Dodgeball Marketing Podcast #1: Doing Keyword Research for SEO

Michael Utley: Hey, welcome. I am Michael Utley. This is Chris Raines, and this is the first ever DodgeballSEO/Dodgeball Marketing Podcast.

Chris Raines: First one.

Michael Utley: Yeah, we're going to call this the Dodgeball Marketing Podcast.

Chris Raines: We just named it, just now.

Michael Utley: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's it. It's like that scene in Footloose where somebody is going down the road and he's standing on two cars. That's what we're doing with Dodgeball Marketing and DodgeballSEO. Those are both going to be a part of what we're doing over the next year. And then we're going to kind of see which one wins, but we built a new website where you can get packages of SEO services called DodgeballSEO. And then there's going to be a sister site to that that's mainly for people who need to get their website situation squared away. And so DodgeballSEO is going to be mainly, start with the SEO. Dodgeball Marketing is going to be mainly, start with the website. But they're both going to have the same back-end, the same learning resources center. And when we started thinking about the podcast for this, we said, "Let's just do one. It's going to apply to both." So-

Chris Raines: Awesome.

Michael Utley: Yeah. And Chris, thanks for being a part of this.

Chris Raines: No, no.

Michael Utley: You and I did the Search Primer Podcast over the last year.

Chris Raines: We're podcast vets.

Michael Utley: Yeah. So, that's been a real success. This is the first time we've switched over to adding a video format for basically, our SEO podcast.

Chris Raines: Yep.

Michael Utley: So yes. So this one is going to replace-

Chris Raines: So I had to change out of pajamas.

Michael Utley: Yeah. This one's going to replace the Search Primer Podcast. So for everyone who's been a part of that, we would ask you to subscribe to Dodgeball Marketing Podcasts wherever you like to follow podcasts. And yeah, that's what's going on. So that's our roughly two minute intro to tell you what this is and what's going on and today we're actually going to dig into some subject matter. And each of these episodes is going to be about 15 minutes long, so these are very introductory. We'll have some, where we'll do multiple episodes for one topic where we think we need half an hour to cover something, but we're going to try to keep these really tightly defined around 15 minutes.

Michael Utley: So, all right. Number one, episode number one.

Chris Raines: Yep. Okay. I thought you were going into the items like without introducing the topic.

Michael Utley: Yeah. Episode number one. Doing keyword research for SEO. Search engine optimization is showing up higher in search results and the lifeblood of it is keywords. And SEO can basically be defined as EAT, expertise, authority, and trust, but the connective tissue of how you gain EAT or expertise, authority, and trust with search engines is in large part made up by what keywords appear on your pages in a number of different areas. So we're not going to get into every aspect of SEO today, but we're going to talk about how to find your keywords. So we've got six or seven ideas for this.

Michael Utley: Right. So here goes, number one. Run your URL through a keyword tool.

Chris Raines: What's a keyword tool?

Michael Utley: A keyword tool. A keyword tool, and I'll give you the punchline here upfront, we like the tool SEMrush, S-E-M rush.com. Another one we use quite often is SpyFu and there are other ones that we'll talk about.

Chris Raines: We'll have all those links in the description if you-

Michael Utley: Yep.

Chris Raines: All these tools will be in the description.

Michael Utley: That's right. All links will be in the show notes. And then yeah, but a keyword tool is really good for, it looks at your website or any website you put into it and it basically boils it down to all the different unique phrases and keywords that are in your website or depending on how you're doing your search, or are heavily related to the subject matter in your website. And the reason that that's good is when you get that report, you can start to say, "Well, we like this phrase and we don't care about this one." So you can start to sort out in a spreadsheet, whether you like or don't care about certain phrases.

Michael Utley: Also, it gives you the monthly U.S. search volume for that phrase. And so this helps you know which phrases the market is using to articulate what it's looking for. So this helps you start to develop an opinion about which keywords are more valuable and which ones you want to rank for. So number one on doing keyword research for SEO is run your URL through a keyword tool. We really like SEMrush. It's not free. If you're a customer of DodgeballSEO or Dodgeball Marketing, this is something we would do for you, so you don't need to pay for that if you're signing up for a DodgeballSEO or Double Marketing stuff. But if you just kind of watching this and wanting to get educated on it, SEMrush is one that we really like. So that's point number one.

Chris Raines: Awesome. Second keyword research tool is Google Suggest. If you use Google, I'm sure you've seen, if you type something into the search bar you get the little, your search and then you get the little list of searches that have bolded items that appear after your search.

Chris Raines: So that's one part of Google Suggest. It's Google taking all the information that's out there, what people are searching, and giving you suggestions like how you might want to complete your search query in the bar. So that's a really great idea to give you keywords that you haven't thought about yet.

Chris Raines: So for example, I just now searched for lifeguard training. So the top search is a paid advertisement for americanlifeguardusa.com. But if you scroll all the way down to the bottom, you see this section called searches related to lifeguard training, so check this out. So if we were running SEO for a lifeguard training company, we would go, oh lifeguard training YMCAs. Maybe we don't to show up for that if we're not YMCA, but lifeguard training near me?

Chris Raines: Okay, that's great. That's a really high intent search. Lifeguard training requirements. Okay, cool. That's a different kind of search. You can do a blog post on that, right. You can do to show up for that. Lifeguard training test. That's a really good one too.

Michael Utley: Yeah, I would even say think of these related searches as potential titles for blog posts.

Chris Raines: Exactly. Yeah. So these are things that are people searching for. And let's go up here and do the trick here of just typing in lifeguard training. And some of these are the same ones, beach lifeguard training here.

Michael Utley: Yeah. Just clicking into the search bar and seeing what suggestions you get.

Chris Raines: Yeah.

Michael Utley: Just auto-fill.

Chris Raines: So this is good for that initial stage of [inaudible 00:06:27] research where you're just throwing stuff into the pile and you can organize it later and figure out what pieces or content or whatever.

Chris Raines: But this is a great way to just give you things that are connected to the thing that you're targeting and that you might not have thought of otherwise.

Michael Utley: And you can take these terms and run them through SEMrush.

Chris Raines: Exactly. So it's like the spider-

Michael Utley: And get the volume and the related terms.

Chris Raines: Exactly. It's like the splintering thing. Like you enter these in, you'll get more and you'll get more. So you just kind of go down whatever rabbit hole you want. So Google suggests. Number two.

Michael Utley: That's great. Number three. Run your competitors through a keyword tool. You may have some direct competitors that will allow you to sort of stand on the shoulders of those around you, but the same thing we said about running your own website through SEMrush to see what content you've already created and what keywords come out of that, you can do this with your competitor sites.

Michael Utley: So you should always know your five to ten top and most direct competitors. And there are a number of different ways you can use that list of competitors over the course of doing online marketing. And so running them through some of these same exercises is another great way to do it. And so a URL can go right into SEMrush and it spits out all the keyword research. And some of it you may say, well, they've got some divisions that we don't have. Well, what you do is you just pull the report and you just sort alphabetically and you can go cut out a big chunk of those keywords that are junk for you are just going to be the ones that start with the phrases that you don't want to pursue. So you just cut out those rows or sort and start, maybe you can even add a column that says good or bad, and then you can sort your spreadsheet based on the phrase, good or bad in column A for example.

Michael Utley: And so this is a way to sort of let all this junk flow into one location but then sort it and be able to handle it without going crazy.

Chris Raines: Yeah.

Michael Utley: But yeah, running a competitor's site. You can also, if you have a page on a competitor site, like a particular services page or a particular product page of a competitor, you can also just take that URL and just run that through a keyword tool and just see what that page comes up with.

Chris Raines: Right.

Michael Utley: Yeah. So that's number three. Treat your competitor's URLs as a potential for a keyword tool just like your own.

Chris Raines: Great that's great. Number four. Keywords Everywhere. This is paid Google Chrome plug-in. And it's paid, but it's actually not that expensive. It runs on a credit system. So every time you run a query on Chrome and on the Google search engine, you cash in these credits to get keyword data and related keyword data.

Chris Raines: But you can get like 10,000 credits for 20 bucks. It's really not that bad. And you just reload it when you run out. But this is kind of like-

Michael Utley: What's it called again?

Chris Raines: Keywords Everywhere. We'll put the link in the description of the video. But this is really great for sort of really quick, cause it just lives right in the browser. So as an example, I just searched for facials in Nashville. So like facial treatments and Keywords Everywhere gives you-

Michael Utley: Like dermatology cosmetic type stuff?

Chris Raines: Yeah. So Google will give you really key components right below the search bar. So facials in Nashville, it gives you a monthly search volume. So there's 70 searches per month for facials in Nashville. It gives you cost per click. So if you're ever doing paid search, it gives you the average cost per click. So it turns out it's about a $1.15 had it been on-

Michael Utley: Which tells you how high or low the demand for that keyword is, right.

Chris Raines: Right, and the intent behind it. And then, so that's really valuable to just get a sense of volume. But then you've got these bars on the side. Okay. So there's a whole section called related keywords. So these are keywords in the same family. So you've got microdermabrasion. Okay, cool. I wouldn't have thought of that. Right? If you're not in this world. Nashville Skin Company, that's a brand search, I guess. Spa Haus, so some of these are competitors.

Michael Utley: And this is telling us what the market is using to search.

Chris Raines: Exactly.

Michael Utley: Not what people like us are thinking about.

Chris Raines: Right.

Michael Utley: And assuming people are searching for. This is-

Chris Raines: Yeah.

Michael Utley: -coming the other direction.

Chris Raines:

If you're a female for inst-

Michael Utley: This is the market telling us.

Chris Raines: Yeah, you're a female for instance and you're really into this world, you might search for hydrafacial Nashville.

Michael Utley: But if you're just a dude trying to buy a gift, you might search for something really stupid.

Chris Raines: Exactly.

Michael Utley: And not know.

Chris Raines: Exactly.

Michael Utley:

But we still want to show up for that guy.

Chris Raines: Exactly.

Michael Utley: For those searches. Right?

Chris Raines: So you get this whole related keyword search and then you get this other section called people also search for. So this is kind of going even more broadly, like not even related to the facial treatment, but just like categories of things. So things like walk-in massage Nashville. Okay. So it's not a facial, but it's kind of related to spa treatments, day spa, Nashville.

Michael Utley: That's what I never would have thought of.

Chris Raines: Yeah. So this is a way to get, if you're a spa business, a medi spa or just a regular spa and you want to figure out what you need to show up for, this is a great way to go. Like, oh yeah I didn't think about showing up for day spa or thermage Nashville.

Chris Raines: Like some of these, it's just a really great way to get a big net.

Michael Utley: Cool.

Chris Raines: And it lives right in the browser. So you don't have to... In a lot of ways it's easier than some of the more high end paid tools. You don't have to log in. You can just get it really quick and you can export a CSV of it. So really great tool. Keywords Everywhere.

Michael Utley: Yeah. That's awesome. Next up, use the AdWords keyword tool. We like SEMrush but Google has its own AdWords tool so-

Chris Raines: And I should add here, you don't have to pay for any clicks to use it. You can sign up for an AdWords account-

Michael Utley: That's right

Chris Raines: And you don't have to start running ads. You can just use the research tools.

Michael Utley: That's right. You're going to have to go through a little bit like you're going to buy-

Chris Raines: Right.

Michael Utley: You don't actually have to activate any campaigns.

Chris Raines: You don't have to turn on any campaigns. You don't have this build any-

Michael Utley: It used to be more wide open. You used to be able to just to pop in.

Chris Raines:

You got to have an account.

Michael Utley: And now you've got to go through the account setup process. So they've closed that. All right. Next step. Talk about this grab bag of great ideas.

Chris Raines: Grab bag. Oh yeah. So.

Michael Utley: Number six.

Chris Raines: These are sort of, I would call them question-based. Well BuzzSumo isn't, but-

Michael Utley: And questions have gotten to be a big deal because of voice activated search.

Chris Raines: Exactly.

Michael Utley: Echo, Dot, Siri, Alexa. These things have created longer search phrases and a lot of Q and A format.

Chris Raines: Exactly. So you're asking Alexa things, you're asking Siri things. So two big question engines are Quora and also AnswerThePublic. So these are sites that you can go to and type in a keyword and it'll show you questions that people have around that topic.

Chris Raines:

Answer The Public is great, it's answerethepublic.com. So I just typed in coffee and you get all of these, why is coffee good for you? Will coffee shops open? so we're in the [crosstalk 00:13:25].

Michael Utley: So you get a mind map of categories-

Chris Raines: Exactly.

Michael Utley: And then specific searches.

Chris Raines: So under the where, where coffee comes from, where coffee is grown. Under what, what coffee shops are open, what coffee machine to buy. All these are really great if you're in the coffee niche and there's things that you wouldn't have thought about before. So questions, and of course, Quora is itself a question and answer engine. People go to Quora to ask their user based questions and then people respond.

Michael Utley: And that's a good place to build inbound links if you want to go answer some questions [crosstalk 00:13:55].

Chris Raines: Oh, for sure. We can do a whole episode on how to use Quora.

Michael Utley: And you've got a couple more. What else do you have in this topic? There a couple of other question engines-

Chris Raines: Reddit of course, is a really popular online kind of message forum where people's post topics. Think of it as like a turbo charged forum, right? If you've known Reddit. It's a really great way to go in and type in your keywords, see what conversations people are having around it.

Michael Utley: Cool.

Chris Raines: Same thing with BuzzSumo is the other tool. BuzzSumo is a tool that you can type in any topic and it shows you social shares and conversations. So things like Twitter conversations, Facebook shares, Facebook conversations will pop up on BuzzSumo. It's a really great way to get an idea for what other people think about it, what topics are popular and being shared.

Michael Utley: Awesome. All right, last one. And we're going to wrap up with this. See, who's showing up for your top keywords and then run them through the keyword tool. So if they're not a direct competitor, they may be a competitor who's a regional player but in a different market. And you can find some really great websites just by seeing who shows up nationally for some of these searches and run them through the keyword tool.

Michael Utley: All right. That's it. That's episode one, doing keyword research for SEO. We'll see you on the next one.