How should I choose my
keywords?
Keyword research and selection process is probably the single most critical
part of a search engine marketing campaign. The challenge here is picking
the terms that will deliver the largest number of the most qualified traffic.
(Remember those old min-max Calculus problems..?) That is, you want to
consider how accurately the keyword describes your product or business
as well as how many users actually use this term in search. Also, out
of all relevant and frequently used terms you should select keywords that
have a high lead value, i.e. a person using that term in search represents
a likely potential prospect or lead.
Below are some basic suggestions to guide you through your keyword selection
process.
Know your audience:
Granted, you want all of your audience groups to find your website. But
here you have to prioritize – focus on the group that is most likely
to convert. For instance, if you're a b2b company, what user group represents
the decision makers that might end up buying your product? What type of
user is your potential lead? What type of language and keywords would
this visitor use when searching for your product? Here is where your knowledge
of your industry will play a big role. Hint: Checking
out some analyst reports for your industry may also help determine the
language your prospects are likely to use since a lot of them probably
consult analyst reports as well.
Look at your competition:
One good way to identify your potential target terms is to look at your
competition. Are they using different terms than you're using on your
website? A good way to check is looking at your competitor website’s
meta tags.
Investigate search popularity:
Before you make the final decision on your keywords, make sure you research
the number of times the term is searched in the major search engines.
We have provided a list of free online tools that you can use to access
these keyword statistics. A few
good ones are Google keyword tool, Overture term suggestion tool, WordTracker,
and AltaVista Prisma.
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