subject: Buyer's Attraction Marketing - Targeted Keyword Research, Part One [print this page] Far and away, the most critical component of any online marketing campaign is going to be targeted keyword research. Proceeding without a clear idea of just what your audience is searching for is akin to setting out across the Pacific without any navigational aids. You need a map to help you get where you're going in this endeavor, and performing a search for the keywords necessary for this journey is the starting point.
How Are We Going To Use These Keywords?
You're going to be using the keywords for many purposes, including Web content creation, videos, tags, expert verbiage, niche markets, and more. That's why you need to get more than a few. You may start with a few "seed" keywords to help you find the gems hiding underneath, but in the end you should end up with a list containing hundreds - if not thousands - of keywords. This will save you both time and money in the long run as you'll have a clear idea what you need to focus on.
How to Spy On Your Competition!
Not only that, you also have tools at your disposal that will allow you to take a very accurate picture of your market and to understand exactly what you need to do to rank for certain keywords. It's common practice to "reverse engineer" the sites ranking at or near the top of a keyword search result and accurately predict the amount of work, links, and other elements needed to unseat any of these sites form their perch.
Remember, we are competing for position, and these rankings are based primarily on SEO (search engine optimization) and inbound links to your site. There are other important factors, but if you can get these right to a large degree, you'll win. Just know that a solid keyword plan is at the foundation of this!
Some of the best tools for uncovering the keywords your competitors are employing are SpyFu, QuantCast, Compete.com, and Market Samurai. Some are free, and others have free trials you can use. You can also glean a lot of information from the SEOQuake Plugin for FireFox. It returns a lot of useful info and is free.
However you manage it, doing some market research, along with your own keyword research, should return to you a list of many keyword terms you can use. You may not employ all of these right away unless you are using them for pay-per-click campaigns or other advertising. In fact, you will start optimizing your site or focus an article marketing strategy around many less, perhaps 12-15 to start, and then move on to the next batch to make it manageable.
Buyers! Not Browsers!
One of the most important aspects of doing your keyword research will be to use your head a bit and think about terms and modifiers that will be the type of terms that attract people late in the buying cycle and that they will typically type into the search box. Some of these include modifiers like "buy, purchase, shop, order, shipping, get, find, coupons, deal, best price, comparison, review." These terms added to your basic keywords will return buyers, not browsers, and that's what we're after, right?
Finding less competitive terms in your market that you can rank for is a challenge you must take up. Going bat-blind into a market is a recipe for disaster. In part two, we'll focus on the exact ways to come up with a wickedly successful keyword list without too much pain and suffering!
Buyer's Attraction Marketing - Targeted Keyword Research, Part One
