One of the best ways to ensure that your company is found by prospective customers is to appear in the first page of results when those propects use search engines. With many other companies competing for the same searches, or keywords, choosing search phrases that you have the ability to rank highly within is very important.
So how do we determine which keywords to try to compete for online? The first step in keyword research is discovering all of the potential phrases we’ll later be comparing.
For whatever general topic we’re considering competing to win, we want to find:
Multiple phrases that potential customers might use when searching
Related keywords to replace within those phrases
Un-natural phrases born from the nature of searching
Let’s take a look at each of these in turn.
Multiple Phrases That Potential Customers Might Use When Searching
Remember that we aren’t concerned with how people within your industry or company might refer to your products and services and topics (unless you sell to these people). We need to determine how your potential customers would describe things in their own terms. So while a cigar shop might be pro’s at calibrating humidors for customers, a customer that needs that service might be searching for re-moisturize my cigar case.
Yes, this sounds challenging, but herein lies our great opportunity. While most cigar shops in Texas will all be competing to win cigars texas, with a little research and thought you can be where the real prospects are, searching for real answers to real concerns online.
Related Keywords to Replace Within Those Phrases
Now that we have a collection of phrases that a prospective customer might use to find a company like ourselves, we need to research all the variations of those phrases that we can find. Like we mentioned earlier, it’s a safe bet that your customers aren’t all going to use the same terminology for the same ideas. The great thing is that we can use research tools to not only determine related keywords to interchange within these phrases, but also how popular each variation of each phrase is within the search engines. This tells us if it’s worth the effort to attempt to win.
Un-Natural Phrases Born from the Nature of Searching
Here’s a little known secret to finding qualified, largely untapped prospective customers online. It’s take a little background on the nature of how people use search engines to find things to unleash this great tactic for your company. Here are the key points:
If they don’t find what they are looking for in the first page of search results, over 80% of people refine their search instead of going to page two (98% don’t go past page 3).
When they refine their search, they typically just add more words to the end of the original search.
Normally, within 2-3 search refinements they find a 5-10 word search phrase that contains a result they are interested in enough to click.
So what does this mean to us? Think about the last time you tried to find out what delivery food would deliver to your house. You enter in restaurants minneapolis and get results all over the city. So you add 55413 and get restaurants around you, but still don’t know what to click. Finally you add delivery to the end of the phrase and finally find search results that are relevant to what you are trying to find. “Oh, chinese sounds good. But not that one.” So you add chinese and see tonight’s dining choise in front of you on the screen.
Our un-natural search phrase in this scenario ended up being: “restaurants minneapolis 55413 delivery chinese”
If you can role play as prospective customers and find phrases like the one above that relate to your products, services, industry, location and more, you can effectively win terms that aren’t even in competition and are much more likely to result in a real purchase.
Here’s a great article on the WordTracker educational site (WordTracker is a tool for doing keyword research) that will give you more tips on finding those perfect keywords. And another article from Nettuts with a solid list of tools for keyword research.
Want to learn more about finding customers through your search rankings? Check out the Search topic in our Education & Events section of the website, or come to a class or workshop.
Keyword Research 101
So how do we determine which keywords to try to compete for online? The first step in keyword research is discovering all of the potential phrases we’ll later be comparing.
For whatever general topic we’re considering competing to win, we want to find:
Let’s take a look at each of these in turn.
Multiple Phrases That Potential Customers Might Use When Searching
Remember that we aren’t concerned with how people within your industry or company might refer to your products and services and topics (unless you sell to these people). We need to determine how your potential customers would describe things in their own terms. So while a cigar shop might be pro’s at calibrating humidors for customers, a customer that needs that service might be searching for re-moisturize my cigar case.
Yes, this sounds challenging, but herein lies our great opportunity. While most cigar shops in Texas will all be competing to win cigars texas, with a little research and thought you can be where the real prospects are, searching for real answers to real concerns online.
Related Keywords to Replace Within Those Phrases
Now that we have a collection of phrases that a prospective customer might use to find a company like ourselves, we need to research all the variations of those phrases that we can find. Like we mentioned earlier, it’s a safe bet that your customers aren’t all going to use the same terminology for the same ideas. The great thing is that we can use research tools to not only determine related keywords to interchange within these phrases, but also how popular each variation of each phrase is within the search engines. This tells us if it’s worth the effort to attempt to win.
Un-Natural Phrases Born from the Nature of Searching
Here’s a little known secret to finding qualified, largely untapped prospective customers online. It’s take a little background on the nature of how people use search engines to find things to unleash this great tactic for your company. Here are the key points:
So what does this mean to us? Think about the last time you tried to find out what delivery food would deliver to your house. You enter in restaurants minneapolis and get results all over the city. So you add 55413 and get restaurants around you, but still don’t know what to click. Finally you add delivery to the end of the phrase and finally find search results that are relevant to what you are trying to find. “Oh, chinese sounds good. But not that one.” So you add chinese and see tonight’s dining choise in front of you on the screen.
Our un-natural search phrase in this scenario ended up being: “restaurants minneapolis 55413 delivery chinese”
If you can role play as prospective customers and find phrases like the one above that relate to your products, services, industry, location and more, you can effectively win terms that aren’t even in competition and are much more likely to result in a real purchase.
Here’s a great article on the WordTracker educational site (WordTracker is a tool for doing keyword research) that will give you more tips on finding those perfect keywords. And another article from Nettuts with a solid list of tools for keyword research.
Want to learn more about finding customers through your search rankings? Check out the Search topic in our Education & Events section of the website, or come to a class or workshop.