In SEO, the goal for a number of businesses seems to be to rank for their industry's main keyword. It may be an absolute dream for a small shoe shop to optimise its website for the keyword "shoes" for example, but the reality is that it may be nearly impossible when the competition is made up of big-name brands such as Office, Barratts and Schuh, whose budgets and resources will be far greater in comparison.

This may seem obvious, yet we occasionally meet businesses who think this type of goal is realistically achievable and the best course of action. Beyond that, there are some marketers working for big-name brands who care so much about the 'head' term that they risk neglecting other keyword areas and search terms, which could have a potentially damaging effect on their overall SEO efforts.

The head term vs. the long tail

To highlight the difference between the head term and the 'long tail' (the rest of the searches related to head term), we used the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to work out the difference in search volume as a percentage.

According to the Keyword Tool, [shoes] on exact match (i.e. Google users typing in the exact phrase "shoes" into Google with nothing before or after it) is searched for 165,000 times per month in the UK. This statistic alone sounds amazing - imagine being on page 1 of Google for that keyword and receiving a share of the visitors! But how many people use Google for any keyword containing or relating to "shoes?" The answer: 9,140,000 UK searches per month!

This is the broad match figure: according to Google's definition, broad match includes "synonyms, singular/plural forms, relevant variants of your keywords and phrases containing your keywords."

To give you an idea, this will include other high-volume keywords...

- "wedding shoes" (49,500 UK searches per month)
- "shoes online" (27,100)
- "cheap shoes" (18,100)

...All the way down to the really specific searches:

- "discount womens shoes" (58 UK searches per month)
- "buy ladies shoes online" (22)
- "uk online shoe store" (12)

If you compare the keyword [shoes] on exact match to its broad match version (e.g. the Long Tail), [shoes] occupies only 1.8% of the entire share of searches in the market:

Therefore, someone chasing [shoes] and nothing else risks missing out on 98% of the market searching for shoes using Google.

The risks of chasing the head

We recently heard of an example of an independent shoe shop that only sells ballerina pumps, whose website coincidentally ranked well organically for "shoes" searches relating to their location (e.g. "shoes london"). Although this sounds great on the surface and would have been great for general exposure, it was actually quite useless to them. Using them as an example, they probably found the head term for their industry & city to be:

- Not specific enough: If someone is searching for shoes, are they looking for tennis shoes, running shoes, kids shoes, ladies shoes, boots, trainers, sandals...? Unless they happen to be looking for ballerina pumps, the site appearing for their search would have been worthless to them, unless they sold all types of shoes imaginable.

- Harder to convert: For the above reason, it is much harder converting this type of traffic into customers, especially if it is not what they are really looking for. Likewise, it would be a surprise if they were unable to convert people searching for "ballerina pumps in london," for example - the type of product they sell twinned with their location.

- More expensive: In this instance, if the ballerina shoe shop were to use Google AdWords and target national traffic, the approximate CPC (cost per click) for "shoes" is £0.65, according to their Keyword Tool. However, "ballerina shoes" and "ballerina pumps" are £0.47 and £0.36, respectively. The latter two search terms may get fewer people searching for them - due to their specificity - but they are cheaper, more specific and therefore easier to convert for this particular shop/website. They could effectively be spending less money in advertising but earning more back in the sales they receive from this type of traffic.

Grabbing the tail

As the long tail is generally a less competitive sector of the market compared to the head term, it is usually a lot easier to target and chase this type of traffic.

So instead of going all out and aiming for "shoes," time can be spent building links and writing content that targets the long tail searches, examples of content including advice articles, news stories, top tips and how-to guides. Go for enough of them and combined they might actually thwart the head term in terms of volume. Not only that but they will likely draw in a better quality of traffic to the website, who will be more likely to buy the products or services on offer to them.

Yesterday we made a discovery regarding one of Google's advanced search parameters. When you do a Google search, if you exclude a keyword by putting a minus sign in front of it (e.g. -keyword), you are not only excluding results that contain that particular word in their on-page copy, but we also now believe that it also excludes any webpage with at least one link pointing to it with that word in the anchor text.

Liberty team member Steve made this discovery when he responded to a tweet by Rand Fishkin, founder of SEOmoz. Rand had seen the "Weirdest SERP" (which stands for Search Engine Results Page) for the search query ["johnnie walker" -johnny] and couldn't figure out why the third result was ranking (here is a screenshot that Rand posted). The third result was an Edinburgh web design company that didn't have the words "Johnnie" or "Walker" anywhere in the text on its homepage, let alone the full phrase, yet it was ranking for that keyword. Steve examined the site's backlink profile and assessed that the site had quite a few in-bound links pointing to it with "Johnnie Walker" in the anchor text. It turns out that Johnnie Walker is a member of staff at the company.

Steve offered this explanation to Rand, and while he thought that the "anchor text likely helps" with its high ranking, he believed that it "just doesn't seem like it would be enough for such a tough-to-rank SERP."

This was a fair enough point. A typical search for ["johnnie walker"] in the US would show Johnnie Walker whisky's official website, Wikipedia pages for the whisky brand as well as the BBC Radio DJ and other pages talking about and relating to the two. While some of them had spellings of both "Johnnie" and "Johnny" on the page, others only had the former. So why are all of them removed when the word "Johnny" is excluded from the search query?

The answer lies in the anchor text of in-bound links pointing to the pages. Steve's next step was to look at the backlinks of the official site's homepage, the relevant Wikipedia pages and other sites that ranked normally for ["johnnie walker"] (i.e. without excluding the keyword "Johnny"). He discovered that other sites were linking to those pages - perhaps naturally - with the incorrect spelling of the whisky and the radio DJ: "Johnny Walker." Regardless of whether or not the word "Johnny" appeared within the text on the page, if the word appeared in the anchor text of at least one in-bound link to the page, Google would remove it from the results if "-johnny" were included in the search query. Therefore, sites such as the Edinburgh web design company were ranking for the ["johnnie walker" -johnny] search because they didn't have the word "Johnny" appear in either instance: it doesn't appear in the on-page text, nor does it appear in the anchor text of any in-bound link pointing to the page.

What is interesting to note is that in its Web Search Help section, Google explains how the keyword exclusion parameter works and claims that:

"Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results." (Our emphasis)

Perhaps this statement needs updating - it is potentially misleading, as "pages that contain this word" suggests that the word must be visible and apparent somewhere on the pages, whether it is somewhere in the copy or in its META data. Obviously, the anchor text of any in-bound links are not actually contained within the page - they appear elsewhere on the Web.

So what does this all mean for businesses? Is there any way to take advantage of this discovery? Sadly, not that we can currently think of. Only an extreme minority of people use minus keywords when conducting searches - those who do are often SEOs, perhaps conducting research and therefore using advanced search parameters to make deductions. However, for those purposes alone, it is still something to be aware of as it could affect the results and conclusions of one's research. If that is the case, it can affect a business via its in-house staff or the online marketing agency that it employs.

A recommendation made by the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) could lead to restrictions on bidding on competitors' brand names and trademarks in Google AdWords.

The adviser recommended that the ECJ should rule against Marks & Spencer for bidding on keywords such as "interflora" as well as variations including misspellings of the trademark and phrase versions including "interflora flowers."

Interflora, who started taking legal action against Marks & Spencer over two years ago, has been unhappy that M&S were paying Google to appear in the Sponsored Links section of the search engine results for its own name. They argued that as M&S' adverts bore no relevance to Interflora, they were taking an "unfair advantage of [their] brand, in breach of trade mark law."

Evidently, the Advocate General agrees, stating that a brand should be allowed to stop a competitor from advertising on its own name as a keyword "in the case where that ad does not enable an average internet user, or enables the said user only with difficulty, to ascertain whether the goods or services referred to in the ad originate from the proprietor of the trademark or an undertaking economically connected to it or from a third party." In other words, if an advert could be confusing and has nothing to do with the brand keyword being searched, then they should not be targeting that particular keyword. After all, a searcher may think that M&S' advert appears when they've searched for Interflora because they're associated with each other or working together.

The potential ruling's implications

The Advocate General's ruling may be non-binding, but it is a signal that the ECJ is likely to lean in that direction and rule in favour of Interflora and against M&S. If so, this landmark case could affect online advertisers throughout Europe when it comes to competing with their competitors' names on Google AdWords.

Bidding on competitor brand terms is not new. In addition to being a practice where one brand might attempt to sway potential customers from another brand, the number of impressions a keyword receives can also provide a valuable insight into the strength and popularity of a brand on a day-by-day basis. For example, as this is typed, Confused.com, Gocompare.com and Comparethemarket.com are all bidding on each other's names:

Bidding by accident?

Perhaps the biggest implication is the ruling's effect on accidental brand term bidding. This will be an issue for phrase term brand searches (e.g. "interflora flowers," "confused.com car insurance," etc.) or if a brand's name contains or is made up of a generic product/service keyword.

For example, if M&S' advert appears for the keyword "interflora" then it is obvious that they are bidding directly on their competitor's name. However, if the advert appears for "interflora flowers," is it because they are bidding on that keyword or because they are bidding on just the keyword "flowers" on broad or phrase match? What about companies that have keywords in their name, such as flowersdirect or Flying Flowers?

The above screenshot shows Interflora's ad showing for a search for "flying flowers," probably because they bid on the keyword "flowers."

Admittedly, Flying Flowers may not be trademarked, but what if it were? Will advertisers be expected to add every single trademarked competitor to their negative keyword list, or only bid on exact match and therefore require an extensive exact match keyword list? Will Google step in and automatically discount popular brand and trademark names and variations? Would it even be able to, without the need to acquire a mammoth list of trademark names?

The impact on Google

Speaking of Google, the ruling will have implications for them as well.

Any restrictions on keywords will result in less money being spent by advertisers, and a restriction on this scale could make a significant dent in the amount they earn from AdWords. If advertisers stick more to exact match keywords, if they are worried about bidding on trademarks via broad and phrase match, they could see even more of a drop-off in the amount of keywords that advertisers bid on.

Is it wrong to bid on competitor brand terms?

Obviously Interflora is pleased by the Advocate General's recommendation, wanting "to protect [their brand] for our customers, florists and the future." But what do others think of the recommendation? Patrick Altoft of BlogStorm argues that it's "a win for common sense. Loads of people bid on competitors trademarks but nobody in the industry really likes it." As mentioned previously however, bidding on a competitor is more than just stealing their traffic: it can give real, accurate data on how many people search for a brand, so this information will be lost as well, with marketers having to rely on Google's Keyword Tool and Google Insights instead.

Evidently it will come down to this: those who benefitted greatly from bidding on their competitors will be unhappy with the recommendation, while those who were taken advantage of (such as Interflora) will consider the potential ruling to be fair and will help them to get the clicks that they feel they deserve.

Either way, it will certainly change the landscape for PPC advertising in the UK and Europe.

When Google Instant was introduced a few months ago, there were assumptions early on that the introduction of Instant would have a negative effect on 'long tail' keywords (longer, wordier keywords which receive less search volume), encouraging those making it their SEO or PPC strategy to target these types keywords to change their ways. The general argument was this: if someone is halfway through typing a phrase and they're presented with results, they could be distracted and click on an earlier result, meaning that they will have searched on a shorter phrase.

Fast forward to the present day and the conclusion for many still seems to be to focus on root/head terms more than they might have done previously, and it's true that some long tail has seen a drop or even a plummet in search volume (just look at the month-on-month patterns on "[type] insurance comparison site" searches on Google's Keyword Tool, compared to "[type] insurance comparison" or just "[type] insurance").

Even recently, one of the speakers at the recent SES London event talked about how Google Instant "is cutting off the long tail," as mentioned by an attendee's tweet.

However, one thing we've noticed is that the long tail isn't dead. Far from it. In fact, we've seen some long tail keywords achieve the same or higher search volumes than shorter, less wordy keywords in the same industry since the introduction of Google Instant. Recently we undertook some keyword research for a website targeting "young driver insurance" keywords. What surprised us was how "cheap car insurance for young drivers" had the same number of searches per month as "car insurance for young drivers" (18,100 searches on exact match, respectively).

We also noticed that "cheap car insurance for young female drivers" - a very long keyword - had a respectable 1,000 searches each month, which is more than many other shorter keywords in the same industry.

Notice the differences between them? Our long tail keyword terms have "cheap" in front of them. If we take young drivers for example, a demographic which is often hit with expensive insurance, it is understandable that the young driver's mentality is to start their search with the word "cheap" - perhaps their intended search was "cheap car insurance" and that'll do.

However, as they start to type that phrase...

..."cheap car insurance for young drivers" might catch their eye. They're a young driver, so this suggestion will appeal to them.

Add "for"...

...and more suggestions are thrown up. If they're a young student or a 17 year old in particular then one of the other suggestions might catch their eye instead.

Add "young"...

...and "...young female drivers" is a suggestion. This might explain why that keyword in particular has a surprisingly large volume of traffic - searchers fitting that demographic might not have intended to search on that keyword originally, but after seeing it suggested to them, combined with the fact that it fits their demographic, they've pursued it and chosen it as their search term.

This suggests that the long tail hasn't died off at all, as might have been previously assumed, but what it does mean is that the long tail has potentially changed its form. The start of the tail (i.e. the first few keywords that a searcher types into Google) has become more important, and therefore businesses targeting certain keywords should try to understand the psychology of their customers/searchers. As seen in our example, the young drivers after insurance were searching for "cheap car insurance," not just "car insurance."

However, it can be argued that this hasn't been caused by Google Instant, but by Google Suggest (a.k.a. Google Auto-Suggest), which has been around for years, predating Instant by quite some time. Either way, the most important takeaway is to identify what a potential visitor might be thinking, looking beyond the obvious and expected and trying to think more like the customer - something a bit of keyword research can really help with.

A few months ago, Google changed over its default keyword tool in AdWords to a new version. You could still use the previous interface up until today, but that link has now gone, so we are left with no choice but to use this new tool for keyword research.

Many people have complained about the search volumes in the new interface, after finding them to be significantly different to the previous stats. If you are stumped by the new tool, wondering why all of a sudden your market looks like a fraction of what it once was then this explanation, left on the AdWords help blog, should shed light on the issue:

"If you use both the previous and updated versions of the Keyword Tool to search for keywords, you may notice differences between the tools for statistics on Global Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches. This is because the previous version of the Keyword Tool provides search statistics based on Google.com search traffic and traffic from search partners, while the updated version of the Keyword Tool provides search statistics based on Google.com traffic only.  We've updated these statistics based on user feedback, and hope you find them helpful for keyword selection."

Oxford House Menswear is a clothing retailer based in South Wales and offers plus sized items under its OH Big Man brand. The business has used Pay Per Click advertising to generate sales for a number of years and recognised the potential and importance in improving natural search engine rankings.
 
OH Menswear engaged the services of other local SEO companies before speaking to us and was disappointed with the results. Undeterred, they were recommended our services and in mid 2009 asked us to help develop their SEO with the goal of significantly greater website traffic and sales.
 
How did we improve their online marketing?
 
Keyword research- We explored the keywords used by their target markets as well as the levels of competition for each one. We then made recommendations on where to concentrate efforts so that a large return could be made quickly.
 
SEO advice - Once keywords were decided upon we advised on ways the site should incorporate them, both in the makeup of the page (titles and meta data, etc.) and within areas of the body copy.
 
Inbound link building - A link building campaign took place where we sought in-bound links from sites related to clothing and e-commerce.

What did this do?
 
At the time of writing there were over 7 million web pages indexed on Google for "XXL Shirts" and OH Menswear have been sat in the first position for a number of months. They also appear on the first page for a number of other important keywords such as "large mens clothing" and "Ben Sherman XXL". Coming up high on the search engines for these keywords has brought in a lot of new, high quality traffic and has meant that the business could greatly reduce its Pay Per Click advertising spend.
 
How has this helped OH Menswear?
 
Online marketing is now a crucial part of OH Menswear. Sales have been growing month on month throughout 2009 and last month sales were up 82% when compared to the same period in 2008. This is remarkable when you look at the market they are in, one where most retailers are currently posting losses and the highest profile competitor, High & Mighty, recently went into administration. The business has actually had to take on additional premises to cope with the increase in orders from within the UK and, for the first time, from various countries around the world.

If you want to improve your click through rate (the frequency with which people click on your Google Pay Per Click adverts) then you should consider Dynamic Keyword Insertion, using this syntax: {keyword: }

The idea behind Dynamic Keyword Insertion is simple. When keywords in a search term appear in the heading or body of an AdWords advert they appear in bold. Bold adverts attract more attention so people are more likely to click on them. As are adverts that contain the exact keywords that a person is searching for. Wouldn’t it be great then if every pay per click advert contained the exact keywords being searched for in bold? They can…

Instead of creating hundreds of separate adverts for every synonym and plural of a keyword, try using Dynamic Keyword Insertion. Group keywords up and place the syntax in the heading. This makes Google automatically use the searched keywords as the title of your advert, improving the likelihood of the searcher clicking on your advert and visiting your website.

Make sure you only use this for keywords grouped together and ones that share the same landing page on your site. Otherwise you run the risk of sending searchers to pages that aren’t relevant, which they’ll just click away from, wasting your budget.

Using Dynamic Keyword Insertion also improves your AdWords Quality Score. As one of the determining factors in calculating Quality Score is the click through rate (CTR) of an advert, the use of the Dynamic Keyword Insertion syntax will lead to better positioning of your ads without you increasing your spend on each click.

Advanced Dynamic Keyword Insertion techniques:

You’ll notice a gap in the syntax {keyword: }. This is for you to place a default heading, to be shown should the search term be longer than the 25 character limit. The full syntax should therefore look something like {keyword: Default Keyword Here}

Capitalising the K and the W will make all keywords displayed begin with a capital letter, another factor in high click through rates: {KeyWord: Default Keyword Here}

Try using the syntax within either lines of the advert body copy instead of, or as well as, the heading.

Before deciding to roll it out to the rest of your ads, or deciding to cancel the experiment, remember the golden rule – measure the results.

SEO (search engine optimisation) has become a mainstream marketing practice used by businesses large and small, all over the globe. Most companies recognise that to take advantage of the keyword searches within their markets they need to outsource their SEO to a specialist online marketing agency. What a lot of these businesses aren’t aware of is that there are two different types of search engine optimiser: white-hat (ethical) and black-hat (unethical). Choosing a black-hat SEO could mean techniques are used that go directly against what the search engines favour.

If black-hat is bad, then why does it exist?

There are two main reasons why SEO’s aren’t all using white-hat, best practices techniques to improve client rankings:

1. Black-hat SEO can work. It can bring in quick results but the downside is it opens your site up to long-term risk. If you have agreed to pay a search engine optimisation to get you to the top of Google then white-hat techniques can take months, whereas using some unethical tricks they could have you there a lot quicker. The problem you’ll face is that once Google spots that these methods have been used to manipulate the search results you will soon find your website has been penalised or even dropped from the index altogether, resulting in plummeting traffic levels.

2. Black-hat SEO is easy. A lot of research is needed to stay ahead in search engine marketing. At Liberty we spend tens of hours each month and thousands of pounds each year on researching and testing the latest techniques. For many companies this isn’t an option, so they choose to stick to old black-hat techniques that they know inside out.

What black-hat techniques should you look out for?

The most common types on unethical optimisation include keyword stuffing, cloaking and invisible text.

Keyword stuffing – When keywords are used in too great a volume.  You will no doubt have seen this on websites where the same keyword is repeated over and over in a piece of copy or where a long list of keywords are bundled together at the bottom of a page.

Cloaking – Presenting one version of a page to the search engines and another to the visitor. If you’ve ever searched for something and found yourself surprised that the website you clicked on is for something completely different then this is probably an example of cloaking.

Invisible text – Making the background colour and the colour used for the text the same. You can only see the text if you select it so although it looks like a big open use of colour, it’s trying to trick the search engines into scanning a whole load of extra copy.

Despite it being common knowledge for years that these techniques could get your site banned, many SEO companies still use them. If you see examples of these in use by your potential online marketing agency then run a mile.

Online marketing intelligence company, Hitwise, has recently released a report showing that the number of words being typed into search engines is growing. It seems that internet users have taught themselves that the longer the keyword phrase, the more relevant the websites shown in the results.

The report, based on search engine usage in the US, shows a continuing rise in the percentage of people typing in over three keywords when using Google and the other search engines.

This is good news for smaller businesses, as one and two keyword phrases are often very competitive and dominated by larger, well funded, and well optimised competitors. Optimising your site for longer search phrases can bring in very targeted traffic and is much easier to rank highly for.

How can you start taking advantage of these “long tail keywords”? Head over to the Google keyword tool and type the your main one and two keyword phrases in your market. In the results you’ll see some of the related long tail keywords that people search on. Some of these will be much more specific to what you offer and will still have a nice level of traffic. Work out which ones are worth competing for and start optimising your web-pages, your copy and your in-bound links for these words. If you don’t know how to do that you can always call us (029 2076 6467).