explain to users why the page appears broken, and hopefully my users will say to themselves “maybe I should upgrade”. After all, IE7 is a free upgrade, and comes as standard in Windows Vista. But until developers stop catering for IE6, many users won’t bother to upgrade, since they don’t notice the difference.

Soon enough the time will come when we can abandon IE6 and start using CSS 2 in earnest. By that time we’ll probably be wishing we could use CSS 3, but as the saying goes, you can’t have your cake and eat it.

How much does the weather affect search engine traffic?

So... yet another summer is over. The question everyone seems to be asking is 'where did it go?' It seems that yet again, a summer which promised so much from the weather forecasters back in Spring turned out to be mainly wet and generally quite miserable, save for a few glorious days.

While the sun was shining/rain was coming down, we were hard at work on several search engine optimisation campaigns. When planning an SEO project, it is imperative to know which phrases to target based on common sense, key phrase research, competitor analysis and various other techniques. Quite often we can predict how easy/hard it will be to get a client website ranked on the target phrases for their website. And now that we have more information at our disposal about which phrases generated the most traffic, and more importantly, how much, our selection process is becoming easier.

However, the figures we work on are predictions, based mainly on previous behaviour with search engines (although sometimes Googles figures are not that great when compared to reality...). But what effects search engine usage? There are a number of factors ranging from user age or experience, through to time of year or even the weather...

Having worked on some campaigns for clients in the last few months, we've seen that traffic has gone down in the last few months. Ok, the summer holidays have been and gone which means that most of the (small) business world stops for several weeks. But surely Google/search engine searches never stop. Or do they? There are dozens of industries which rely on the weather to make their businesses work, but it's interesting to see what affect this has on search engine traffic and searches.

Some industries which I can think of which rely on the British Summer are shown below using Google Trends to show traffic over the last few years.



The aim of this graph is to show where searchers in the UK look for their holidays; either camping in the UK or trips to the sun in Spain. As you can see there are various peaks and troughs which we can assume are down to the weather for those years (see the BBC news article showing sunshine and rainfall recorded in the UK).

Comparing two great British summer pastimes Cluedo and Conquet (ok, well not 'great', but still relatively popular to make it onto a Google Trend graph) you can again see that the Summer of 2006 bought people out in the dozens to play croquet rather stay indoors playing board games. In 2007, it was a different matter with Cluedo nearly catching up with the famous lawn sport. I guess everyone wanted to know if Mr Plum did do it or not.



These are just two examples of where we can see external factors having an affect on search engine traffic and user behaviour.

The weather isn't something that you can control yet (although I'm sure Google are working on that) but it may need to be considered for your business website. When planning a search engine campaign, it is important to try and take into account every possible factor you can to ensure that you get the best results from your marketing spend.

Don't come up with it - copy it!

Many of you would have seen TV adverts for catalogue company Argos over the last few months. They end with the phrase - 'Don't shop for it, Argos it'. They have long running advertising campaign pushing the fact that when it comes to buying things, it is easier to use the Argos services, rather than spend your time touring your local shopping centre. Nothing unique in the message that Argos are trying to portray, they have been offering an alternative to the Saturday afternoon high street scrum for decades, but it is the way that they have done it which interests me.

For those who may remember, a few years ago Google caused a bit of fuss in the blogging world by saying that they didn't like it when people said 'Google it' instead of 'search for it' as it infringed on their trademark. Google went to the press twice about this issue, once in 2003, and then again in 2006. They claimed that the use of the Google brand name in this way was a trademark violation and that people who referred to 'Googling' shouldn't do so; they even sent out letters to people to ask them to stop/change references to using Google as a verb.

For many marketers, having a brand name or company name synonymous with an activity or industry would be the holy grail. Some companies have already achieved this, here are just some examples I can think of;

'I didn't watch it last night, I sky plus'd it' or

'Do you want a copy? I'll xerox one off now'.

I'm still pretty sure that when Google came out saying that they didn't want people to use Google with reference to search it was a massive double bluff. Why wouldn't they want their name to become so strongly tied to one of the fastest growing industries on the Internet, especially when competing against one of the biggest companies in the world?

Regardless if Google did or didn't want people to use their name with reference to searching, it certainly hasn't done them any harm. Google is now the most powerful brand name in the UK. They have even overtaken Microsoft in the world of brands as well as search.

It's not surprising then that other companies have tried to borrow ideas from the best brand in the UK to try and build their market share and brand profile. It always pays to 'borrow' from the best doesn't it!?

In this case, Argos, in my opinion, have tried to 'do a Google' and make their brand synonymous with brochure shopping. A smart move given that other companies exist, and are entering into, their market space.

Maybe it's me putting two and two together and getting five (Google started complaining about their infringements in 2003 and Argos started their campaign in 2005) but it seems that this is just another example of where the online world and online brands have had impact in the offline world and established companies.

FREE seminars to improve your website traffic

Building on the feedback and success of recent series of free Internet events in Dorset and Hampshire, Adido have arranged three more seminars to help you take your website and online presence to the next level! The events will include an informative seminar by Director Andy Headington, introducing you to strategies and skills that are vital in any business.

How to make the most of Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising
Are you running a Pay Per Click or Google Adwords campaign? Do you want to know how to get better results and increase enquires and sales? This seminar will cover everything you need to know in order to get the best results from your PPC budget.
Date: Monday 15th September 2008

How to improve your search engine ranking
This event will look at how to improve your website ranking in the ‘free’ listings using a technique called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Getting SEO right can greatly increase the number of visitors that come to your website and give you great Return On Investment.
Date: Monday 13th October 2008

How to increase your website visits using the latest online marketing techniques.
Blogging, e-newsletters, email signatures, online press releases and viral marketing are some of the latest online marketing techniques that will be discussed in the seminar to help you increase your website traffic.
Date: Monday 10th November 2008

During the event there will be an opportunity to network with local, like-minded business people with the added bonus of having the Adido team around to answer any questions or queries you might have! Free light refreshments will be provided.

Venue: Holiday Inn, Farnborough,GU14 6AZ
Time: 6pm arrive, 6.30pm seminar starts, networking until 8pm.
Price: FREE

To book your place click here for the online booking form, email networking@adido-solutions.com or call Alex Tucker on 0845 260 2343

Mind the Gap – How short term compromise can lead to long term losses

Often clients will compromise on design or development due to budget restraints. While this is reasonable (none of us have bottomless wallets), it can often lead to long term costs that will have client and developer alike banging their heads in frustration.

Early on, the cost of creating a website can seem intimidating. You take a look at your budget and decide to compromise on quality in the short term. You can always fix it later, right? Wrong. You should always strive for the website you want rather than the website you can afford.

Ok so you can’t just make money appear out of thin air. Sometimes your budget is stubborn – you just can’t budge it. But if you can, you should seriously consider it. Don’t design twice when you can get it right the first time. Aside from the cost of having a site redesigned, you have the change of corporate image to consider. Your corporate image is an ever evolving beast, and is determined by, among many other things, the look and feel of your website. You don’t control your image directly – it is the sum of your marketing efforts.

So if you change that website, it will change how people perceive your business. And that should always be the primary motivation for redesigning your piece of the internet – change because you want to, not because you can afford to. And if you want to, why settle for less the first time round?

Of course, it’s all well and good to say “don’t compromise on quality”, but what does that actually mean? Well there are several ways this can happen, from accepting the first design given to you (even if it isn’t really right for you) to designing the site yourself. The latter may seem like a great way to cut costs. After all, who knows what you want better than you?

But if web design was that easy, then we wouldn’t have web designers, just web developers. Often when a client does all of their own design work, one of two extremes occurs: either the site looks bland and uninteresting, or it looks overcrowded and complex. And often the pitfalls of designing your own work have nothing to do with ability or lack thereof. It often comes down to objectivity. Something which a third party has, but you don’t. A full time web designer is used to designing quickly and not attaching too much sentiment to their work. They spend their career observing the strengths and weaknesses of every website they see, and you’d be a fool not to take advantage of that depth of knowledge.

Just remember that while it may seem like a short step to improve on your website later, that short step can quickly become a gaping hole that will swallow up your budget. Better to plug the gap early on and avoid long term costs.