If you’re doing any keyword research for yourself or a little manual market research you know you’ve got to dig pretty deep into the search results to get that relevant data. You can use these 4 tricks to help bolster your own research and get some of that data a little faster. I use these tricks more than most others in my arsenal.
Omiting Results:
I tend to use the “-site:” command to dump some listings from the SERPs, often if I’m looking for specific competitors for a product and the big players keep appearing such as comparison shopping engines and affiliates. This can help you get a better feel for the other players on the field.
You can try this yourself by putting in any major product currently on the market such as electronics. You’ll likely get fed sites such as amazon, best buy or bizrate. You can eliminate these from your search results (and they can take up a lot of those results) by using the -site: tag followed by the url.
-site:www.amazon.com would omit amazon from any of your results.
Related Keywords:
Need help finding related keywords but you’re drawing a complete blank? Google can serve you up with pages containing keywords related to the actual keyword you’re searching for. To get an idea of what keyword variations that Google is considering, add a “~” to the beginning of your query. You can also get some ideas for additional keywords by using Google’s WonderWheel. It will examine the keyword you’ve entered and show you a number of relevant, similar keywords. You can then click on those alternatve variations to discover even more variations.
Indented Listings:
You can figure out where those indented listings truly rank within Goggle. Indented links are pages from the same domain that show up anywhere within the bracket of those 10 results. Google just tends to lump them together for user value3. When working towards domination in the SERPs for your particilar market you its important to know where all the pages lie so you have a good idea of who you need to smack around in order to get to the top. Add &num=x to the end of a Google search queyry where X is a number less than 10. Keep changing the value of x until the indented listing disappears, then you’ll be able to figure out where the actual position of that indented listing is.
Exact match searching:
Most users search for something by simply typing in a query. That yields millions of pages in many cases. If you surround your search term in “‘s however you’re telling google to search for the exact phrase, used as you typed it. This generally slashes the number of pages being returned in half (or more) and shows you who you’re really competiting with. These are the sites you’ll need to push past in order to gain true dominance for a particular keyword.
To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt
P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.
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Joerg Weishaupt is a 48 year old entrepreneur, software architect, search engine optimization and social media expert. Joerg has been building a lot of profitable Internet businesses since he put his first website online in 1995. He is also one of the founders and partners of Social Media Science LLC, where he launched a content syndication network called SYNND.
Joerg resides in a small, quiet community about 100 miles outside of Munich, Germany. If you ever seek to find him, look for where the cows gather.
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