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