In today’s uncertain economic climate, business owners are increasingly frustrated with having to choose between old fashion and ineffective marketing practices of yesterday and the lack of results they are experiencing from their website. They understand the importance of having a presence on the internet, but they don’t understand why they aren’t getting the traffic they expected.
In this posting, we will explain the first steps in starting an internet marketing strategy that you can use to make it easier for prospective customers to find you when they search for your product or service.
Whether you are just getting started with internet marketing or have been at it for awhile…if you’re not happy with your website then you need to do something.
If you were to break internet marketing down to a single starting point – keyword research would be it! Consumers today are finding the products, services and companies on the internet by using search engines like Google and even Facebook. And they find them by using keywords.
What is a keyword?
A keyword is a word or phrase that people enter into search engines in order to find a product, service, company or information about a particular market.
The Role and Value of a Keyword
Keywords play an important role in that they provide the path to a particular market that someone is interested in. The value of a keyword is determined by how many people use that specific keyword or keyword phrase to search for a specific market.
Finding Success Online
Two factors that will greatly determine whether you are successful online or not are:
- The market you choose
- The keywords you target
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Keyword Research
I’d like to explain is the process of choosing the right keywords.
(you’ll want to open the Google keyword tool to follow along)
Creating a Keyword Strategy
Create a list of 3-5 keywords relevant to your business. You have to think like your customer. What words would you use if you were looking for the product or service that you are selling?
I’ll be using my business as an example
Choosing Keywords
There are four parts to determining what keywords or keyword phrases your should use.
1) Relevance – how relevant are the keywords to the content on your website?
a) This is one aspect often overlooked in keyword research. You may find a specific keyword that you can rank well with. Even to the point of getting to the first page of Google. So receive a lot of traffic but because the keyword you ranked for isn’t relevant to the content on your website. So your visitors don’t buy. So lesson one is to make sure that your targeted keyword is relevant to the content on your site.
2) Traffic – Is there enough traffic generated with your selection?
a) Many people are surprised to learn that in most niches over 90% of all keywords have insignificant levels of traffic and are not really worth spending a lot of time and effort on. Unfortunately, when a lot of people set up their website, they target keywords at random and are then disappointed to find that they receive little or no traffic to their website.
3) Competition – Is there an acceptable level of competition?
a) One of the best ways to obtain a steady stream of traffic to your website is to obtain a front page ranking in Google. The big problem is that you will have to compete with many thousands of websites competing for only 10 positions. One reason people fail to get the traffic they expect from their website is that they never take the time to assess the level and strength of the competition associated with the keywords they are targeting. They then hope that Google will somehow find their site and magically give them a front page ranking. Unfortunately, this rarely happens. The really sad part is that many people work extremely hard to build a great website but still receive little or no traffic because they’ve entered a very competitive market and the competition is simply too strong. The real secret to success online is to learn to pick your battles carefully and only target keywords for which you have a good chance of achieving a front page ranking.
4) Commerciality – Is your keyword or phrase commercially viable?
a) Commerciality is a measure of the potential profitability of a keyword phrase. So before you select a phrase to target in your market, it is very important to check the commerciality of the keywords you are investigating. Whenever you do a search in Google, you’ll notice that to the right of your search results, there are a collection of small advertisements. Each of these ads has been set up by an advertiser in order to generate leads to their business. Every time someone clicks one of these ads, the advertiser pays Google an amount of money in exchange for getting a new visitor to their website. Just put your keyword or phrase into the search bar and if you find that people are paying for to put ads on the page – you can safely assume that your keyword has a commercial value.
Design and optimize your website around your keywords.
Now that you’ve chosen your keywords, you should incorporate them into your website.
About Garry Owen Cardinal
