How to Identify Profitable New SEO Keywords That Your Competition is Unaware of

Written on 26 November, 2015 by Matthew Isaac
Categories PPC

If you are utilising Google AdWords for your business, then I have some good news for you. Profitable untapped keywords are just a couple of clicks away. For those of you that remain unconvinced about this marketing avenue, and think it is too expensive – I have some bad news for you. You will have to read the rest of my post to learn about one of the most overlooked and underutilised benefits of using the platform.

Before I go into detail about what it is, I just want to give you a bit of background into why this tool was such a game changer for me.

Before starting with Webcentral, I used to work with a market research firm that did consumer studies for massive Australian telcos. They would spend millions of dollars on these studies to gain customer insights (and therefore, competitive advantages). In the end, they would learn no more about their customers than if they had just asked a handful of people on the street.

Fast forward to the internet age and a few hours of keyword research online can tell you exactly what you need. It can deliver you what people within your target geographic areas type into search engines when looking for information about the product or service you provide. You can get an idea of the language they use to describe your product or service and the common questions that they have relating to it.

Google Analytics used to tell us exactly what phrases people used before they found our websites, until the dreaded (not provided) spoiled the party.

Then there are a number of tools that businesses can use to identify new keywords – Google’s Keyword Tool, SEM rush, Soovle or Ubersuggest – all flawed and all of them accessible to your major competitors.

So if everyone has access to the same information, how do you find that insight or keyword that give you an advantage?

This fantastic report tells you exactly what people typed into Google before they clicked on your ad.

All you need to do is set up a campaign that allows your ads to show up when your main keywords (and more importantly, variations of your keywords) are searched for.

Here is an example of how this might work:

  • A driving school sets up a campaign targeting variations of the following:
    • driving schools + suburb / city
    • driving lessons + suburb / city
    • driving instructor + suburb / city
  • The search term report shows that people typed the following before clicking on their ad:
    • Female driving instructor Geelong
    • Chinese language driving school Sydney
    • Driving lesson vouchers Melbourne.

Google’s Keyword Tool says that no-one is searching for these terms. This driving school’s competitors are not targeting any of these keywords. However, because ads are set to show when someone types in “driving instructor” with other words either before or after, the search term report shows that you are consistently receiving traffic for the above keywords and variations of these keywords.

If these terms are relevant, the typical AdWords user would think, “that’s great – I create a new ad group around this with text and target it to this search audience. That will get me click-throughs”.

The more experienced AdWords user might even tweak their landing pages or create an entirely new one for people looking for female instructors, lesson vouchers or the like, in order to generate more conversions.

But only the savviest marketers would use this information to create SEO optimised landing pages for those new keywords—that is, if they are more commercial keywords (eg. buy XYZ online). They might even create a new blog post if it is an informational search that addresses the search query (eg. how to XYZ).

Doing this consistently, will give you the opportunity to generate additional organic traffic, with a higher chance of converting frequently.

To wrap it up

The quality of information I have learned about my clients’ customers from this report far exceeds the information that others have learned from their multi-million dollar studies. Best of all, it is accessible to businesses of all sizes. If you know how to leverage this information, you can stay two steps ahead of the competition.

Still think AdWords is expensive?

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