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Keyword Strategy
Keywords are the foundation of any search engine marketing program. This cannot be overemphasized.
By keywords we mean the search phrases people use in search engines that are relevant to what your site has to offer. People do search on single words, but single-word searches are usually too ambiguous to yield results of any value. It is likewise rare that single keywords offer any value to the search engine marketer. Nevertheless, for simplicity we abbreviate the term keyword phrases to simply keywords.
Keywords are the foundation of any search engine marketing program because they are the connector, the relationship between you and your prospects in the medium of Internet search. People search on certain words or phrases that are relevant to what you offer on your site, and if your site is well optimized, your pages turn up in the search results, and the higher the better. In keyword advertising, your ad is delivered to searchers when they search for the specific keyword phrases you contract for.
Whether optimizing your site for specific keyword phrases, or running keyword advertising, it will certainly be advantageous to have a clear and thorough understanding of which keywords will perform best for you.
Most companies believe they have a good handle on this, because they know their business better than anyone else. We’ve had many clients who were very confident they had the right keywords, but after doing our own research, were able to convince them otherwise. Companies make two fundamental mistakes:
- They select keywords that people don’t actually search for.
- They are unaware of many search terms prospective customers use, and/or are unaware of which search terms are most popular among their customers.
(Another, more complex issue is how effective a keyword phrase is, relative to other phrases, in terms of sales conversions on your site. This must be evaluated through testing and tracking.)
Concerning the first point, we’ve had clients who were very proud to have attained high rankings for specific keywords, which we subsequently found to receive few to no searches—a fact borne out by their own log file reports.
We use databases that provide projections of the search popularity of keywords, and suggest you do the same before committing to a keyword. Two popular database tools are Overture’s Search Term Suggestion Tool and
WordTracker. The Overture tool is free and tells you how many times a keyword was searched on the Overture network the previous month. It’s good for a quick confirmation and to get ideas for search phrases that contain a specific word, because if you plug in a single word, it gives you all phrases that contain that word. But at this writing you need an advertising account with Overture to access the tool. Wordtracker is a far better and more sophisticated tool. We have an annual license to use it, but you can pay under $10 for one day’s use.
The second point, that companies often don’t know what search terms are most popular with prospective customers trying to find their products, is more difficult to understand. Telephone receptionists and sales people, those who have direct contact with customers, will likely have the best ideas of what customers will search for. Our client contacts are usually in marketing or operations. Marketers are more oriented to "positioning" and trying to tell the customer how to think about a product, and most of the media they use are outward directed. Internet search is, of course, a very different kind of medium. It doesn’t matter if the prospect is "wrong " or "illogical"—they search what they search, and if you don’t get in front of them, you don’t get the sale.
Client Examples
One of our clients is a distributor of software programs that helps professional mailers engaged in direct mail marketing to save time and money and ensure their mail actually gets delivered to the intended recipients. These programs correct and validate addresses, remove duplicates, but the most important task is to perform complex automated presorts to take advantage of the discounts the U.S. Postal Service offers to mass mailers who make their job easier.
This client believed his best keywords would be postal software and mail management software. Our subsequent research showed that postal software received approximately 1,000 searches a month while mail management software received a paltry 150. We found that mailing list software received approximately 5,000 searches a month and bulk mail software approximately 2,200. Our client was very puzzled by this ("it’s wrong"). Yet mailing list software is now providing most of his leads.
When there is doubt, cost-per-click keyword advertising can be a quick way of getting some insight.
We ran ads on Google’s AdWords program on the full universe of keyword possibilities, and in our ads mentioned the names of the specific products our client sold. After a week, we found that mailing list software did deliver the most clickthroughs: seven times as many as postal software. That’s somewhat expected because it is searched five times more often than postal software. More interesting though, is that mailing list software generated a clickthrough rate of 9.0 percent versus a clickthrough rate of only 3.9 percent for postal software. Thus, it’s not just a matter of volume of searches. Our client’s customers think of these products as mailing list software more so than postal software, even though mailing list software is an inadequate description for all the tasks the products perform, such as the presorting feature which accounts for a large portion of the cost of the products.
Another example: a private detective felt that his best chance for getting business from the Internet was for surveillance work; for example, someone hires the detective to watch her husband when he’s on a three-day trip to Los Angeles.
The client suggested a search term of spousal surveillance. We found that nobody searches on spousal surveillance or anything relevant that contains the word surveillance. Most people simply don’t think that way or use that word. So we did some simple searches for terms like cheating and eventually got to infidelity. We found a lot of search terms that show many people are interested in information on how to detect an unfaithful spouse. The single best search phrase we found is signs of infidelity, which gets around 9,000 searches a month and has virtually no competition. So we created a page of editorial content on the subject, which quickly shot to the top of Google and other search engines, and which brings a lot of traffic to the site. And surveillance work for our client.
What are Good Keywords?
The answer is, whatever will bring a worthwhile amount of targeted traffic to your Web site and, hopefully, a decent rate of conversion to sales. Relevant keywords will bring traffic that’s interested enough in what the site offers to at least take a look. But we must contend with differing degrees of relevancy, because there is always a tradeoff between relevancy, popularity and competitiveness. Thus, the most optimal solution will be a combination of keywords that span a range of specificity.
We want to identify highly specific, relevant keyword phrases, because these really zero in on what your company or Web site have to offer. With these keywords we are getting in front of the more sophisticated searchers who are fairly clear about what they're looking for. For example, a wine maker that specializes in private label wine sales would find these keywords to be highly targeted: personalized wine bottles (2,000 searches per month), personalized wine (1,700/month), custom wine labels (1,500/month), personalized wine labels (1,300/month), personalized wine gift bottles (750/month), etc. (Incidentally, while the industry uses the term private label, we found most consumers think in terms of personalized or custom.)
However, the more specific a keyword phrase, the fewer searches it will receive. But that’s okay, up to a certain point, because it is so highly targeted. Highly specific keywords tend to be less competitive, meaning it's usually easier to optimize Web pages for them to attain high rankings. They may also carry relatively lower CPCs for keyword advertising (though not always, especially if they're straight forward in describing a highly competitive product or service).
Less specific, broader keywords will get many searches—e.g., 5,000 to 20,000-plus a month—because most people begin searches very simplistically. These keywords will be less targeted, and a smaller percent of people making those searches will have any interest in what you have to offer. This should be viewed on a relative scale. While a lesser percent of these searches will be interested in your product, because of the overall volume they may deliver a high volume of leads.
In terms of SEO, there's no downside to achieving a high ranking for a broad, popular keyword. But in CPC keyword advertising, we need to be cautious about using broad keywords that generate a lot of unwanted clickthroughs, resulting in an unacceptable converstion rate (i.e., you lose money). The way around this is to have a highly descriptive ad.
In selecting keywords, especially the more popular ones, we must contend with the issue of competition. In keyword advertising this is a straight-forward proposition. But in SEO, we must analyze and make a judgement about whether it's probable or even possible to achieve a high ranking for a given keyword. The broader or simpler a keyword, the more Web pages in search engines' indexes will include that keyword, and therefore the greater the competition. In addition, more of these pages will belong to sites that enjoy a large number of inbound links, an
important criterion in search engine ranking algorithms.
Taking the private wine category example, wine is about as broad as you can get, with nearly 200,000 searches a month. If even 10 percent of those searches could be receptive to buying private label wine, you'd get in front of a lot of prospects. However, something so broad could be near impossible for a commercial site to compete for in terms of attaining a high ranking through SEO. A better keyword phrase may be wine labels that is searched some 16,000 times a month. This is a large number, and as you can see, it is certainly more targeted, so a higher percentage of searchers will be receptive to buying private label wine. It is also not nearly as competitive as simply wine
In summary, the paradigm of keywords would be precisely descriptive of what you're selling, be searched with great frequency, and enjoy no competition from other Web pages. Unfortunately, no such animal exists. So you employ a range of keywords varying by degrees of relevancy and popularity. Sometimes we can find exceptionally effective keywords, which have good relevance and popularity, yet little competition. We call these keywords gifts.
Getting Creative with Keywords
Finding exceptionally effective keywords usually requires a bit of imaginative thinking.
Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it requires the application of fundamental marketing approaches: figuring out how to reach prospects indirectly through their other interests, needs and behaviors.
In an earlier example, we described how we identified signs of infidelity as an excellent keyword for a private detective looking for spousal surveillance work. This was not immediately obvious. It’s excellent because it is searched frequently and yet has so little competition; in other words, it’s a slam dunk for SEO.
Here’s another example: a company that ships automobiles domestically and internationally, for both individuals and businesses.
Numerous direct, obvious keywords are available, such as auto transport, car shipping, vehicle shipping, etc. For being obvious, they also tend to be quite competitive, meaning you’ll pay a lot per clickthrough in keyword advertising, and it may not be a cakewalk to attain high rankings with SEO. Now let’s broaden the approach and look at activities, interests and needs someone might have who’d be a prospect for shipping their auto.
People who are moving is obvious, and we found that moving checklist and moving tips are searched about 15,000 and 17,000 times a month, respectively. However, because the moving industry itself is so large and competitive these keywords are very competitive. But by using a database tool to search for terms that contain the word relocation, we found that people relocating want to know how the cost of living of the new location compares to the old; specifically, how much more salary they ought to ask for. About 52,000 searches a month are made cumulatively on cost of living calculator, relocation calculator and relocation salary calculator. Other variations of this search are made as well.
Turns out (at least at the time), that these keywords are not at all competitive, for either SEO or CPC advertising.
To take advantage of this requires developing a new, dedicated Web page and licensing content or structuring some kind of mutually beneficial marketing relationship with the content provider. (You begin to see that search engine marketing is best practiced by marketing professionals versus something to turn over to the college intern working for your Web development firm.)
These indirect keywords may be best suited for SEO purposes, unless the CPC rates are very low, because the conversion rate will be much less than with the direct keywords. For example, a lot of people relocating and interested in the cost of living in the new market will have no need for a professional auto shipper. Yes, you can offset this and qualify your clickthroughs by being very specific with your ad. But then you're up against the relevancy police at Overture and Google's minimum one-percent clickthrough rate (clickthroughs as a percent of impressions delivered). The only way to know for sure is to test.
Where to Source Keywords
In the above we discuss criteria of good keywords and guidelines for selecting and prioritizing them. We also suggest there’s a bit of an art-and-science aspect to keywords, especially in identifying some of the not-so-obvious keywords that can be effective for you. While use of database tools such as Wordtracker are helpful in generating keyword ideas, we do not rely only on these tools or on the input of a single client contact. In sourcing keywords (as in so much else), the best approach is to tap into multiple sources. This way we're more likely to find the gems in the rough.
Here are some of the sources we use for generating keyword ideas:
- Speak to our client contact, of course, but also see , where relevant, if we can speak to a sales person or possibly a receptionist, i.e., people on the front lines of communication with customers.
- Review our client’s Web site content.
- Review a log file analysis of our client's site traffic (or perform our own). This is helpful both in identifying potential keywords and in prioritizing them. It is highly insightful.
- Read the home page and main product pages of a few different competitor sites.
- Read the keywords and description meta tags in the source code of these competitor sites to see what they think are important keywords. We’re very happy that most Web sites make aggressive use of the keywords tag.
- Hold one-on-one discussions with prospective buyers of the product/service and ask them what search phrases they’d use. It’s informative to have them in front of a computer and learn the approach they take from beginning to end. Because their initial search will usually not yield what they seek, we want to see how they focus their searches until it does.
- If it’s a consumer product/service, check out relevant consumer specialty publications online; e.g., PCWeek, HomeOffice, Bird Watchers Monthly.
- If it’s a business product/service, we’ll look for industry trade publications online and perhaps related trade associations. Perusing these give us some ideas for terms that are industry jargon we may not be aware of. Taking the private detective example, surveillance work for insurance companies is referred to as sub rosa, something we’d never know on our own.
- Conduct a search on Google for some of the more promising keyword phrases we’ve already found and review some of the sites that get high rankings for those keywords.
- Search for competitors in the Yahoo! and Google directories, and then review the category pages they’re listed in. This provides a good snapshot of a category, especially where the potential keywords are more complex. These listings are insightful because they were written or approved by human editors, so you will see a lot of different ideas as well as core keywords. You won’t appreciate this until you actually take a look.
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