What are your Site's Top THREE Search Engine Referrer Terms

The Top Three Keyphrases from Search Engines for your sites...

How long did it take to attain their current rankings...

Was this the orignal goal - or a pleasant surprise...

When analyzing keyword popularty - how accurate have the top "KEYWORD" suggestion tools been...

Sometimes it can be a rude awkening to discover that much of a keyword's popularity could be just Webmasters checking their SERPs

[seobook]

which site...

seo book?

that would be:
seo book
traffic power
and nigritude ultramarine

[hassleback]

Originally Posted by seobook

nigritude ultramarine

Ha ha. Right.


I'm not divulging my top keywords! Classified info.

When analyzing keyword popularty - how accurate have the top "KEYWORD" suggestion tools been...

Not accurate. Yes, the SEO community and industry players skews the keyword counts for many words.

[AussieWebmaster]

The top search terms always seem to be the company name and URL, as I would think everyone else's are too.... though minus those variations currency trading and related terms do us well... we sit at #1 on Google's free search, #3 of MSN, #5 at yahoo...

[Dodger]

Well, for one site in particular ... it would have to be the word "gold" in combination with about 30 other words. It has nothing to do with the metal gold either, and we do get people looking for the metal (which is not any good).

Quite frankly, it does well on all three SE's and I have not a clue as to why that is. It has never dropped below number three, and has been that way for almost a year now. The word "gold" has been ... well like gold! ;0)

Another would have to be a persons name. In the beginning, a search for her name turned up an author at Amazon.com and a Real Estate agent in Texas. Seemed that the first two pages of results anywhere was stuffed with these two or some "find the persons name at ebay" kind of listing.

It was very important to get her name in the search results because she does a lot of talking on the phone. They know her by name - but do not know her company name. Getting her name above the author and agent has been a real boon in business.

• search engine optimization
• search engine positioning
• search engine ranking
• search engine placement

A 4-way tie, has taken about One Year to achieve - however, recently because of a BUG in Google - two, seperate, WRONG URLs are listed in the SERPs - althought everything else is correct.


But, of course - these keyphrases are usually Webmasters checking their SERPs - not sincere surfers - but that's the breaks !

Latest Overture keyword suggestion tool results for MAY

Searches done in May 2004

Count Search Term

1000070 search engine
122261 best search engine
112002 search engine optimization
109895 google search engine
49445 search engine submission
40373 job search engine
37462 search engine submit
36953 search engine ranking
36288 lyric search engine
34908 search engine placement
33143 search engine positioning
32728 search engine marketing

[NFFC]

>The top search terms always seem to be the company name and URL, as I would think everyone else's are too

I have never come across a case where that has been true. It maybe that you work for Microsoft or Free Sex Inc, otherwise and with respect you need a serious and urgent refocus on the companies SEO efforts.

[AussieWebmaster]

Originally Posted by NFFC

>The top search terms always seem to be the company name and URL, as I would think everyone else's are too

I have never come across a case where that has been true. It maybe that you work for Microsoft or Free Sex Inc, otherwise and with respect you need a serious and urgent refocus on the companies SEO efforts.

What I was saying is that many people just type the URL in the search box... it is done quite often... especially where people have Yahoo or Google as their default page in their browser

[sugarrae]

"as I would think everyone else's are too"

I think any company with a strong focus on branding or a household name may see those results - but for many, many, many other sites, I think generic terms will probably be their number 1 referrers.

I run a lot of sites and yes, I do see company names as the top referrers for some - but these are huge companies with again, huge household names, strong branding campaigns and/or known authorities within an industry.

As an example, I run one site that sells two name brand electronic items. These are the two larger companies that sell this item. But, even though I have the ranks on the main names, the biggest referral term for the site is the type of electronic item - it's generic description. The product is newer and therefore, so is any branding being done by the company. The companies are not "strongly branded" yet - people know the item they want but haven't had it beaten into their head with a stick yet which companies are the "end all" for supplying it.

In addition, many many sites on the Internet are owned by people who don't have a known brand name (yet anyway) to be searched for, so it would be unprofitable if the "brand" was their top referrer.

[Joseph Morin]

Three keywords can't deliver decent traffic nor can you configure a campaign around only three keywords. We worked on a campaign that started out with just under 5,000 keyphrases and within 12 months, there were over 85,000 naturally occurring keyphrases driving traffic. If your three top keywords suddenly fall out of the SERPs, you can still increase traffic, conversions and ROI by strategically increasing you keyword base. I would say continually research, test, research, test and then research and test some more.

The keyword suggestion tools are a start but they arent always accurate. In one instance, Wordtracker told us that the singular version of a two word keyphrase would drive ten X the traffic of the plural version, but when we delved into analytics and examined converting keyphrases, we discovered that the plural version (which had one tenth of the demand remember) actually drove TWICE the number of conversions as the singular phrase. I think a lot of SEO's would have or are still focusing on the singular term based upon Wordtracker numbers, but we now know better and focus on the more converting term.

We then applied that methodology to several thousand keyphrases and conversion shot up 800%. Because of our research we have developed several methodologies to determine keyphrase viability but readily available tools are a small percentage of that strategy.

[Joseph Morin]

Originally Posted by NFFC

>The top search terms always seem to be the company name and URL, as I would think everyone else's are too

I have never come across a case where that has been true. It maybe that you work for Microsoft or Free Sex Inc, otherwise and with respect you need a serious and urgent refocus on the companies SEO efforts.

Actually, I work with only large clients and in most every case, the top converting keyphrase is the client's brand trademark, followed by the client URL.

[NFFC]

>Actually, I work with only large clients and in most every case, the top converting keyphrase

How did we get from referrals to conversions?

Back to the topic. I agree that some huge companies will have their trademark/company name/url as the top ref. My point would be that it is natural before an SEO campaign starts but would be quite rare after the campign has been running a while. I don't know where the tipping point lies but there must be very few companies whose brand is so strong that SEO/SEM targetted at the generic keywords can have little impact.

[Jill Whalen]

But, of course - these keyphrases are usually Webmasters checking their SERPs - not sincere surfers - but that's the breaks !

Not sure I understand this comment in the context of this thread. How do Webmasters checking their serps get into your stats for who visits your site?

Just checked my top keyword phrase referrals from Aug. and #1 is search engine optimization. But #2 is very strange: united 8828 I have no idea where that one comes from and don't see any of my pages showing up in G or Y for that phrase.

The next most popular are:
meta keywords
seo forum
meta description

But like Joe said, there are thousands of unique phrases being used to find my site too. Especially the forum pages which are about so many different things.

BTW, great post as usual, Joe!

[Joseph Morin]

Thanks Jill

Originally Posted by NFFC

>My point would be that it is natural before an SEO campaign starts but would be quite rare after the campign has been running a while. I don't know where the tipping point lies but there must be very few companies whose brand is so strong that SEO/SEM targetted at the generic keywords can have little impact.

Actually, the thought would be that of course a major company or brand would have naturally occurring traffic for their name, but with several of our campaigns that was not the case as these companies' own affiliate marketers had overrun the SERPS for those terms.

Also with a strong brand and a very large site, there is a great probability that they will rank well for generic terms as well if that is the goal, so of course we target those during the optimization process, we just happen to focus on a very large keyword base to 'cast a bigger net' so to speak.

To a site that is advertiser driven or with a multi-tier revenue model, such as lead generation coupled with advertiser page views, referral traffic can mean the same as conversions because sheer traffic can be classified as a monetary event. To a site with a sales model as the primary revenue model, then focusing on conversions rather than traffic would be the optimal choice.

[rustybrick]

I'll share.

For my blog, www.seroundtable.com, for the month of August so far, I have received traffic from over 5,000 different keyword searches.

The top 3:
google stock quote (no wonder, the google ipo this month)
gmail invites (an annoying one, so many comments asking for invites)
google olympic logos (that will dye down next month)

Interesting...

[seobook]

Originally Posted by rustybrick

gmail invites (an annoying one, so many comments asking for invites)

I decided to make a fun game of the gmail invites concept.

I got 15 - 20 screens full of people telling me how evil they are and what evil is.
http://www.seobook.com/archives/000373.shtml

[Dodger]

I am proud to say that our forum's number one search is for wmon23.exe (and all its derivatives) which is a file that shows up on Windows Systems from a new virus that is isolated in the UK. Seems we discovered it a couple of months before Trend Micro picked up on it. The forum is getting pounded for it.

Coming in second -- but sure to easily take over top spot -- is troubleshooting SP2. Various forms of SP2 in the search terms are doing quite well.

Overall for several months now is agobot removal and gaobot removal. Most virus searches are hitting big, maybe because one of our members is our early warning viral magnet for some reason. He usually gets hit with every one before anyone else does -- and very consistantly I might add.

Since Jill and Barry also offered up some strange terms, I guess I should too. The oddest one by far is for meth ball moth balls. Another odd one was for pinochios nose.

[Jill Whalen]

I just did a site search at Google and did find where that United 8828 was mentioned on my forum.

How weird for it to be the 2nd highest referer. I'll be happy to pass the baton for that phrase on to this forum instead...

[Dodger]

That post needs to be edited Jill. It is in error!

The shortcut for flight information should have been for Yahoo, and not Google as reported in the post. I don't know what the original poster was thinking.

The search referrals could also be coming from your own members also. A ricochet effect. They read the post, click the United link, then click back into the original post. I can see this happening because the Google search overlays on top of your window in IE. Edit the link (or disable it) and see if the referrals go away.

[Jill Whalen]

LOL...interesting. Good idea, I think I will edit the post in my forum so that it doesn't perpetuate this whole thing!

Thanks Dodger, I didn't even think of that.