Keyword Research Tools (part 7) - comScore Marketer

Like Hitwise, comScore Marketer is a tool that provides a range of data as a result of monitoring the behavior of actual users on the Internet. This data includes details on search terms used, as well as competitive search term analysis.

2.8.1. What it provides

ComScore Marketer comprises eight modules, but two of them are particularly useful for keyword research:

Site Profile (for Site(s) X)

This module tells you what search terms and search engines are driving the most traffic to your site, to your competitor’s site, and within your category.

Profile Search Terms

This module tells you the demographic profile of people searching on a set of search terms, as well as what sites these searchers tend to visit.

Figure 31 shows the highest-volume terms specific to the Health category.

You can also view similar data specific to a competitor’s site, so you can see what search terms are driving their traffic.

2.8.2. Where it gets its data

ComScore monitors the behavior of approximately 2 million users. These users have voluntarily joined comScore’s research panels in return for free software, free Internet-based storage, or chances to win prizes.

2.8.3. How it is useful

The data is presented in percentages (the volume of searches, its success rate with searchers), which makes it very easy to compare the relative popularity of various keywords, but difficult to estimate the actual number of searches for a given term.

2.8.4. Cost

Pricing for comScore Marketer is available only upon contacting the company. The primary audience for the product is mid-size to large companies with developed SEM/SEO strategies, but the company has some smaller clients as well.

2.9. Enquisite Optimizer

Enquisite Optimizer is a tool that provides some great insights into your long tail search volume. One of its neat features is that it allows you to group terms (e.g., all terms that include the word seo) and see how those terms performed as a group. This data from Enquisite Optimizer allows you to analyze not only which long tail terms are bringing in traffic, but also which ones are leading to conversions.

2.9.1. What it provides

Enquisite Optimizer provides a deep and rich look at the long tail of your search volume, as shown in Figure 32.

As you can see in Figure 32, the first four terms (the “head terms”) make up only a tiny fraction of the overall traffic, while the rest of the terms comprise a considerable majority and yet have brought only one or two visits to the site. The numerical chart in Figure 33 shows this in greater detail; note that the top phrases bring in only a minuscule percentage of SEOmoz’s total search traffic.

2.9.2. Where it gets its data

Publishers incorporate a small amount of JavaScript on their site, and then the tool collects data specific to the site. The JavaScript runs on Akamai’s network, so the load time is very minimal.

2.9.3. How it is useful

Because of the data collection method used, the data is specific to the publisher’s site. It provides a close look at the long tail terms users are currently using to find your site, and therefore provides you with data you can use to consider ways to expand upon that traffic.

2.9.4. Cost

As of May 2009, low-volume sites (fewer than 100,000 search referrals per month) are priced at $49.95 per month.

3.3. Things to Keep in Mind

It is important to keep in mind that when you are using the various keyword research tools to brainstorm keywords, they are all based on relatively limited data. In addition, each tool will provide different search counts than the other tools. Rather than focusing on the exact search count of various terms, you should think of each tool as a good way to get a general comparison of two search terms.

For example, if you compare two terms and see that one term is more popular than the other because it returns a higher search count, you at least know that Term A is more popular and searched for more often than Term B, but you can treat the search counts as only (rough) estimates.