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Holiday Keyword Research

iCraft Admin


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Posts: 1701


« on: October 27, 2010, 01:36:23 am »

Would you like to know which products are popular this holiday season?
Would it help you in deciding which products to make and which Keywords to use in marketing them?

If the answer is Yes, then keep reading. Wink


Trending Topics & Rising Searches indicate what’s Popular Now

One way of finding out what people are interested in right now is by watching Trending Topics on sites like Twitter, Yahoo, Google and others that display that type of information on their sites.

On Twitter you can even specify Trending Topics by country or by certain cities.



You might not get immediate results. However, by watching trending topics, you will be the first to know which topics, related to your products, are on the rise.
 



Not sure why “Uncle Jesse” (aka John Stamos) from Full House is a trending topic now, but if I had any products connected to the show or “Uncle Jesse” in particular, I’d mention that in my tweets today ...

You can also subscribe to specific replacementes and use hashtags like#Handmade, #Crafts, #Scrapbooking, #Woodworking #Jewelry, #Vintage etc., whatever is more relevant to your product line, and follow a few Influencers on Twitter to gain an insight into what’s popular and why.


Also, Google provides two great tools for rereplacementing Trending Topics:


Google Trends is a basic tool that shows how often a Keyword is replacemented in relation to the total replacement volume throughout the world.

Google Insights is a more sophisticated tool, meant for marketing professionals and anyone else, who is serious about studying users’ replacement behaviour.  It provides additional flexibility and functionality, compared to Google Trends.
You can analyze results there from Google News, Product Search, and Image Search.

Here are the results of the Rising Product Searches on Google Worldwide in the past 30 days, produced by Google Insights.

http://www.google.com/insights/replacement/#date=today%201-m&gprop=froogle&cmpt=geo




“Breakout”, according to Google, means that the replacement term has experienced a change in growth greater than 5000%.  Shocked

Doesn’t this inspire you to drop everything and start making Candles or Signs for Halloween?
If I could make candles, I’d make a bunch of them immediately, tag them all with “Halloween Candles” and write a good story about why my candles are great for Halloween. Ha ha...    Grin


Search Volumes over time help with Forecasting

Google Trends can be used to see the historical replacement data for keywords entered, broken down by location and language. You will see a horizontal timeline, which goes back to 2004.

Let’s say you have 3 distinct product lines - “Christmas Decorations”, “Christmas Cards” and “Christmas Jewelry”.  You go on Google Trends and do a replacement for all 3 Key Phrases, separated by comma: christmas decorations, christmas cards, christmas jewelry

The result below showed no surprise in the rise of the replacement volume for your Key Phrases in the last quarter of the year, most likely due to Christmas shopping. However, it also showed that “Christmas Cards”, even though highly popular in replacementes, have been on the steady decline since 2005. “Christmas Decorations” are not declining, but not as popular as “Christmas Cards”... and “Christmas Jewelry” seems to be not popular with the online users at all.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=christmas+decorations%2C+christmas+cards%2C+christmas+jewelry&ctab=0&geo=us&geor=all&date=all&sort=0




Looking at this graph, can you guess what will happen this time next year?

You’d actually have to play with the Keywords that are relevant to your products to make this tool useful, but I think you get the idea, right?


Picking the Right Keywords to Market your Products

Now knowing that “Christmas Cards” are more popular in Searches than your other products, you decided to put all your efforts into making Christmas Cards this year. Smart move!   Cool

The next question is which Keywords should you use to market your cards?

You can use the same tool Google Insights to play with keyword ideas for “Christmas Cards” and use them to tweak your Product Titles and your Adwords Campaigns.

Here is what you will see on Google Insight for Top Searches and Rising Searches in the past 90 days worldwide (no point to replacement for 12 months, as you already know that people look for “Christmas Cards” in the last quarter of the year): http://www.google.com/insights/replacement/#q=christmas%20cards&date=today%203-m&cmpt=q

 

If you have any products that could relate to Charity or have Photos on them, you could pick “Christmas Cards Charity” and “Photo Christmas Cards” for optimise your product pages.

Most of the online traffic (some say over 94%) comes from the Long Tail Keywords, those that consist of three or four Key Phrases with very specific terms related to your products. Long Tail Keywords are also less competitive, that’s why you should always pick them over shorter and more generic Key Phrases.  

You could also go to Google Adwords Tool and do another replacement on “Christmas Cards” or specifically on “Photo Christmas Cards”. Simply take each relevant phrase and do a quick rereplacement on it.

Google Adwords tells me that for the term “Photo Christmas Cards” Estimated Global Searches are about 49,500 https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__c=5720851795&__u=3933752095&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#replacement.none

I've also learned here about additional Keyword Ideas, like “personalized photo christmas cards” with Estimated Global Searches at 4,400 and “holiday photo christmas cards” with Estimated Global Searches at 2,400, which I also like.

I’d suggest you also perform an actual replacement on Google for the term you are thinking of using to optimise your product pages. If you enter “Photo Christmas Cards” on Google, you will get about 83,000 results – those are other sites competing with you for the same term.

http://www.google.ca/replacement?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_enCA383CA384&q=Photo+Christmas+Cards#sclient=psy&hl=en&rlz=1T4GGLL_enCA383CA384&q=%22Photo+Christmas+Cards%22&aq=f&aqi=g1g-c3g-o1&aql=&oq=%22Photo+Christmas+Cards%22&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=c2f918b5f88c0036

But don’t get discouraged!  Cool

Click on the top 5 links and check their Google Ranking (you’d need to install Google Toolbar for that - http://www.google.com/toolbar/ie/index.html) If they are PR  1 or 2 or 0 – you can take them!  Well, at least you have a chance to appear on the first page, if you optimise your page properly.

Keyword Optimization is needed for SEO, even though in the past year, this has become a bit less of a factor for replacement engines. But most importantly, it’s needed for capturing attention of the potential Buyers.

When people replacement for something very specific, they’ve probably made up their mind about what they are going to buy, right? Otherwise their replacementes would be more generic in nature.

Even if your page is listed at the bottom of the page, but you have the exact Keywords, that users used in their replacement query, incorporated in your product Titles – you have a better chance of grabbing user’s attention. People are more likely to click on your links and check out your products, when they see exactly what they are looking for.

You can read more about Keyword Rereplacement in my other post - https://icraftgifts.com/forum/1066/choosing-right-keywords-is-not-a-guessing-game/ and more on page optimization here https://icraftgifts.com/forum/1202/how-does-perfectly-optimized-page-looks-like/


What's Popular on Amazon

Another great way of gaining an insight of what’s popular this holiday season is by checking out Amazon's Bestsellers - a list of the most popular items on Amazon.com (Updated hourly)  http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/ref=pd_ts_jw_ldr

You can drill down further by clicking on the product categories, like Jewelry, listed on the left-hand side. http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/jewelry/ref=pd_mw_jw_mte

You can also select the “Most Gifted” and the “Most Wished For” items within specific categories.



 
Let me know if you found this post useful and Good Luck with your Holiday Keyword Rereplacement!
« Last Edit: October 27, 2010, 01:58:11 am by iCraft Admin »
PillowThrowDecor


Posts: 1096


« Reply #1 on: October 30, 2010, 09:17:31 am »

Excellent article! Thanks so much.

Need to stress here that you need a Google Adsense account (free and with no obligation) otherwise you keyword list is very limited.

Global vs local replacementes... can you give a little insight on the difference between them and which we should be basing our decisions on.

Off to do some more keyword checking Smiley

Cheers
Christine
iCraft Admin


Administrator
Posts: 1701


« Reply #2 on: October 31, 2010, 03:42:42 pm »

Thanks Christine for the suggestion about creating free account with Adwords.


Global vs local replacementes in Google’s Adwords Keyword Rereplacement Tool

It all depends on who you are targeting.

Local means that you are looking at the data from replacementes made in your specified country in your specified language.
Global means you are looking at the data compiled across whole Google.com in your specified language.

According to Google “The Local Monthly Searches and Global Monthly Searches columns show an approximate 12-month average of the number of user queries for the keyword.“ However, some reputable sources state that the “Local” numbers reflect only data from the last month, when “Global” shows average for the 12-months period.

Just keep in mind that those numbers are estimates and should be treated as such.

Anyway, what to choose?

If you sell only within your country, there is no need for you to look at Global Search numbers. I see that some people don’t offer “International Shipping” or say “Local pickup only”.

If you sell internationally, then pay more attention to Global Search Volumes.
Though at the end, I’d choose keywords which have high replacement volume in local and global replacementes with the combination of exact and broad keywords.

Join Google Help Forum, if you have specific questions about their tool. There are some good discussions posted already http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdWords/thread?tid=55387c6b6a682b4f&hl=en
Hope this helps!
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