Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [65]
In examining the annual trend, another story emerges. You can see that the bulk of the searches take place in the last three months of the year and is most intense in the first two weeks of December, presumably as people search for the perfect Christmas gift. A similar trend can be seen in many product-oriented searches; the trend for tennis rackets in the United States shows a significant spike in interest in early September (see Figure 6-10), which is about the time of the U.S. Open tennis tournament.
Figure 6-10: The annual trend for tennis racket searches from Google.com/insights/search
Alternate Spelling and Plurals
One of the hurdles to effective keyword selection is deciding between the uses of alternative spellings and plural versions. For instance, there are two different spellings for some keywords, such as tennis racket and tennis racquet.
In instances like this, I am very glad to have the Google Insights for Search tool, www.google.com/insights/search. The tool allows keyword investigation for multiple words and combinations, allowing you to compare spellings, plurals, and regional variances. The Insights tool shows that tennis racket and tennis racquet are nearly equivalent to searchers (see Figure 6-11), but tennis rackets (plural) receives more searches than tennis racquets (plural). This makes it very difficult for online retailers, because consistency would dictate to target one or the other as a primary marketing focus for rankings. This is also an area that can be explored when using pay-per-click advertising in the search engines. Advertisers can bid on both terms and measure their sales accordingly to find the most profitable choice.
The Insights tool will also show regional variations; you can see this in the Filtering options. Simply by choosing United States in the filtering options, the choice between the two spellings becomes even more fascinating. The spelling option racket (represented by the top set of bars in Figure 6-12) is highest in Hawaii, Georgia, and California, but only California has more searches for racket than racquet. The option racquet (represented by the bottom set of bars in Figure 6-12) is strongly favored in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.
Figure 6-11: Google’s Insights for Search tool comparing tennis racket, tennis racquet, tennis rackets, and tennis racquets
Figure 6-12: States favoring the spelling racket (the top bar) vs. racquet (bottom bar)
Along with spelling options, plurals can be a headache for marketers. As an example of this, consider the negligible difference between cruise vacation and cruise vacations (Figure 6-13).
When choosing between spellings and plurals, test what works for you. Although rankings can be attained for each treatment, most likely you will find that one version performs significantly better in providing conversions of sales or leads or just traffic in general.
Selecting and researching your keywords is only the first step to effective marketing. Measuring keyword performance is critical to maintaining momentum. Constant measurement of keyword choices and performance is the only indicator of success and judgment in your selection of keywords. Measurement analytics and tactics for keywords will be covered in Part V of this book, "Month 4 and Beyond: Expand Your Reach and Measure Results.”
Figure 6-13: Comparison of cruise vacation vs. cruise vacations
The Keyword Long Tail
One of the most interesting phenomena to arise in the online marketing world was the labeling of the “long tail.” Initially presented in an article by Wired editor Chris Anderson, the concept was expanded upon in his book The Long Tail (Hyperion Books, 2006).
In my mind, the image of the long tail is that of the prehistoric Brontosaurus—the tail itself was just as long, if not longer than the body of the animal. If you were to visually graph the number of search referrals to a website, you’d see that most people are enamored with the “head” of the graph—the left side that shows all of the