Another good use of Google Instant?

By Liam Lally 24th November 2010 Blog & 2 more

One of the techniques we use as search engine optimisation consultants is the allintitle: search in Google.

An all in title search will show you the number of websites that have the keyword or keyphrase as part of their page title. This can be a good indicator as to how much competition you are going to face optimising for that keyword – don’t get me wrong, there are many other factors, but this technique can be a good guide. It can also find some great niche search phrases with reasonable search numbers and little competition.

Not sure what I mean? Let me show you a couple of examples for the client I was doing the research for today:

Wireless CCTV camera has 720 exact match searches per month, but 15,800 web pages with this phrase in their page title.

Wireless CCTV cameras (plural) has 480 exact match searches per month, but only 822 web pages with this phrase. For the little difference in monthly search numbers, in this instance, it is worth investigating all the other SEO stuff for the client to see if we can optimise their web page for Wireless CCTV cameras.

The problem has always been (for me anyway) that when you start to do these searches (and usually you have a great long list of keywords to work through), Google will kick you out, saying that it feels you are generating automated requests. You can swap your browser (I usually go Firefox, IE, Safari and Google Chrome), but eventually they all get blocked (and the final few seem to get blocked quicker). This often leaves you half way through your keyword research, waiting for Google to “trust” you again. You can clear your cookies etc, but it can be a pain.

Today I thought I would test the allintitle search using Google Instant search results. I signed in, set the web results to the UK and ploughed on with my research. I didn’t get ditched ONCE by Google AND it was a much quicker way to see the results. I have used a couple of automated programmes in the past however these have also faced the same problem, after a few requests Google closes the search facility – so maybe Google Instant search will prove to be a great tool for SEO after all!!

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