Find New Keywords: Simplifying Keyword Research

In December, we rolled out branded keyword rules and metrics to campaigns to help you segment your branded traffic. Now, we’re excited to introduce a companion feature to make your keyword research easier: Find New Keywords. With this feature, you can view keywords sending you organic search traffic, filter on your brand rules, and determine if you want to track them in your campaign.

First, the basics.

You’ll discover the Find New Keywords feature in a tab under your Manage Keywords section. (This feature requires that you connect your campaign to Google Analytics, so if you’re not connected to GA, you’ll find instructions on how to do this on the Find New Keywords tab.)

But wait, where did the Manage Brand Rules page go?!  We’ve moved your brand rules page into a tab under Manage Keywords, as well, so you can easily move among these sections as you manage your keywords.

Now, on to the hunt for new keywords!

1. View the top 200 keywords sending you traffic that you’re not currently tracking.

Why stop at 200? We want to make it easier for you to add the keywords that may be most interesting to track because they are branded terms or common words heavily associated by searchers with your site. After that, you can go straight to GA to manually grab more terms. If we see high demand for showing more keywords, we’ll consider showing more terms in the future (so let us know what you think!).

2. Decide which keywords are candidates for tracking.
We show you a number of factors:

• Keyword’s position or “rank” in your current list of 200 keywords sending you organic search traffic.
• Keyword’s traffic from the last week and last four weeks.
• Branded vs, non-branded keyword filters, based on your brand rules.
• Quick access to a full keyword analysis for keyword difficulty and full SERP analysis.

3. Add keywords of interest to your managed keywords list. 
With some information in hand about the keyword’s relationship to your brand, traffic, difficulty, and SERP analysis details, you’re on your way to finding some keywords of interest to track.

One thing to note: If you are tracking all 200 (which we don’t necessarily recommend–please make your choices carefully), you’ll see a message telling you to check later for new keywords that have moved up the list.

Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/find-new-keywords-simplifying-keyword-research

Introducing Branded Keyword Rules and Metrics!

Looking at your site’s aggregate organic search traffic is a bit like docking a boat without a depth sounder: Sure, you can gauge where you need to go, but you’d be wise to have more details before you head in.

On that same tack, we should have more detail about our overall search traffic before we use it to make decisions. First and foremost, this bucket of attention can be divided into two groups that we need to watch differently: branded and non-branded traffic.

Why segment your branded traffic?

By segmenting your branded and non-branded traffic, you get a clear picture of two important indicators of success: how visitors interact with your brand, and how they find you with generic, non-branded keywords. This information can help you can take action to target the keywords you care about. This split is also a useful metric to educate your organization or client about your brand pervasiveness and overall visibility.

That’s why we’re excited to roll out a new feature today: Branded Keywords. Now you can group your brand-related keywords together and see related branded data in-line with your reports.

What branded and non-branded traffic tells you

Keywords related to your brand tend to show up at the end of the conversion funnel, when visitors are already aware and interested. They’re more specific and unique, often based on company and domain names, key products, and variations/misspellings of those names and products. They aren’t subject to the fluctuations caused by search algorithms in the same way that non-branded keywords are. This makes them useful as indicators of long-term strength and popularity. For that reason, most sites should see a decent portion of traffic coming from brand-related keywords.

With new brand rules, you’ll be able to track that branded traffic clearly, and uncover any problems with branded keywords that aren’t ranking as well as they should be.

Things get really interesting when you remove branded numbers from your search traffic numbers and focus on your non-branded traffic. Now you have an clearer picture of the generic keywords that currently work hardest for you, which ones you should be targeting and are not, and which content is most effective.

A quick cruise through the feature

You can add brand rules for existing campaigns under Overview > Manage Brand Rules. Specify brand-related terms, and we’ll filter all keywords that contain those words.

You can also add brand rules for new campaigns during setup. Once campaign setup is complete, your rules will be applied to any additional keywords you add.

Add or remove individual keywords once rules are set up. At any time, you can label individual keywords as branded or exclude one from the “branded” filter under Overview > Manage Keywords.

If your campaign is hooked to Google Analytics, you’ll see your historical traffic data split into branded and non-branded metrics.

You can get better insight into how people arrive at your site with in-depth metrics on top ten search sources, landing pages, and nonpaid keywords, including PPV, bounce rate, time on site, and more.

See traffic data for brand-related campaign keywords when you filter branded keywords in your ranking report.

More options for managing your keywords include improved list filters, the ability to view all keywords in the list, and a new label filter for adding keywords.

And there’s more coming in the new year! You’ll see .PDF and .CSV reports added for traffic data. We’ll also start showing you your top keywords that send you traffic, so you can have the option to start tracking them.

Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/introducing-branded-keyword-rules-and-metrics

The Greatest Attribution Ever Graphed

Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-greatest-attribution-ever-graphed

Multi Channel attribution is amazing, to say the least. In the immortal words of Avinash Kaushik, “You will have an orgasm!” If you weren’t there for Mozcon, I’m sorry. Don’t let it happen again, but you can always get the video of his presentation when it comes out.

Much like the way I felt on Christmas day 1996, I couldn’t wait to play with a brand new system whose inner workings I knew almost nothing about: the Nintendo 64. Rand will corroborate my story. Today, it’s the new Multi Channel Funnels segmentations in Google Analytics, Version 5 (trumpets please, Avinash).

Below, you’ll find some Michelangelo-esque screenshots of how we (the Slingshot R&D guys) broke down some custom segmentation and compared them to show differences between:

• Non-branded, organic, first interaction
• All non-branded organic interactions
• All conversions

To create a custom Conversion Segment, simply click the link, as shown in this screenshot:

To create the First Interaction Organic, Non-Branded Segment, select the following:

• Include [First Interaction] [Medium] [Containing] [Organic]
• Next, select [Add a conversion path option]

And for the love of all that is Mozzy, go to the “and” section to add this piece. Use “or” and you won’t know North from a Bear-o-dactyl.

• Exclude [Any Interaction] [Keyword] [Matching RegExp] [fill in your branded terms here]

Done? Awesome. Next.

To create the All Organic, Non-Branded segment, select the following:

• Include [Any Interaction] [Medium] [Containing] [Organic]
• Next, use “add” not the “or” option [Add a conversion path option]

• Exclude [Any Interaction] [Keyword] [Matching RegExp] [fill in your branded terms here]

Done? You’re the best. Now grab your chopsticks, eat some Cheetos, and enjoy the graph!

Delicious… the graph, I mean. If at some point you decide you’re tired of looking at all those conversions (what is wrong with you? Oh right, you’re a Mozzer), you can pick and choose the specific conversions you’d like to see.

Gratuitous screenshot for your enjoyment.

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