Targeting effective keywords
Ranking number one on Google does not necessarily mean you will suddenly receive a flood of visitors and new customers. You need to rank at the top for keywords that are actually searched for by your visitors.
A lot of marketing executives and companies make a mistake commonly known as "me marketing". They assume that what they think, feel and want is what their customers will want too. The most common transference of this syndrome in the world of search marketing is when companies claim that they have their SEO work sorted because they already rank number one on Google for their own company name!
So what is a an effective keyword or search term?
An effective keyword or phrase is one that is a popularly searched for by Internet users. There is no set value or limit above which all keywords can be deemed effective. The number of relevant searches per month varies by industry. In the travel industry, searches for certain phrases can be carried out by the tens of thousands per month only in the UK. By the same token, certain industries might consider ten or twenty searches per month to be effective. The important thing to remember when qualifying a search term's effectiveness is that it should be searched for by your target market, and is more popular than similar related terms.
e.g. "search engine optimization" is searched for by over 15,000 visitors on the Overture network each month. Whereas "search engine optimizer" is searched for by only 200-300 visitors. Obviously, the former is the more effective search term in this case, and should be what an SEO company optimises its pages for.
Checking whether your selected keywords are effective
Both Google and Overture offer very useful tools on their website to help you select the most effective keywords for your campaign, which would ensure maximum clickthroughs and traffic for your site. The Google AdWords Keyword Tool allows you to enter a series of search terms, and then produces a comprehensive list of similar words and more focussed search terms that you could use to expand or focus your targets.
Overture's keyword assistant, found on the Overture Tools section, helps you find search terms similar to the ones you entered and details how many times they were searched upon the previous month.
RSS
Bookmark
