With Google Advanced segmentation tools, this is now possible. The best part is, the segmentation parameters need not be restricted to certain pages. You can segment your visitors based on say the time they spend on your site, or only new visitors – or even certain search phrases that contain certain keywords. For example, you can see the trend of visits to your site from all phrases that contain a certain phrase.

The tool is a bit advanced, but even for non professional users, it allows you to play around with the data and take a look at it in many different ways. This is the essence of understanding your customers and gaining insights that can help you serve them better. Try it and see. You’ll be amazed!

However, in PPC campaigns, the overriding concern is based on just two factors. The most important factor is – “Will this keyword be used by people who want to purchase/sign up/view a particular page?”. In PPC you pay by the click. So it’s not just visitors you want, but those visitors who will do what you want them to once they’re on your site.

For example, suppose you’re selling computer hard drives. You’re not interested in people who merely want information and want to learn about hard drives. That’s what the organic results are for. No, when someone clicks on your PPC ads, you want to be damn sure they want to buy a hard disk! So you need to target keywords that such people will use – perhaps “hard disk dealers”, “xyz brand hard disks” or the like. Such keywords indicate that the searcher wants to purchase your product.

You need to refine your selection as much as possible to focus on your particular products. For example, if you’re a physical shop without an ecommerce store, then your keyword should be “hard disk dealers in xyz location”. The more certain you are that that particular keyword will be used by your potential customers, the better the keyword is.

The second parameter is the price you pay for each click. It goes without saying that highly competitive keywords cost more. It is precisely due to this reason that the first step of selection is so important. You can lose a lot of money everyday by simply choosing keywords that will not be used by your customers.

Depending on your budget, you need to select a mix of cost effective and relevant keywords, but the latter is more important than the first. I’m assuming that the final goal of your website would be at least a hundred times over and above the cost per click of a given keyword.

These are the basics of choosing PPC keywords. In the coming sections, we take a look at the next stage – preparing your website, bidding, pruning your keyword list and tracking.

While the basics of SEO remains the same for Bing, there are a few subtle differences. There are strong indications that Bing places a greater emphasis on old domains than Google. This is a good thing if you’ve been in business for a long time, but it’s taken out of your hands if you’re new obviously. Other factors imply that in Bing, keyword prominence has less of an influence than it does with Google.

Of course, you have much less control over inbound links than you have with other on page factors (and that is perhaps a good thing, or else everyone would be doing it), but one lesson we can take from this perhaps is that if you’re a new company with a new website, Google will be a bit more kind to you than Bing. For those of you whose sites have already been around for a long time – well you don’t really have to worry too much about your PageRank now do you?