Why Keywords Have Less and Less To Do With Search (Engines)

Admit it; when someone says 'keyword research' you think of Google, SEO, and AdWords, right?

That's fine, but it doesn't stop there. In fact,  keyword research starts with these things, but it doesn't end there. Just because you've found ten long tail keyword phrases that ought to pull in 1,000 high quality, converting customers to your web site, it's not the end of the story.

It will be useful to create content around those keyword phrases, yes.

But they're also useful for so many other parts of the online marketing process:

• Twitter hash tags;
• Category labels;
• Email subject headings;
• etc.

What keyword research shows is what's on people's minds. Since you're targeting your market with the research activities (or ought to be!) the keyword phrases tell you what's on your customers' minds.

That's important - and an illustration of exactly how important it is can be found on a recent 4 Hour Work Week blog entry (How to Create a $4,000 Per Month Muse), under the heading for Day 2.

(If you go over there to read the article, that's fine, but make sure you come back!)

On Day 2 of the 5 day mentorship program, Noah Kagan points out that in contacting your market, you should deliver your message through multiple channels:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Email
• Twitter

Reasons for this are diverse, but it could just be that people get busy and like to be reminded that they've received an email, been contacted on LinkedIn or Facebook, and so on.

Sage advice. But what about the keyword research?

It's important because it ensures that your message is consistent, and that you are using keywords that are likely something that your prospect was already thinking about - after all, they came from the market.

There's an added bonus - some of these contact methods (i.e. Twitter) become publicly searchable. When that happens, if you're using keywords, the Tweet (or whatever) will be found, and interested parties can find you, and that's what marketing (even search engine marketing) is all about.

The Three Aspects of Search Engine Marketing Explained

Today, I received an interesting email entitled Back to Basics with SEM from Website Magazine. If you're not signed up, and are a web site owner or search engine marketer, then you need to! (They don't even pay me to tell you that, either...)

Even if you don't want to give away your email address to receive yet another inbox magazine, it's worth taking a look at the Back to Basics with SEM article. With all the anxiety over Google updates, shifts in the landscape of paid search inclusion, and the like, some of the basic definitions are often overlooked.

So, for a 30 second scan-read, or a more in depth 5 minutes of your time, it's worth remembering that SEM is not the same as SEO, and that there are other traffic acquisition strategies out there.

Using Google Analytics and The Google AdWords Keyword Tool Together

As the largest search provider, Google is uniquely placed to help online marketers, content providers, entrepreneurs and business owners research their online market niches. They have even placed the tools to do so at our disposal, so why not make the most of their generosity?

The technical side of Analytics and using AdWords for SEO (search engine optimization) often challenges people who would rather be writing, selling, or out there doing business.

This short article should help to dispel some of those fears, and help the reader get to grips with using these powerful tools to propel online earnings to new heights.

Google Analytics Organic Search

The secret to online success is often said to be traffic. It's like footfall in the real world – a retail outlet on a busy high street is expected to do better than one in a less frequented side street.

However, as in the world of bricks and mortar retailing, online customers will also travel a bit further than the high street if you offer them something special. At the same time, mere visibility is no guarantee of success.

Google Analytics provides a lot of information, but for the purpose of keyword research, only one page is of special interest : the Organic Search page.

It's found on the left hand menu, under Traffic Sources->Sources->Search->Organic. Once a project has been selected, and the right page located, the user is presented with a spreadsheet style page containing several columns.

We're interested in the following:

• Keyword
• Visits
• Pages/Visit
• Average Visit Duration
• Bounce Rate

In essence, we want to find those keywords for which visitors are viewing multiple pages, and spending time on the site, with a low bounce rate. This may only generate five keyword phrases that we can honestly mark down as being of interest, but they're the online equivalent of a warm lead.

That is, they are people who have raised their hand, and volunteered to go the extra mile to find your page. This implies that there may be others who just missed out, stuck to the high street, and found one of your competitors.

These people might have used slightly different keyword combinations which returned pages higher up the search engines indexes (Search Engine Result Pages, or SERPs) than yours; so, how do we find them?

The AdWords Keyword Tool

The AdWords Keywords Tool provides a way to estimate the potential comparative search volumes over a set of generated keywords.

For each keyword or phrase it is given, the tool will look through a database of actual online searches, and match relevant keywords to the initial phrase, and return both the competition for that phrase (in AdWords terms) and the potential search volume that it could capture.

There are a whole raft of filters, and some are useful in certain situations, but for now we just want to get a feel for the market, and so we look at:

• keyword phrase
• competition index
• global search volumes

Analyzing each keyword phrase from the Analytics tool in turn, we want to select a reasonably limited number of phrases and so can afford to be quite selective. Different markets have different thresholds, but a good rule of thumb is to target 'Low' competition keywords with 10k – 100k global search volume figures.

Anything larger than this will be terribly hard to capture, and indicates that the keyword phrase might not be niche enough to be certain of providing a stream of qualified leads.

The keyword phrases can be written into your content as blog posts or article prompts and used to generate traffic towards your web properties. As long as you remember to keep applying the process to discover new keyword phrases, you'll never run short of inspiration or targeted traffic again.

Keyword Research Mistake That's Costing You $$$

Most people who use keyword research make the same basic mistake. They think they're doing everything right, but they inevitably leave one aspect to one side. In their admirable quest to provide quality content (good) in a popular niche (excellent), they neglect to take the extra step...

...and look for "Buyers Keywords".

A buyers keyword is one that indicates that the visitor is in a buying frame of mind. They know what they want, and are ready to buy it from the site that can offer it. It's a niche long tail keyword phrase with real earning power.

Learn how to research keyword phrases that really pull in the orders (or AdSense clicks!) in the Keyword Cracker eBook. I'll give you a clue : 'nokia n65 leather case' is, and 'cell phones' isn't.

Have a great weekend.
Guy

Secrets of an AdWords Professional

Pay Per Click Optimization and AdWords Marketing Guru Reveals All!

In this post, read the top tips from an AdWords professional, learn all about pay per click optimization and AdWords marketing, and follow some simple steps to success...

Google AdSense and AdWords are two sides to the world's most popular, influential, and widespread pay per click (PPC) advertising platform. Content creators can use AdSense to generate income, whilst online sellers can deploy AdWords as their PPC traffic generation mechanism.

AdWords and AdSense are also linked to Google search too, which means that keyword researchers can use the same tools that AdWords professionals use to target their keywords accurately to optimize their content for search engine marketing.

The goal of the AdWords professional is to use pay per click optimization and PPC keyword research to get the best return on investment for their clients, but also to use the techniques to deploy their own content to attract attention in their chosen niche.

It requires some careful tracking, management, and some clever manipulation of the tools Google makes available to it's users to achieve the best effects. But when they come together, the results are outstanding - whatever the final goal:

• Great search engine placement
• Naturally occurring Web 2.0 promotion
• AdSense revenue generation
• AdWords keyword campaign ROI

Part of the whole process involves making sure that the pay per click results are carefully optimized.

Pay Per Click Optimization

Running an efficient AdWords campaign means getting the most clicks (actions) from the investment. This usually means making sure that the revenue from each action - on average - outstrips the cost of obtaining that action (the _pay_ in PPC).

For a low margin product, such as AdSense income through advertising (a.k.a AdWords / AdSense arbitrage), the cost per click (CPC in the Google AdWords Keyword Tool), must be minimized, while the expected CPC from AdSense income must be maximized.

High margin products, on the other hand, might pull in enough money that a high CPC can still reap benefits. If the conversion rate is 10%, for example, and the CPC is $10 (easy numbers), then the cost of a single sale is 10 x 10, or $100. So, the margin has to be higher than $100 on each product in order for the AdWords campaign to break even.

And, it goes without saying that the keywords have to be logically connected for the entry and exit points of the system. It is no good paying for cheap AdWords that have nothing to do with the content / product on sale.

AdWords Marketing and Search Engine Marketing

The other side to the technique is as a way to get great search engine rankings using the PPC paradigm and Google AdWords. Here the trick is to leverage the AdWords and AdSense tools to research keywords that have actually been used in real Google searches, and at the same time, are being targeted by advertisers. The result ought to be content that is heavily weighted in favor of good natural search engine rankings.

So, from the point of view of an AdWords professional, anyone can use pay per click optimization techniques to help deliver more traffic. And because it concentrates on AdWords marketing, the result is content that is heavily optimized towards search engine marketing, as well. Using pay per click advertising services such as Google AdWords as a form of keyword research is a key secret to traffic success on the world wide web.

The Keyword Cracker
Get the acclaimed 'AdSense Keyword Research Guide'