Keyword research

Keyword research is one of the most important, 
valuable, and high return activities in the
 search marketing field. 


Through the detective work of puzzling out


 your market's keyword demand, 
you not only learn which terms and phrases 
to target with SEO, but also learn more 
about your customers as a whole. 


The usefulness of this intelligence 
cannot be overstated - 
with keyword research you can 
predict shifts in demand
, respond to changing market
 conditions, and produce the
 products, services, and content 
that web searchers are
 already actively seeking. 
In the history of marketing, 
there has never been such a 
low barrier to entry in 
understanding the
 motivations of consumers in
 virtually every niche - 
not taking advantage is
 practically criminal.

 

Every search phrase that's typed
 into an engine is recorded in one 
way or another, and keyword
 research tools like those described 
below allow us to retrieve this information. 
However, those tools cannot show us 
(directly) how valuable or important
 it might be to rank for and
 receive traffic from those searches.
 To understand the value of a keyword, 
we need to research further,
 make some hypotheses, test, 
and iterate - the classic web marketing formula.

	The following is a basic, but valuable process for determining a keyword’s value:

	Ask yourself Is the keyword relevant to the  content your website offers?  Will searchers who find your site  through this term find the likely answer  to their implied question(s)?  And will this traffic result in  financial rewards  (or other organizational goals) directly  or indirectly?  If the answer to all of these questions is a clear "Yes!", proceed... Search for the term/phrase  in the major engines Are there search advertisements  running along the top and right-hand  side of the organic results? Typically,  many search ads means a high value  keyword, and multiple search ads  above the organic results often  means a highly lucrative and directly  conversion-prone keyword. Buy a sample campaign for the  keyword at Google AdWords  and/or Bing Adcenter In Google Adwords, choose  "exact match" and point the traffic  to the most relevant page on  your website.  Measure the traffic to your site,  nd track impressions and conversion  ate over the course of at  least 2-300 clicks  (this may take only a day or two  with highly trafficked terms, or  several weeks with keywords in  lesser demand). Using the data you’ve collected,  make an educated guess about  the value of a single visitor to  your site with the given search  term or phrase. For example, if, in the past 24 hours,  your search ad has generated 5,000  impressions, of which 100 visitors  have come to your site and 3 have  converted for total profit (not revenue!)  of $300, then a single visitor for that  keyword is worth approx. $3 to your  business. Those 5,000 impressions  in 24 hours could probably generate  a click-through rate of between  30-40% with a #1 ranking  (see theleaked AOL data mining  for more on potential click- through-rates),  which would mean 1500-2000  visits per day, at $3 each, or ~$1.75  million dollars per year.  No wonder businesses love search marketing!

Of course, even the best estimates 
of value fall flat against the hands-
on process of optimizing and
calculating ROI. Remember 
that the time and money you invest
 in a search marketing campaign 
must be weighed against any 
returns, and even though SEO 
is typically one of the highest
 return marketing investments,
 measuring success is still 
critical to the process.