We’ve had a number of inquiries from our clients who want to start an seo campaign about how to select appropriate keywords. We like it when our clients want to understand the process, so we felt this warranted a discussion as keyword selection is one of the most crucial aspects of a successful search engine optimization and marketing campaign. The keywords you choose will power your seo, link building, sponsored ads, press releases, and more. Thus, keyword research and selection must be carefully examined.
Gathering Keywords
There is widespread belief with site owners that achieving any #1 ranking is the key to success. However, there is a big difference between a marketing campaign that delivers a lot of traffic vs. one that delivers the right traffic. In many cases, the site that generates smaller amounts of targeted traffic will see a better return on investment than that of a site that generates a larger amount of untargeted traffic. So then, let’s talk about delivering that targeted traffic.
1. Find Your Core Terms
When you start the gathering process, it’s important to look for the core terms that make up the essence of your site. For example, a site that sells Ford Mustangs might use core terms such as:
- ford mustang
- 1967 mustang
- first-geneartion mustang
- american mustang
- mustang dealers
- mustang fastback
The words “mustang” is actually the core term, but it’s so broad that there really is no reason to optimize for it. It would be near impossible to rank for it, and even if rankings were achieve, the percentage of targeted traffic would be low. It still might produce a lot of sales, but it would be a great drain on resources, bringing in a very low, to perhaps negative, ROI.
Most of these terms actually refer to the same product, and many can be combined to produce a valid keyphrase. For example, someone could search for “first-generation mustang fastback” or “ford mustang dealers”. The basic principle here is that you want to first discover the basic core terms. The rest will come later. If you have trouble coming up with core terms, a great way to start is to write down the purpose(s) of your website including a detailed description of the scope in relation to its industry, subject, etc. To do this, simply start by going over your site itself. Review title tags, navigation links, body copy, anything within your site that contains themes about your site. This should turn up a gold mine of information. Then write it all down. Don’t worry about plurals, singulars, or combining key terms. It’s all about coming up with the core at first.
One you’ve exhausted this approach, go through your competitors’ sites. Make sure that whatever you copy down from them actually matches your products and/or services as well. When in doubt, add it to your list. You can always go back and remove it later.
Next, exhaust the following resources:
- Words you feel people would type in to find your website.
- Questions your visitors might ask
- What is it your visitors are trying to accomplish
- Industry reference material
- Thesaurus
- Geography related search phrases
There are also paid services that will help uncover core terms. Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker both gather keyword statistics to help you optimize your site and review competitors’ traffic by reviewing your current core terms. Free services include Google Suggest, where you plug in your core term and Google will suggest phrases that contain that keyword. Also try using L3xicon for related words, definitions, and other websites. For example, L3xicon’s results for “mustang fastback” retrieves “gt fastback”, “shelby restoration”, “exotic fords”, etc. You can literally come up with over a hundred core terms. Many will not end up giving valuable search phrases, but that can be determined later.
Once you’ve gathered these terms, it’s time to weed a few out. First, you want to make sure that these actually target your audience. And then which ones target your audience better than others. Next, if you are using a paid service, you can determine the search volume of your terms. Search volume will supply you with information on how often that phrase is searched daily, weekly, and monthly. Give those with a higher search volume more preference. Finally, make sure that the terms you choose will turn a profit. No sense spending the resource to optimize a term if it doesn’t have the ability to positively affect the bottom line.
2. Find Your Search Phrases
Search phrases are derived from your core terms. For example “mustang fastback pro street” contain the core term “mustang fastback”. Creating search phrases is not difficult, but it is time consuming. When creating this list, consider the following as a helpful guide:
- Utilize both singular and plural
- Target multi-word phrases
- Target phrases with measurable search volume
- Create variations from multi-word phrases
- Localize your phrases to geographical locations
Depending on your industry, expect to gather between 10 and 300 phrases. Carefully consider if these phrases pass muster using the guide above. If they don’t, dump them. If they do, then it’s time to start your search engine marketing campaign.
Next Steps and Conclusion
Once you’ve selected your keywords, it’s time to start your campaign. Group your keywords in a way that makes sense for your site. Include those keywords not just in your paid ads, press releases, and sponsored ads, but include them in the body of the pages on your site. Add them where it makes sense to add them and do so in a natural and organic way. If the keyword doesn’t fit, find another page for it.
Gathering the proper keywords from the very beginning puts you in a very solid position to be successful. It keeps things more streamlined, thus saving you time and money. Not only will you boost your search engine rankings, but you’ll also be targeting the right audience. Get in touch with us if you’d like to know more.
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