Recently I did a quick keyword opportunity analysis for a mid-sized B2B company that wanted to find ways to get more out of their search programs.? I am still surprised after numerous presentations and articles I continue to find this dysfunction.? Nearly four years ago I wrote about one of the most dysfunctional keyword programs I had seen and just added the update post on maximizing keyword alignment generated revenue and saves money.

The following is the data breakdown of a similar program.?? The goal was to identify misalignment in keyword lists and make sure they had full representation on the critical keyword sets.

keyword_list_alignment

Activity

We imported all of the words from the various lists into DataPrizm tagging them with the associated list.? We then did a search with the criteria to include each of the list and the following was the outcomes.? But first a few assumptions from the client

  1. ?Assumes that all words in their Critical 300 list would be in both the paid search campaign.
  2. These critical words, being loaded in BrightEdge were being measured and optimized by their SEO agency.
  3. That there was collaboration between PPC agency and SEO Agency for co-optimizaiton and trying to optimize for high cost keywords

The Import Results

Imported PPC keywords from AdWords – they had a total of 33,089 words active in AdWords paid search.
Imported SEO words from Brightedge – this was the list of words they actively managed in BrightEdge – they only had 300 as that was all they paid for.
Imported List of Words SEO Agency optimizing – this was the list the SEO Agency had developed to try to make rank higher.

Merge & Compare

Remember, client told me that the 300 words in Brightedge were their most important words that they needed to rank for.? As the most important words they ?SHOULD? have been in all lists.

When I compared the 33,000 paid words to the 300 Brightedge words there were 62 critical words missing from the list – meaning while they were critical they were not live in Paid Search and there was no reason why they were not.

When I compared the 694 words the SEO agency was working on to the 300 in Brightedge, 87 of the critical keywords were not on the SEO company list – strange that the SEO agency was not working on 87 of the most important words and words that they were ?supposedly? monitoring in Brightedge.

I then compared the paid keyword with the highest cost per click and all 20 of those words, the most expensive keywords, were not on the SEO Agencies list of words to optimize.? So if they are actually the most expensive you would assume that.? They would be in the SEO program to help offset the cost of paid.

In the end the client was not happy with the outcome as they “assumed” and was told repeatedly by their agency that there was alignment.?? If you are not sure of your alignment contact us to do a review for your program alignment.