If you are thinking of launching a new Advertising or Search Engine Marketing campaign, Google Insights for Search is a great tool that, when used correctly, can help determine the best search terms for the best times and locations.  Using Google Insights for Search, you can compare the interest in different search terms over time, determine search term interest trends over time, research search term interest by area and much more.  In this post, we will give a quick run through on how to use this awesome tool so you can make your next Search Engine Marketing campaign that much more effective. 

Step 1: Determine Your Search Terms

To start, determine the search terms you would like to build your campaign around.  The terms you use are completely up to you but I would suggest going with similar terms with slight differences (example:  landscaping, lawn care, lawn maintenance … all are services, centered around lawn care, that you pay for but each is a different term) once you have them down, enter them into the search terms box, comma separated, as indicated in the example image below.

Step 2: Determine Your Filters

The next step is to determine how you want to filter your results.  This is where you drill down the type of search you would like the results to come from (Web, Image, Product, and News), the geographic location (you can get down to the metro area level), time frame and categories, as indicated in the image below. If your marketing campaign is location based, you can research the interest level for your search terms, by the locations you are targeting.  Once your filters are selected, click search.

Step 3: Analysis of Results

The third step in this process is analyzing the results of your search.  Many tidbits of information can be gathered from the results but we will focus on 3 main ones: Comparison of Search Volume / Trending, Search Volume by Location and Top / Rising Searches.

Comparison of Search Volume / Trending

General comparison of the search volume for your terms is important because it indicates which term is being searched the most and also trending over time.  With this information you can plan out your advertising or marketing campaign based on when people search for that keyword the most and increase your chances of the campaign being successful.  Out of our example phrases, landscaping trumps the the other two in volume but it shares a common trend with lawn care.

Search Volume by Location

Google Insights for Search also reveals great data on the search volume, for your selected search term, by geographic location.  Using this information you can accurately plan your local search marketing campaign and target specific areas for different search terms.

Top / Rising Searches

The Top / Rising Searches section gives you great insight into other search terms, similar to yours, that are at the top  and also those that are rising in volume.  This information may help you determine what other search terms might benefit your campaign and give you an overall view of what people are searching for most often.

Review

So now you know the basics of how to use Google Insights for Search to improve your search engine marketing campaign.  We have covered how to get the report and a brief analysis of 3 different parts of the report.  If you have more questions about this awesome tool, visit our contact page and send us an email or call us at 210-519-7729.

Below are some live charts from the example search.  Enjoy.

Thank you for visiting.  If you have a website project or online marketing campaign to be completed, we can help you with that as well.  Check out our SEO, Folio, Web and Marketing pages for more information on our services and contact us to see what we can do for you.

Hey folks.

This post is about how to make sure your website headers match your content.  This is a short review of how to find them and also, what they should be.  You would be surprised how many website owners I have talked to that don’t know how Google and the other search engines are reading their content, and why it is being read a certain way.  Knowing and adjusting your website header content is a big step in getting your website on the right track for effective SEO and online marketing.

How do I see my website header tags and what is in them?

Here is how to check to see what your headers look like:

1. Visit your website.
2. Click “View” in your browser.
3. Click the “View Source” option.
4. When the source code loads, you should see something like the code listed below.  This blog is focusing on the meta tags “keywords” , “description”, and “title” just to keep things short.   They are labeled in like colors in the code below :

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr" lang="en-US">

<head>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

<meta name="description" content="Big Cloud Media is an Arlington, TX based, web-design, development and marketing company that builds business websites, web-applications, and marketing solutions." />

<meta name="keywords" content="web-design, development, marketing, business, Search Engine Optimization, websites, website" />

<title>Big Cloud Media Custom Business Website Design, Development & Marketing</title>

These tags make up part of what is known as the web-page header.  They suggest to search bots how to list your page in their search results and how to categorize your site.

Website Meta Keywords

The website meta keywords can be found by the <meta name=“keywords” tag:

<meta name=“keywords” content=”web-design, development, marketing, business, Search Engine Optimization, websites, website” />

The content=”…” portion of this code is where you indicate which keywords you would like your site to be associated with.  The catch here though is that you want them to be relevant to your code in your webpage.  If they are not, it can hinder your SEO efforts.  It is a good idea to repeat the keywords that you want to be found by in your content several times so that your keywords line up with your content.  Do it with class though and make sure that the sentences make sense.  There isn’t a point in trying to appease the search engines if you lose visitors in the process.

The Meta Description:

The website meta description can be found by looking for the <meta name=”description” tag:

<meta name=”description” content=”Big Cloud Media is an Arlington, TX based, web-design, development and marketing company that builds business websites, web-applications, and marketing solutions.” />

The meta description is where you give the search engines a short blurb about the webpage.  This is often, in the Google search, the description that shows up under the search result.  Sometimes the search engines will create their own for your site but if your description matches your content, it is likely Google will use it.  Having an accurate and concise description of your site will also help your SEO efforts later on down the road.  The more your headers line up with the content, the better.

The Title Tag

The title tag is can be found by looking for the <title> tag:

<title>Big Cloud Media Custom Business Website Design, Development & Marketing</title>

The <title> tag is your page title and also the text that appears in your browsers window bar.  This should be intuitive and match up with your page content as well.  The theme here is continuity.  If your page is about Dogs, the title should include “Dogs” in it.  The title of your page helps in your suggestion to the search engines about how your site should be listed and in what categories and search terms.

Why should I care about my meta tags?

Ultimately, it all comes down to how search engine friendly do you want your site to be and also, what does the search engine see when it reads your page.  The more things that are missing, the less likely your site will be listed correctly and associated with the right search terms.  Checking your headers and making sure they are accurate can also help to make your SEO efforts more fruitful.

This blog came around from a real-world situation I recently came upon.  I recently met with a prospective client and after doing a site overview (which includes checking their header tags) we found random stuff in them including unrelated words, references to other companies, etc.  Their header tags were hindering their progression online and were definitely not helping their SEO efforts.  The prospective client had no clue until this was addressed by us.  Thus, this post, my effort to help you all know a little more about the content that represents you online.

If you have more questions about any of this, please leave a comment or contact us right away.  We would be more than happy to help you in your specific situation.

Thanks for reading and I hope that this post has been helpful for you.

Big Cloud Media