Location: Research > Website Analysis > Search Traffic > Keyword Phrases
Keyword Phrases help you determine which search terms (single and multiple keywords) are most valuable to your business. On this page, you can see different combinations of keywords and the percentage of traffic they're sending to your website.
In this article, we'll cover these basic questions:
Keyword Phrases reflect the different search terms that drive traffic to the website you are analyzing and the percent of traffic this search term sends to the website, on its own and within longer search queries.
Single Keyword
When looking at a single search term and its corresponding traffic share, you can see how much traffic this one keyword drives in all its possible keyword combinations.
For example, the CNN's keyword phrases include the word "news" as a single keyword which brings in over 6% of the traffic. This percentage of traffic includes traffic driven to the website from "news", "world news", "cnn world news", "breaking news headlines", "live breaking news", etc.
Longer Keyword Phrases
When looking at search terms with two words or more, you will see the traffic that is driven by that exact keyword combination. As exemplified below, a quick search for "news world" generates slightly different search results than "world news".
Versus
Compare Mode
You can also see how you compete with your competition on different keyword combinations. By adding a competitor on the top left bar, you will see the total traffic share of you and your competitors for a keyword as well as the traffic distribution. This gives you a clear view on who is winning for certain keyword combinations.
A great way to utilize this comparative view is by looking at the long-tail keywords i.e. 3 words, that don't send any traffic to you but are sending traffic to your competitors. If you exclude branded keywords (simply check the box), these are great indicators for keyword opportunities that can bring in traffic that is currently going to your competitors.
By looking at Keyword Phrases, you can
pinpoint the most lucrative SEO opportunities for your campaigns
estimate the amount of traffic from different keywords combinations
discover long-tail keywords your competition ranks for but you don't
The below graph exemplifies how you should be analyzing the search terms on the Keyword Phrases page. Consider one-word keywords, like news, to be highly costly and competitive which means vying for this keyword will be difficult and at risk to be ROI positive. But it does give you a good indication on how to combine it with other keywords that can offer you a low-cost yet high reward keyword strategy.
Here are a few ideas on how to use the insights drawn from Keyword Phrases to make decisions in your daily work:
Build out a PPC campaign for long-tail search terms that bring in traffic to your competitors
Create dedicated web content that uses multiple combinations of high-traffic driving keywords
Discover negative keywords to rank for
Analyze each keyword and see the websites competing for search traffic for this keyword
Create a keyword group from high-value keywords to monitor
This metric enables you to analyze your site's keyword phrases and those of your competitors - both insights show changes overtime.
To view incoming keyword phrases traffic share over time:
Click the arrow next to each keyword phrase in the keyword phrases table to see a monthly breakdown.
Understanding the breakdown of keyword phrases traffic to not only your website, but also your competitors is crucial to accurately analyze trends in your space. The benefit of a monthly view is that you can find SEO opportunities to drive organic traffic and to protect your search strategy, understand how your keyword phrases stack up against the competition, and determine which phrases you are winning/losing to the competition, over time.