Why are keyword search skills important?

In the age of the internet, whether we are doing digital marketing, market research, competitor research, conference presentations or information for work, or even if we just want to buy something, we cannot do without search engines such as google, and of course in China we cannot do without Baidu.

However, if we don’t have enough search skills, we may find a bunch of advertisements or useless information, which tends to reduce the efficiency of our search and makes us spend more time on searching for information, which further reduces our ability to obtain information.

"Efficient searching will leave us far behind in our decision making"

Here are 7 tips for accurate keyword searches, both on Baidu and Google, which Domatters has summarised in his keyword research and other research for clients. I hope this article is useful to you.

Table of contents (Quick Jump):

Tip1.To remove ads or certain keywords, use [-] (minus sign)

When we are searching for keywords, there are often advertisements or search results that we do not want to appear.

For example, if we search for “IELTS training“, we can see that there are advertisements for various tutorials on the left, but if we change it to “IELTS training-ads”, these advertisements will be removed from the search results!

Tip2.To refine your search for a particular keyword, use [“”].

When doing keyword research, we usually encounter three situations where we need to use a refined search.

• – When a specific keyword needs to be searched rigorously, such as a medical term
• – where the keyword is not normally used and needs to be highlighted
• – When a keyword is separated into multiple meanings, it is easy to search for multiple results, especially for English keywords.

For example, search for “learning Mandarin Chinese” on google will easily yield “learning” and “Mandarin Chinese ” or “Chinese” respectively, but if you use [“”] you will search for the full set of “Learning Mandarin Chinese “. The search results will be more precise, with many results containing all the words in double quotes. If there are fewer results, you will want to consider whether the keyword fits the local context or translation issues, etc.

photo: keyword research |Learning Mandarin Chinese | google|double quotes

Another example is to search for [天猫国际开店教程](tmall international shop opening tutorials) through Baidu, add double quotes and type in [“天猫国际开店教程”], which also achieves this effect of precise search as Google does. This also applies to yahoo and other search engines.

photo: keyword research |天猫国际开店教程 | baidu|double quotes

Baidu can also use the book title symbol [《》] to achieve this result. The book title is a special query syntax unique to Baidu. In other search engines, the book title symbol [《》] is ignored, whereas in Baidu, the Chinese book title symbol is available for queries.

It has two special layers of functionality. One is that the book title number will appear in the search results. The second is that content expanded by the book title symbol will not be split up.

The book title symbol is particularly effective in some cases. For example, look up the movie “mobile phone”. If you do not add the book title symbol, in many cases you will find a communication tool, a mobile phone. When the book title symbol is added, the results for “《手机》” are all about movies.

photo: keyword research |mobile phone | baidu|The book title symbol

Tip3.Search for a website with a specific keyword in the title use [intitile:] or [+]

We encounter many clients who may need to search for classic examples of social marketing or integrated SEO marketing, but if they search for a long-tail keyword directly, it will often be split up and the search results may not be particularly accurate. If we want the search results to be around a certain topic, use [intitile:] or [+] and the results will show you the keyword title website you want, so most of the articles are about the topic you want, which will be more accurate.

photo | use [intitile:domatters] | google|baidu|2023

The results will be displayed with the keywords you want, so that most of the content of the article is also the relevant topic you want.

photo | domatters+China link building | google| 淘宝+知乎|baidu|2023

Tip4.To search for a specific file form,use [filetype]

If you are a student and want to search for relevant papers, or you are a researcher and want to know about a research report on a certain industry, but you don’t want to find only some one-sided news reports, what can you do?

For example, we can target the keywords of the research report we want by adding [filetype] to the end, the results shown on the right will be ready-made pdf files, we can directly get more complete report information, not just news reports.

If you want a template for a PowerPoint, you can also try searching for “slide template filetype:ppt” in google or searching for “ppt模板filetype:ppt” in baidu and so on.

Photo| searching for “slide template filetype:ppt” |google|ppt模板filetype:ppt|baidu|2023

Tip5.To search for the content of a specific website,use [site]

If you want to search for a keyword, but you want to search for a keyword in a specific website, you can try [site].

For example, when we search for “wechat marketing domatters“, the results shown below are not necessarily the articles that appear on the domatters website, if the only results we want are articles related to wechat marketing that appear on the domatters website, then use the + above. If the only result we want is a wechat marketing related article on the domatters website,  add site will make the results below only come from domatters.com!

photo | use site to accurate keyword searches|wechat marketing domatters|domatters| 2023

Tip6.To search for websites similar to a specific website, use [related].

We already know about a particular site, but if we want to see what other sites are similar to it, we can try [related].

For example, emarketer is a well-known global market research company that provides data analysis and research reports, so if we want to find a website similar to emarketer, use [related] to find out what other websites are providing industry insight.

The first thing you need to do is to use [related] to find out what other sites are offering industry insight.

Tip 7.To search for keyword content in a particular country/region, use [location].

If we want to see how the same keyword shows up in other countries/regions, we can try [location], which can be used to study the views of different countries on the same topic.

For example, a direct search for “學測數學“(learning maths) would show different results to a search for “學測數學 location:taiwan“. The result that use location is only half, and the location is mostly Taiwan or related websites.

Photo|tip 7 for accurate keyword searches|学測数学Location:taiwan|google|2023

Of course, a more straightforward approach is to use the local search engine to search for the keywords you are looking for.

8.Conclusions and recommendations – from domatters

Searching for information is an increasingly important skill in today’s workplace. The more precise the ability to search for information, the more resources can be obtained. Resources are not limited to knowledge. Getting the information we want quickly and accurately requires some skill. There are many techniques for searching online, but you don’t need to memorise them all. These 7 tips domatters shared can be used in a variety of ways and can even be combined to make your search results more accurate!

If this article is helpful to you or your friend, don’t forget to share it with your friends or your clients.

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About Domatters

Domatters China Marketing Agency provide online marketing service to help overseas clients who want to do business in China or marketing to china to entry China market or reaching 1.4 billion Chinese consumers.

1.Chinese content copywriting
2.Chinese translation service
3.Baidu SEO Ranking
4.China Link Building
5.Chinese Content Strategy
6.Chinese Keywords Research
7. WeChat marketing, tiktok marketing, Little Red Book, etc.
8. Chinese and English video subtitle editing, creating video scripts, video editing, etc.

From 2016 to now, domatters serviced a lot overseas clients from different industry, e.g. online education, travel, blockchain, real estate, mechanical, game, IT, retailer, etc.  If you are doing business in China, or plan to entry China market, then we domatters could be your China market advisor.

Photo |domatters Tradeshow Brochures | Design:Mary | likedin profile of Mary

If you have issues,please fell free to contact  Domatters . OUR IDEA IS DO MATTERS.

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