Finding Related Keywords and/or Phrases

[DFLsports]

I'm diving into unknown territory and looking for keywords and phrases related to a prospective new clients business.  He knows some of the general terms, for example, water removal.  What tool works best to find related search terms and the number of searches for those keywords/search terms.  I usually use the Google Keyword Tool but going to give moz a try. Love to be able to get local search data as well.

Thanks!

[SEO5Team]

Hi Donald,

I would recommend SEMRUSH for this kind of research. By just typing in the URL , you can check your competitors top 20 organic rankings for a majority of their keywords and get an insight into their strategy. It gives you info related to keywords, positions, search volume, level of competition etc.

Cheers,

SEO5.

[DFLsports]

Thank you very much for the suggestion. Going to check it out.

[MoosaHemani]

I personally think that there is no way a tool like Google keyword tool is going to help you with that. In order to find the keywords related to the business and offer better return on investment then try keyword tools software like SEM Rush or Keyword Spy and you will get tons of valuable data under your belt.

**Both tools are paid!

Hope this helps!

[KeriMorgret]

What do people calling the business ask for? The way potential customers describe things can help you figure out keywords, too.

[David-E-Carey]

Yip SEMRUSH as being mentioned, however employ the Moz keyword difficulty tool as well and see if your competition are I ranking for the interesting terms. Good for supporting your keywords that you are aiming the site/pages in the right direction.

David

[Ron_McCabe]

As suggested above good keyword research provides good tools as well as creativity.  I would recommend the following:

1. I like Spyfu and they do have a 30 day trial if you want to check them out.  What I normally do is run a report with the competitors the client mentions.  Then I look at the the top guys on the key word searches the client wants to show up on and run a report with these.  I like to limit the competitors to 2-3 even though you can add more (sometimes too much data reduces clarity). I export the words that come up to CSV.  I delete any non applicable words and create a master key word list out of this.

2. If by any chance you don't have an overwhelming amount of key words at this point(unlikely) you can put the most interesting words into another tool Spyfu has Keyword groupie to get more.

3. Related to the answer above I like to sit in on a few sales calls and/or act as a temporary sales floor rep for a few hours if the business is retail.  If this is not possible another option is to call a list of customers and leads as a quality assurance person(or whatever other title works for the client) to find out how their experience is/was and ask them what they were looking for when they purchased and what features caused them to buy. During the conversation the clients will often give you several good value propositions and key words.  As a side note this is a great time to surf for case studies, references and reviews for the client as well.  All of these option do require the clients permission and trust. If they are OK with things like this you can get a lot of information.

4. I add any new key words out of this exploration to the list and review with the client.

5. Once I have a list I input this into my Moz campaign.

6. After the ranking report has run I evaluate the low hanging fruit and focus my content development on these words/phrases.

7. Once I have mastered the universe on this first set of words I repeat the process.

Hope this helps,

Ron

[KeriMorgret]

This sounds like the start of a good YouMoz post.

[Ron_McCabe]

Keri,

Thanks for the encouragement.  Are there specific areas I should expand on ?  Are there others that are more obvious that I should ot include or focus on?  What do you think would help the community the most?