In economics, supply and demand describe market relations between prospective sellers and buyers of a good. (wikipedia.org)

In search engine optimization, we can use the supply and demand model to describe the relationship between the people searching for specific keywords (the demand) and the people creating content to meet that demand (the supply).

The following is a simplified explanation on how to visualize the supply and demand of keywords.

Initial Assumptions

This article assumes that you already have a list of your most valuable keywords. These are keywords that will have high search volumes, low competition and high click estimates.

If you need help choosing your most valuable keywords, read our article on Five Things Every Online Retailer Must Learn to Succeed with Social Media.

Online Tools Used

We will be using two online tools (Google and IceRocket) to provide us with the data we need to see the supply and demand of your most valuable keywords.

Google Trends = Demand

Google Trends allows us to view the search volume of keywords over a period of time. This will be the demand side of the equation.

IceRocket Blog Trends = Supply

IceRocket Blog Trends allows us to view the amount of content created in the blogosphere for specific keywords. This will be the supply side of the equation.

Before We Jump Into How it Works…

This technique is designed to provide insight into the both the amount of people searching and the amount of people creating content for the searches. However, this is not an exact science and it must be assumed that the information derived from this method will be an approximation.

The Basics of Keyword Supply and Demand

Once you have a list of your most valuable keywords, you can use this technique to determine which keywords have high search volumes and a low number of content creators.

The Demand
The people searching, or the demand, this is your market. When the demand is high — when there are many people searching for a keyword, you have an opportunity for larger amounts of traffic.

The Supply
The people creating content, the supply, this is your competition. When you have a lot of competition, you will have a more difficult time achieving good search engine rankings and standing out in the list when you do get good rankings.

Determining Your Demand

Unfortunately, Google does not provide a scale for the search volume returned from Google Trends. Instead, you have to make some assumptions and guesses from the baseline of zero.

Below is a Google Trend Graph for the keyword “rockies tickets” over the last 12 months. As you can see the search volumes where low until just recently. Then a huge spike occurred.

To find the estimated Demand of your keywords, go to Google Trends and enter your keyword.

You will have access to the following information:

• Search volume
• News reference volume
• Top Regions
• Top Cities
• Top Languanges
• News story excerpts

Sizing up the Supply (your competition)

Let’s take a look at the supply side of “rockies tickets”. IceRocket Blog Trends only allows you to view trends over the last three months. However, IceRocket does give you the scale and some actual numbers relating to the number of posts you have competing with you.

Below is the IceRocket Trend Graph and the numeric data returned.

To find the estimated supply, go to IceRocket Blog Trends and enter in your keywords.

Here you see what looks to be a similar curve, but let’s look closer…

Comparing the Supply and the Demand

According to Google Trends, the spike in search volume started half way through September (highlighted in yellow). Relative to the last previous months on this chart, this is a very large spike.

If we compare that to the same period of time from the IceRocket Blog Trend chart, we see that the content buzz hasn’t started yet. This was a huge window of opportunity. The key is to find the opportunities before everyone else does.

As you look closer at the IceRocket Blog Trend chart, you see there are some sharp spikes when the blogosphere was talking about “rockies tickets”, but those spikes are sharp and the valleys are deep. The Google Trends’ chart doesn’t show the the same sharp spikes. Instead, it shows that the search volume is still growing.

Repeat and Analyze

Once you understand the basic tools for comparison, you can repeat this process for all your most valuable keywords. As you do, you will start to see that some of your keywords will be better than the others (supply and demand-wise).

As you go through your keywords, this technique should start to give you a good idea of which keywords will have more competition than others, and which keywords have the largest pool of possible traffic for you to attract.

When used with other keyword research techniques, you should be able to make better decisions for content development, blog post topics and more.

Other Related Keywords to “rockies tickets”

The following graphic is a combination of the IceRocket and Google Trend data for “coloradorockies.com” and “world series tickets”. As a basic example, you can easily see that “world series tickets” has much more “demand” or people competing for the searcher’s attention when compared to “rockies tickets” and “coloradorockies.com”.

If you had a sports blog and you wanted to write about the Colorado Rockies, using the Keyword Supply and Demand technique, you would see that currently “rockies tickets” and “coloradorockies.com” both have good search volumes and lower competitions. These are the keywords you would use as your post’s keyword focus.

Need help analyzing and finding the right keywords? Contact us at Chief Ingredient.

Tags: content competition, keyword research, linkedin, marketing research, marketing tools, search phrases, trends, valuable keywords

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Keyword Research Tools, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.