Are you developing your keyword marketing strategy? Keyword marketing is an important factor in an effective search engine marketing campaign, and should be a primary factor in your web development.
Developing your keyword marketing strategy is much like dating. You want to have enough of the right keywords to get the attention of the Google algorithm (and your target market), without being so eager that you aren’t taken seriously. To help you identify the right keywords for your website, check out our list of keyword marketing research tips:
Five Tips for Finding the Best Keywords
- Know your target market.
There are search engine marketing tools that will significantly help you in your search of the best keywords (and we’ll get to this in a bit), but these tools can only slice and dice the data to determine what’s most important to your target market if they know what demographic they’re looking at.
Is your target customer male or female? What age range are you most likely going to be selling your product to? What socio-economic class are they in? In order to launch an effective keyword campaign, you’ll need to have the answers to these questions. - Pay attention to longtail keywords.
The best way to really target the demographic you’re trying to reach is through “longtail” keywords. Consider this: You sell pianos. It seems like the most direct and effective keyword is going to be “piano,” yes? Well 90% of people who are Googling “piano” are not shopping for pianos. They’re searching for YouTube videos of cats playing the piano. They’re writing book reports for their second grade class about Mozart. If your keyword marketing campaign is for pay per click advertisement, you’ll be paying for clicks that will never lead to sales.
Instead, focus on keywords that your target market is actually entering when they’re researching a purchase they want to make (and over 90% of purchases, whether they are in person or online, are researched online before a penny is spent). In our piano example, you’d use “best pianos to buy” or “cost of a baby grand piano.” The people who are searching these phrases are likely closer to a purchasing decision than people who are just typing the word “piano” in. - Experiment with different phrases.
There are a lot of keyword generation tools out there and many of them are free! These tools will give you a list of suggested phrases on any particular topic, and it’s up to you to decide which will best hit your target market. One very effective way to identify the best phrases in your keyword campaign is by running two keywords at the same time and watch how effective each one is. When you identify one that doesn’t seem to work as well as another, you can retire it, tweak it, or replace it with another keyword to test out.
Keep in mind that trends come and go, and the best keyword today might not be the most effective keyword in a couple weeks or months. You want to continually watch your statistics, and try out new keywords as old ones become less effective. This is more of an ongoing system of staying relevant online than a target you only have to hit once. - Utilize technology.
You’re probably tired of hearing this, but there are a lot of tools available for identifying the best keywords to use in you search engine marketing or pay per click advertising campaigns. Some tools give you a list of possible keywords relating to any specific topic. Some tools allow you to test out your own keywords and give you stats about how often the term is searched, and what response ads get with those terms. There are keyword tools in every shape or size. They point is that there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Take advantage of the tools who will do the work (and save you the hassle of a failed campaign) for you! - Let your keywords determine the content on you page.
If you know anything about search engine marketing, you know that content is king. Some people create content, and then go back and jam the keywords in. Instead, determine you list of keywords, and then use that to create content that works with it.