Keyword research is one of the most important stages of developing a website – especially if the purpose of the site is to generate money and business. Your first step is deciding exactly what you will be selling on your site – is it a product, service or information? Next is taking the steps to find out the type of things people type into the search engines when looking for your particular product or service.
It’s the myriad of terms people use to search that will allow you to better target any search marketing you do, as well as start building content and links to help your organic rankings in the search engines (also known as search engine optimization). The wider your subject, the more in-depth your keyword research will be – sometimes ending in a list of keywords in the tens of thousands. For example, if you sell ONLY 3 brands of fishing rods, your keyword list will be noticeably shorter than if you sold fishing rods, line, bait, tackle, the whole nine.
To start your keyword research, just brainstorm a bit and get into your target audience’s head. What might they search for in the search engines to find your service? From there you can generate short list of broad terms. From there you can take your research in one of two directions.
The more traditional school uses online tools and programs. Google’s Keyword Tool will generate a list of related terms and suggested terms as well as show how often people search for them. There is also software available that utilizes several online tools in one. Whichever you choose, do a bit of research to find how to best utilize it.
Of course, if the purpose of your keyword research is to build search marketing campaigns through Yahoo and Google, you can save yourself time, energy and the game of trying to figure out which keywords are the best to use and which will waste money. How you ask? Simply by doing a bit of experiment with whichever search marketing program you use.
Most pay per click programs allows you to choose a ‘broad’ match or ‘exact’ match option regarding your keywords as your build ad campaigns. Spend a bit of cash to build a general campaign around your original keyword research – the list of several general terms you created. Add them as broad matches, which will allow your ads to pop up anytime at least one of those words is in a search inquiry.
You can spend some money by running your test campaign for a week or two, and wind up actually cutting the manpower hours your keyword research takes in half. Using the analytics software most search marketing programs provide, you can track which keywords led people to click on your actual ads. Than you can add keywords and tweak your campaign as necessary, to get the most for your marketing, eventually cutting out broad match keywords for exact matches.
It’s really not rocket-science, it just means putting a little money up front. While more traditional keyword research works and definitely has value, for companies with less manpower and time, this method should help lead to higher conversion rates at lower costs. It can’t hurt to try!
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