Search Engine Keywords Selection
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Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites.
But in order for visitors to reach their destination - your website - you need
to provide them with specific and effective signs that will direct them right to
your site. You do this by creating carefully chosen keywords.
Think of the right keywords as the Open Sesame! of the Internet. Find the
exactly right words or phrases, and presto! hoards of traffic will be pulling up
to your front
door. But if your keywords are too general or too over-used, the possibility of
visitors actually making it all the way to your site - or of seeing any real
profits from the visitors that do arrive - decreases dramatically.
Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are
not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing
campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it.
So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords
and phrases.
You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search
phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven't followed certain specific steps, you are
probably WRONG. It's hard to be objective when you are right in the center of
your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose
the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like
your customers.
And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go
directly to the source.
Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search words and
phrases yourself, ask for words from as many potential customers as you can. You
will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your
customers' understanding is significantly different.
The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you accumulate
from them are words and phrases you probably never would have considered from
deep inside the trenches of your business.
Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from outside resources
should you add your own keyword to the list. Once you have this list in hand,
you are ready for the next step: evaluation.
The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of words and
phrases that will direct the highest number of quality visitors to your website.
By
"quality visitors" I mean those consumers who are most likely to make a purchase
rather than just cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In
evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements:
popularity, specificity, and motivation.
Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality. The
more popular your keyword is, the more likely the chances are that it will be
typed into a
search engine which will then bring up your URL.
You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and
phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity.
Software such as WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and
phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the
more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your site. The only
fallacy with this
concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the search engine
position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the bottom of the search
results, the consumer will probably never scroll down to find you.
Popularity isn't enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must move on to
the next criteria, which is specificity. The more specific your keyword is, the
greater
the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase your goods or services
will find you.
Let's look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained popularity
rankings for the keyword "automobile companies." However, you company
specializes in bodywork only. The keyword "automobile body shops" would rank
lower on the popularity scale than "automobile companies," but it would
nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of getting a slew of people
interested in everything from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you
will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being
directed to your site. In other words, consumers ready to buy your services are
the ones who will
immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the specificity of your
keyword is, the less competition you will face.
The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this requires putting
yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the seller to figure out
what motivation
prompts a person looking for a service or product to type in a particular word
or phrase. Let's look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching
for a job as an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between "Seattle
job listings" and "Seattle IT recruiters" which do you think will benefit the
consumer more? If you were looking for this type of specific job, which keyword
would
you type in? The second one, of course! Using the second keyword targets people
who have decided on their career, have the necessary experience, and are ready
to enlist you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school who is
casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in between beer
parties. You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and
this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until your find the most
specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to
you site.
Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must continually
evaluate performance across a variety of search engines, bearing in mind that
times and trends change, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log
traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how many of your visitors
actually made a purchase.
Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the effectiveness
of your keywords in individual search engines. There is now software available
that
analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to
discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.
This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profits
per visitor do. You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site who
actually buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your product. This
is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase,
and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or
inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better profits.
Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine success.
This may sound like a lot of work - and it is! But the amount of informed effort
you put into
your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your business' rewards.
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