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SEO (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION)ARTICLES
Selecting and Evaluating Keyphrases in Search
Engine Marketing
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).
Scott Buresh is Co-founder and Principal of
Medium
Blue Internet Marketing. For monthly
tips on how to get the most out of your internet
presence, sign up for our Internet
Marketing Newsletter.
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