Broad and Exact Search

We use Google’s keyword data and Google Analytics visitor data to analyze our statistics. There are two important criteria to consider when using Google’s data and these are the broad and the exact figures. A broad search is every search that includes the words we are looking for. For example a search for “SEO companies in the West Sussex area” may yield many broad searches. Broad searches for this could be “West Sussex SEO companies”, “companies in West Sussex SEO”, “SEO West Sussex area companies”, and so on. Where as an exact search for this would just be the one term “SEO companies in the West Sussex area”. With the aim of clarity and specifics we have decided to only track the exact figures in our SEO work. This can result in the figures looking lower than they actually are, but making the targeting more precise. Using the above example of “SEO companies in the West Sussex area” for example would only yield say 25 exact monthly searches on Google. Whereas broad would yield maybe 900 searches. This will also reflect on the visitor statistics. We will only track the exact visits which could only be 3 on a monthly search of 25. But in reality there has probably been around 50 on the broad phrases. To balance this out on our monthly report, we only use the exact figures on the search term, but we log the overall website visitors for the month. The overall website visitors should rise even though the exact visitors may only be slightly rising. This can all be studied further in Google Analytics itself.