Your web page or site might be at a stage where you’ve already performed in-depth keyword research through a formal and vetted process.
You’ve used all the tools at your disposal to identify what best suits your brand.
However, if you’re like me, have you ever found yourself just performing ad hoc keyword research on a direct or indirect competitor? Or honestly, keywords research on a random webpage?
You’re hoping to test the waters and you’re not really sure of what you might find, if anything. The effort isn’t meant to replace any portion of a webpage now but to ease curiosity that comes to mind.
As you peruse various webpages that may or may not be of significance, you might want to look to quick competitive keyword research that doesn’t haven’t to be formal.
I’m all for efficiency. I prefer to do ad hoc research and avoid weaving through various web pages or datasets, if I can help it.
I’ve been engaging in this neat little hack that has boosted my keyword research productivity tremendously. It will combine 2 of my favorite tools: a Google Chrome extension, Keywords Everywhere, in tandem with a “site:” search operator.
Watch my video on how to perform quick competitive research below!
Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere is a Google Chrome extension that shows monthly search volume, estimated CPC, and other trending keyword data in search results.
For some time they offered the extension for free but eventually it was converted to a paid tool (boo!) but, in all honesty, it’s totally worth it (yay!).
For $10, you receive 100,000 credits to pull individual keyword data. I’ve had it for 5 months already and I have 56,000 credits left – I still have a ways to go before depleting my credits. Remember, I’m an SEOer that looks at keyword data quite regularly. That having said, you can definitely make the most out of the $10.
They’ve started to pull in ranking keyword data based on ranking URLs within search results. That if a URL is in position 1, Keywords Everywhere shows what other keywords that URL ranks for. We’re going to focus on this aspect of the extension.
“Site:” Search Operator
A search operator is a type of directive / command of what you want to see in search results.
In case you’re searching for web pages that are in a PDF format, you can using a “filetype:” search operator.
Or if you want to look at web pages with a specific page title, you can use a “intitle:” search operator.
In our case, we’ll be using a “site:” search operator, which allows you to look at a specific page, site section, or an entire site’s pages within Google results.
So let’s use my site for example, you may want to look at all my site’s webpages that are indexed in google, you would use the below site: search operator.
site:https://www.edwindanromero.comYou can drop the https://www. and look at all subdomains or add in a specific webpage or site section.
It’s a real nifty way to better understand what Google has been indexing for a specific page.
Again, with the site search you can see what URLs are indexed immediately – an improvement to productivity.
Bing also uses search operators but I find that they are a bit more finicky.
Keyword Research with Keywords Everywhere and Site: Search
Let’s walk through an example and see how easy it can be to dig up ad hoc competitor keyword research in a more productive manner.
Let’s say you’re writing a post on “Search Operators” and you want to use keywords where an existing competitor already ranks. In doing so, you hope to identify keyword opportunities that can help you further optimize your web page or possibly inspire new content.
After becoming familiar with the web pages that write about the topic, let’s settle on one that comes up often.
Let’s use Ahrefs’s Search Operator page, found here. Ahrefs is a very popular SEO tool and resource in the industry. If you look at their page, you can tell it’s extraordinarily thorough and very practical, which may explain why it ranks regularly.
For our case, we can consider Ahrefs as a competitor.
Now, you have the Search Operator URL and you can do a site: search with it. This will tell Google to only filter for that specific URL within search results
Now that you have just that URL, you can look at some really nifty Keywords Everywhere data.
Remember, you get the monthly search volume for the search you performed but in our case we want to look deeper.
Let’s click through the keywords: 557 link.
Look at that.
Keywords Everywhere has added in the ability to identify which other keywords this specific URL also ranks for.
Again, a really amazing feature that I feel makes Keywords Everywhere totally worth $10. This alone has started to become a pivotal part of my keyword research.
If you comb through this list you’ll find other possible keywords you can optimize and create content around.
Summary
I hope you’ve enjoyed this great hack.
Lastly, remember, you want to make sure you find the most relevant and successful keyword opportunities that exist for a content piece you’re working on or a web page you’re building.
This hack shouldn’t replace the thoroughness that goes into competitor or keyword research. Rather, this is meant to be a supplement to those efforts.
I hope it helps you and makes your keyword research quicker and more productive / efficient.
