BI Revolution

Keywords Are Your Friends
When people ask how teams I managed made over $30M in online e-commerce I usually say we did what we were told. This is NOT to say I didn't have an amazing creative team (I did). 

Yes we could riff like jazz musicians, but we only improvised where we know there was GOLD to be found (to mix a metaphor lol). One way to know where the GOLD is in them there search marketing hills is to steal a simple keyword secret - Keyword Efficiency. 

What Is Keyword Efficiency
I stole the idea from WordTracker. I couldn't afford their tool and they weren't letting "scholarship students" in (this is on my return from Martin's Ride to Cure Cancer my bicycle ride across America when I had NO MONEY LOL).

Wordtracker's Efficiency is a valuation, a fancy algorithmic SWAG, that estimates the chances of getting your PPC money back.  My Keyword Efficiency is a ratio showing and ranking keywords revealing the priority you should attack them. 

My Keyword Efficiency is a ratio between DEMAND (I like global monthly broad match since large numbers HELP this model) and competition (documents returned on a Google search for that key). Formula is simple:

DEMAND / COMPETITION

Don't get lost in the tiny numbers. The number is only there to help you model one keyword against another. use Excel's (or Google docs) magical sort tool and you have a prioritized list of keys with BLUE OCEANS at the top and RED OCEANS at the bottom. 

Blue Oceans = you have a chance to rank especially if you go a little further out in the long tail of search (just make sure there is search demand and remember Google has been cutting back and not supporting terms with few searchers).  

Think of Blue Oceans as OVER SEARCHED and UNDER PUBLISHED. BTW, Q&A content consistently has high efficiencies ACROSS business verticals (as it does in this example from the BI vertical). 

Some Red Oceans you and your content marketing MUST swim in, so close your eyes and swim. Focus your content marketing on keys that are efficient - keys that are OVER SERCHED and UNDER PUBLISHED and life will be good :).