Choosing the right keywords
February 4, 2008 – 4:41 amJust a few short years ago, we didn’t even have a “keywords” thought in our head. Nowadays, nearly everyone knows what a keyword is, but many times how it is chosen, how it is used and what it can do for your website are not clear. Understanding the job your keywords will do and how it affects your website’s traffic and overall conversion is very important.
How do you choose the right keywords? I usually break it down into three steps:
1. Keyword Research
2. Competitive Analysis
3. Conversion Testing
Keyword Research
Start with a long list of what you think your audience types in to find your products or services. I usually look at single words, 2-word phrases and 3-word phrases, then if it’s a local market, add in the local keywords, such as city, state and/or zip code.
There are a variety of keyword research tools available on the Internet to help you learn how frequently these keywords are typed in, what spin-offs of the phrase are typed in and how many competing web pages are out there.
Some of the resources available - Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery and Google Adwords database are just a few of the ways we research to determine which keywords look promising.
Competitive Analysis
Get a good feel for which keywords your competitors are optimized for, and how difficult it might be to break into the top ten or top five group on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). This is a very important step, since some keyword phrases are extremely competitive and will require an incredible amount of on-page optimization and a solid linking strategy.
Conversion Testing
Before I settle on the exact keyword phrases to optimize for and build a strong position it’s important to know if this phrase is one that will convert to sales for you. Easiest way to determine this - test. Build your landing page and then develop a short Google Adword campaign. Drive traffic to the landing page, and measure the results to determine if that phrase is a good one. It’s not about how many visitors you get for a keyword - it’s all about how well you convert those visitors to sales.
2 Responses to “Choosing the right keywords”
Sandy:
I think a lot of folks focus on the keywords and the competitive analysis… but not many on the conversion testing.
If you’re not actually selling product on the site, how do you measure conversion? Phone calls? emails? closes?
Chris
By chris brown on Feb 6, 2008
Chris,
Although you may not be selling a product or service directly from your website, it’s important to measure the activity coming from it. For instance, assembling a landing page where the call to action is a request for quote, or downloadable case study, free webinar, or a special phone number to call for details.
If your testing produces good results, in other words, the visitor responds by calling, submitting a request for quote, providing you with contact info when downloading a file - that’s a conversion.
Visitors that bounce from the page - usually tells us we have either targeted the wrong audience, or our landing page doesn’t match their search criteria.
By admin on Feb 11, 2008