So, you know what your prospective customers search for when looking for your products or services? Do you? Get it wrong and your website marketing will be in vain, get it right and you signpost prospective clients straight to your door.
So why do we get it wrong?
When a client comes to me and we start to discuss keywords and keyword phrases, they automatically assume they know what they should be because, quite rightly, they know their own business inside out. But that is the key, their prospective clients do NOT know their business inside out, and so therefore do not have the same understanding of what things are called, and what they can do. You need to step outside of your business and look at it through the eyes of a customer, better still, ask them.
KEYWORD RESEARCH
Keyword research is a vital part of website marketing. This exercise should be performed prior the website content being written. It is through this exercise, that we are able to find out exactly how many surfers searched for which keywords and phrases and how many other web pages are competing for the same phrase. In the short term it is not a sensible idea to target one word keywords that have over 200,000 pages competing for them. In the long term, maybe but if you want to get your website seen and start to build up some traffic, then you need to concentrate on 2-3 keyword phrases that have less than 200,000 pages competing for them.
THE PROCESS
Step 1- Preliminary keyword list
The client needs to produce a list of keywords that they feel are applicable to their business. Keywords can also be lifted from any company literature. It is also useful if the client can tell the website marketing consultant who their main competitors are, and their web addresses. You need to think ‘outside of the box’ and also think laterally.
Step 2 – What keywords are searched for
Armed with a list of keywords, the website marketing consultant should now perform research with a tool such as WordTracker™ to ascertain:
•Whether these listed keywords are in fact being searched for
•What other related keywords are also being searched for
•Whether there are any synonyms that are relevant and being searched for
•How many other web pages are competing for the same keyword phrases
These results are taken from a database of searched carried out over the last 60 days within all of the major search engines, directories and Pay Per Click directories.
This list should highlight some keyword phrases that are being searched for, but that are not being overly competed for, these are the keyword phrases that you should be looking for.
Now some more in-depth research can be carried out which will tell the consultant, out of those pages said to be competing for a given keyword phrase, how many of them are actively competing rather than incidentally.
Step 3 – Final Draft
Now it is time to go back to the client with the detailed list of actual search phrases used, and decide which of those are relevant to the type of visitor you want to attract to your website.
Step 4 – Focus your content
Armed with this final list, the content can now be written using relevant, searched for keyword phrases.
THE EFFECT
Getting it wrong
You can have the most professional website in the world, with the most user friendly interface, but if you are targeting the wrong keywords then you are targeting the wrong people. Therefore, your objective (to get more business, sell more products etc) cannot be met. All of your hard work will have been in vain as it will fall upon deaf ears (so to speak).
Getting it right
However, target the right keyword phrases will attract in exactly those people that are looking for precisely what you are offering. Of course, when they find you, you will need to make sure you have also fulfilled the rest of the criteria of professional design and user-friendly interface!
CONCLUSION
As with all marketing campaigns, you need to know your target audience, know what they want and then meet their demands. The internet offers the opportunity for you to get up to date marketing research data that means you can effectively achieve this quickly and cost-effectively. So make the most of it.
©Crystal Clear Internet Marketing Consultants
Written by Nicky Nelson July 2004
About the Author
Nicky Nelson is the proprietor of Crystal Clear a web site marketing & consulting company based in North Wales, UK. Having spent a number of years in Sales & Marketing, her area of expertise has naturally progressed to the Web. Crystal Clear offer a range of services to enable businesses to generate better results from their web site and digital marketing.