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Internet Marketing &
Business Promotion
Selecting and Evaluating
Keyphrases for Search Engine Marketing
By Scott Buresh
Many
businesses recognize that search engines can bring volumes
of highly targeted prospects to their website, typically
at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing.
Unfortunately, these same companies often overlook the
most important part of their search engine marketing
campaigns, which is keyphrase selection and evaluation.
Keyphrases (those phrases that potential customers are
using to find products or services on search engines)
are the building block of any search engine marketing
strategy. It is essential that they are chosen carefully,
or else the remainder of the campaign, no matter how
effective the implementation, will likely be in vain.
What follows is a three-step process that goes over
the process of compiling, selecting, and evaluating
the ongoing performance of keyphrases for search engines.
1. Compiling a keyphrase list:
Usually, companies are sure that they already know their
ideal keyphrases. Often, they are wrong. This is typically
because it is very hard to separate oneself from a business
and look at it from the perspective of a potential customer
(rather than an insider). Compiling a keyphrase list
should not be, despite common practice, a strictly internal
process. Rather, it is best to ask everyone outside
of your company for their input, especially your customers.
People are often very surprised at the keyphrase suggestions
they get- and sometimes dismayed to realize that an
average customer doesn't speak the same language that
they do. Only after you have put together a list of
likely phrases from external sources do you add your
own. As a last step, try to add variations, plurals,
and derivatives of the phrases on your list.
2. Evaluating keyphrases:
Once you have compiled a master keyphrase list, it is
time to evaluate each phrase to hone your list down
to those most likely to bring you the highest amount
of quality traffic. Although many individuals will base
their assessment of keyphrase value based only on popularity
figures, there are really three vitally important aspects
of each phrase to consider.
Popularity
By far the easiest of the three to judge is popularity,
since it is not subjective. Software like WordTracker
gives popularity figures of search phrases based upon
actual search engine activity (it also gives additional
keyphrase suggestions and variations). Such software
allows you to assign a concrete popularity number to
each phrase to use when comparing them. Obviously, the
higher the number, the more traffic that can be expected
(assuming you are able to obtain good search engine
positions). However, this number alone is not good enough
reason to pursue any particular keyphrase, although
too often keyphrase analysis stops here.
Specificity
This is more abstract than the sheer popularity number,
but equally important. For example, let's assume that
you were able to obtain great rankings for the keyphrase
"insurance companies" (a daunting prospect).
Let's also assume that you only deal with auto insurance.
Although "insurance companies" might have
a much higher popularity figure than "auto insurance
companies", the first keyphrase would also be comprised
of people looking for life insurance, health insurance,
and home insurance. It is very likely that someone searching
for a particular type of insurance will refine their
search after seeing the disparate results returned from
the phrase "insurance companies". In the second,
longer keyphrase, you can be reasonably sure that a
much higher percentage of visitors will be looking for
what you offer- and the addition of the word "auto"
will make it much easier to attain higher rankings,
since the longer term will be less competitive.
Motivation of User
This factor, even more abstract than specificity, calls
for an attempt to understand the motivation of a search
engine user by simply analyzing his or her search phrase.
Assume, for example, that you were a real estate agent
in Atlanta. Two of the keyphrases you are evaluating
are "Atlanta real estate listings" and "Atlanta
real estate agents". Both phrases have very similar
popularity numbers. They are also each fairly specific,
and your services are very relevant to each. So which
phrase is better? If you look into the likely motivation
of the user, you will probably conclude that the second
is superior. While both phrases target people looking
for real estate in Atlanta, you can infer from the second
phrase that the searcher has moved beyond the point
where they are browsing local homes or checking out
prices in their neighborhood- they are looking for an
agent, which implies that they are ready to act. Often,
subtle distinctions between terms can make a large difference
on the quality of the traffic they attract.
3. Evaluating Keyphrase Performance:
Until recently, judging the performance of individual
keyphrases was a dicey proposition. Although it is possible
to tell from your log traffic analysis how many visitors
are getting to your site from each keyphrase (valuable
information, but unfortunately not enough to do much
with), it was very hard to decipher which phrases were
bringing you the most quality traffic. Recently, however,
some sophisticated but affordable tools have been developed
that allow you to judge the performance of each individual
keyphrase based upon visitor behavior. This new software
makes it possible to periodically analyze which keyphrases
are bringing your site the most valuable visitors- those
who buy your products, fill out your contact form, download
your demo, etc. This type of data, rather than the sheer
number of visitors from each search phrase alone, is
invaluable when you are refining your search engine
marketing campaigns, since you can discard and replace
non-performing keyphrases and put increased effort toward
the phrases that are delivering visitors that become
customers. This kind of ongoing analysis is the final
piece of the keyphrase puzzle, and allows you to continually
target the most important phrases for your industry,
even if they change over time.
Conclusion:
Keyphrase compilation, evaluation, and performance are
all vitally important to any search engine marketing
campaign. While high rankings in search engines are
an admirable goal, high rankings for poor keyphrases
will consistently deliver poor results. Integration
of this keyphrase process into your overall search engine
marketing strategy can dramatically improve your website
performance (and thus your bottom line).
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About the Author
Scott Buresh is Co-founder and Principal of Medium
Blue Internet Marketing .
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