Online Marketing Starts with Targeted Keyword ResearchMost businesses recognize that the internet is fast becoming a major marketing avenue for virtually any type of product or service. But, what most of them don’t realize is; actually how to go about doing that. Unfortunately, due to a lack of information, the biggest mistake they make is going out and blindly hiring a web designer thinking that marketing is their responsibility, nothing could be further from the truth. While certain web designers may have some marketing skills, that is not what their main purpose is. It is of course; designing your website. Internet marketing, on the other hand, is a completely different ball game and something that few people, even web designers, know very little about. So, having said that, you must recognize that it is your responsibility to educate yourself on exactly what internet marketing is and how to go about it. Today, I’d like to talk about the starting point. And, where should you start? With keyword research. Keyword research is the art of finding out just how many people use a major search engine everyday searching for your products and services and exactly what keyword phrases they use. Why is that important? Because when you consider that approximately 85% of North Americans use a search engine before any other medium of research, it becomes pretty important to know exactly what their search habits are. Even if you partially know that on some level you have to use keyword phrases in your website, the sad truth is most people just guess at what those phrases are. And, while you may choose some pretty good ones that are relevant to your products and services, most of the ones you choose will not bring you much search engine traffic. The reason for that is; you have not factored in what your competition is. If you think about it, if you choose relevant keyword phrases solely based on guessing, what you haven’t considered is how many other websites that are out there using exactly the same keyword phrases One of the ways you can find more relevant keyword phrases is to use a membership site such as Wordtracker. What Wordtracker can do is; not only can it suggest relevant keyword phrases based on your products and services but it can also tell you exactly how much competition there is for each phrase. For example; the keyword phrase “sign company” gets 4,800 searches a month, but there are 120 million competing websites. On the other hand, a more targeted search phrases like “sign company toronto” gets much less searches but only has 458,000 competing websites. That means you have a much better shot of competing for longer (long tail) more targeted keyword phrases than shorter ones.
Once you have chosen your keyword phrases you must then strategically place them within your site surrounded by significant amounts of content. But, that is an article for another day. For now, just be aware that choosing good keyword phrases that have high search volumes and low competition is a great starting point for any online marketing plan. My suggestion is to come up with at least 20 good targeted keyword phrases before constructing your site or a least before your next site redesign. Paul Tobey | |
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