Three Essential Web Marketing Tools
Top Tool #1: Google Insights for Search
http://www.google.com/insights/search/
This tool provides historical information, future trends and possible options:
A graph of how keywords and key phrases have peaked and troughed over the past months/years Geographic information on where your search is most popular, drilling down to how particular towns and cities have performed Suggestions as to which other keywords and key phrases are used by web prospects conducting similar searches Data on up-coming keywords and phrases – those that are"on the up".
In the example below, the keywords "SEO" and "Search Engine Optimisation" were used.
It can clearly be seen that the keyword "SEO" has steadily increased in popularity over the past four years, but the use of "search engine optimisation" has steadily decreased.
The tool has the option to display several search phrases on the one graph, so that you can see their relative popularity. You also have the choice of drilling down from yearly trends to daily trends.
You might ask the question, how can I use this information to best effect? One application is to help determine which particular product attributes to emphasise.
For example, a broadband router manufacturer may be unsure of whether it should highlight speed or cost to market a new router.
When "router cost" is entered into Insights, you can see that the usage trend is downwards, but the interest in "router speed" is much greater and has increased over the past four years - despite one or two dips, the general trend is upwards:
With this information, the router manufacturer will want to emphasise speed rather than cost in its marketing messages.
If you need more help, Google provides help here.
Top Tool #2: Google Trends
http://www.google.com/trends/
This tool is similar to Google Insights for Search, but additionally shows news item trends and links to particular news articles and blog posts that relate to the rise and fall of the news traffic.
As with Google Insights for Search, you can also put in several keywords to see where your topic of choice stands over a selected period of time. Again, you can choose to look at previous years or the last few days.
In the example below, the phrase "Web marketing" and "SEO" were used and the past 12 months was selected. It could be seen that SEO was much more popular than web marketing.
The highest peaks were linked to the press releases and articles on the topic. The links to those press releases and articles were provided.
The single phrase "Web marketing" was entered and the past 30 days was selected and it could be seen that search interest surged weekly on Tuesdays Wednesdays, and Thursdays and dipped on Saturdays and Sundays.
In this example, because the time period was relatively short at 30 days, there were no major news releases associated with the peaks.
Top Tool #3: Google Trends for Websites
http://trends.google.com/websites/
This tool shows the number of unique visitors to a specific site over a chosen period of time – from days to years. The information drills down into which regions/countries the visitors came from, what other sites they visited and the search terms those visitors have in common.
In the example below, trends in the microprocessor market were being looked at and intel.com and motorola.com were entered. Intel was the more popular of the two sites, by up to 100%. The interest in both sites (the general microprocessor market) has gradually declined over the past four years.
For sites with low traffic volume, there is not enough data for Google to display results. However, you can use the tool to analyse your overall market or check on your biggest competitors.