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search engine keywords, terms, and phrases
Search Engine Keywords, Terms, and Phrases
By Scott Buresh
Many businesses recognize that with the proper choice of search engine keywords, 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 evaluating and selecting their terms for keyphrase search. Also called Internet search terms and search phrases (the terms are used interchangeably throughout this article), search engine keywords are groups of words that potential customers are using to find products or services on search engines. These terms for keyphrase search 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 each keyphrase in a search engine optimization campaign.
1. Compiling your terms for keyphrase search:
Often, companies are sure that they already know their ideal search engine keywords. Usually, 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 list of search engine keywords 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 suggestions for Internet search terms 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 search phrases from external sources do you add your own. As a last step, try to add variations, plurals, and derivatives of each keyphrase for search that is on your list.
2. Evaluating your search phrases:
Once you have compiled a master list of potential search engine keywords, 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 the value of each keyphrase for search based only on popularity figures, there are really three vitally important aspects to consider for all search phrases.
Popularity
By far the easiest of the three to judge is popularity, since it is not subjective. Software like WordTracker gives popularity figures of each keyphrase in a search campaign based upon actual search engine activity (as well as additional suggestions and variations of similar Internet search terms). This allows you to assign a concrete popularity number to individual search engine keywords 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 analysis of search terms 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 search engine keywords "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 for a keyphrase search than "auto insurance companies", the first of these search engine keywords would also be comprised of people looking for life insurance, health insurance, and home insurance. It is very likely that someone doing a keyphrase search for a particular type of insurance will refine their search after seeing the disparate results returned from the second of these search phrases ("insurance companies"). In the second, longer phrase, 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 of the search terms will be less competitive.
Motivation of User
This factor, even more abstract than specificity, calls for an attempt to understand the motivation of a user performing a keyphrase search by simply analyzing his or her search engine keywords. Assume, for example, that you were a real estate agent in Atlanta. Two of the search phrases you are evaluating are "Atlanta real estate listings" and "Atlanta real estate agents". Both search engine keywords have very similar popularity numbers. They are also each fairly specific, and your services are very relevant to each. So which of the search engine keywords is better? If you look into the likely motivation of the user, you will probably conclude that the second is superior. While both choices for a keyphrase search 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 search terms can make a large difference on the quality of the traffic they attract.
3. Evaluating the Performance of Terms in a Keyphrase Search:
Until recently, judging the performance of an individual keyphrase in a search was a dicey proposition. Although it is possible to tell from your log traffic analysis how many visitors are getting to your site from individual Internet search terms (valuable information, but unfortunately not enough to do much with), it was very hard to decipher which search terms 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 an individual keyphrase in a search based upon visitor behavior. This new software makes it possible to periodically analyze which search terms 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 search engine keywords and put increased effort toward the search terms that are delivering visitors that become customers. This kind of ongoing analysis of keyphrase search is the final piece of the search engine keywords puzzle, and allows you to continually target the most important search terms for your industry, even if they change over time.
Conclusion:
The compilation, selection, and evaluation of search engine keywords are vitally important to any search engine marketing campaign. While high rankings in search engines are an admirable goal, high rankings for poor terms in a keyphrase search will consistently deliver poor results. Integration of this process into your overall search engine marketing strategy can dramatically improve your website performance (and thus your bottom line).
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