25+ sites giving keyword data for free & how to use it to drive SEO success
A topic I touched on while speaking at Pubcon last year was using other people’s data to help you in keyword research. In that presentation I illustrated how so many companies put their data “out there” with links to popular searches, and thought it would be helpful for many of you to have a list of some of these sites 25+. Sure it is one thing to see something get hot on Google trends but what if you are in a Hispanic market, a sports market, a travel market, how can you use OPD to help you?
#1 – OPD helps you to uncover trends
#2 – OPD helps you gain some competitive insights into your foes
#3 – OPD gets you insights into topics that you could write about to your blog to take advantage of surging traffic
What can naughty by nature teach us about other people’s property (data)â¦well OPD how can I explain itâ¦
So lets start with an easy one like Amazon:
With this information you can easily see the top sellers in any category, if your web site is strollersdirect.com and you decide that you’d like to list out the top 5 most popular baby strollers â you could do that based on the data you have or you could use a site like Amazon’s top sellers for Baby Travel Systems which is updated hourly to make sure you are using the most popular strollers in your top 5 or top 10 list every day.
If you are still thinking, how does this impact MY SEO strategy, then here’s another angle:
Most websites SHOULD NOT list the top 30-40-50 or more products on the homepage, why? It kills your internal link juice flow, and often looks like crap â using amazon’s best sellers at any point you can update your top 5 or 10 to be in accordance with what is likely a much larger data set meaning it is likely to be more accurate.
Here’s another few in many shopping categories:
Shopping General – http://www.mysimon.com/9098-1_8-0.html
Shopping General – http://www.shopping.com/top_searches (page no longer active)
But some of us are in totally different categories not general e-commerce, all is not lost here are some others that should help:
Mobile Accessories and Games – http://handmark.resultspage.com/
Programming – http://corp.koders.com/zeitgeist/ & http://koders.com/info.aspx?page=LanguageReport&la=ruby
Halloween Costumes – http://halloween-costumes.spirithalloween.com/
Fine Dining – http://search.mikasaandcompany.com/
Healthcare caregivers- http://www.healthcentral.com/caregiver/top-searches.html
Healthcare cholesterol – http://www.healthcentral.com/cholesterol/top-searches.html
Healthcare breast cancer – http://www.healthcentral.com/breast-cancer/top-searches.html
Healthcare Top searches 2007 – http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/top-10-searches-2007
Healthcare (look right) – http://www.healthcare.com/popular-searches/
SEOmoz Meta popular search – http://www.seomoz.org/popular-searches
eBay Pulse – http://pulse.ebay.com/
Local results – http://la.backpage.com/online/classifieds/PopularSearches (just swap LA with Connecticut, new York, etc)
Local results – http://newyork.kijiji.com/c-PopularSearches (pitbulls! WTF!)
Local results UK – http://www.touchlocal.com/business/popularsearches
Fashion / shoes – http://www.roadrunnersports.com/rrs/popularSearches/PopularSearches.html
Fashion / shoes – http://www.zappos.com/Search (look under the search bar)
Beauty – http://search.ulta.com/
Fashion – http://search.vivre.com/
Sports – http://search.espn.go.com/
Sports (monthly) – http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=3872535
A great way to get story ideas
Travel – http://search.travelchannel.com/
So to Recap, use this data to:
#1 – uncover search trends on other sites to augment your data or use to influence top 5,10,20 lists
#2 – gain some competitive insights into your foes, what are people seeking the most, which products, brands, etc let this help you develop strategies to outrank them for terms that people are looking for on their sites
#3 – get a spark on new topics to write about, blog about, and in general get links for by understanding what trends and words are getting hot in different niches
How else can this data be used? Let me know what you think.
Posted: 02.11.09
Bonnie:
I could see this kind of strategy working great for e-commerce paid search campaigns that have a hundreds of products. If you know what the top trends are in the vertical than you would know where to focus your efforts.
andrew wee:
Good list.
As an affiliate/marketer, I’m predisposed to sites which indicate buying intent, vs searching intent in most cases.
Only because the searcher is further along the buying cycle compared to the browser.
Besides Amazon’s bestsellers, I like the eBay pulse (http://pulse.ebay.com/) although you’d know which are the top sellers, it would probably serve to validate your efforts.
BRLM the Costa Rica SEO:
You down with ODP? Wil you know ME! I’m down with ODP.