Posts Tagged ‘keyword research’

Where Does Internet Marketing Begin?

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

What is the beginning of Internet marketing for your small business? If you thought I was going to say your website, sorry to disappoint you. Effective Internet marketing begins long before you start building your website.

Internet marketing begins with research. There are three really important areas of key research that you should undertake before you do anything online.

  • Keyword Research – Not necessarily first, but definitely not least. You should research important keywords for your business so that you can determine your search engine marketing needs and strategy.
  • Competitive Research - Who is your competition? What are they doing and what have they done? Are you subscribed to their newsletters and blogs? You should be.
  • Brand Research – Brand research is a little bit more complicated. It goes beyond basic competitive and keyword research. You must also look at other forces that can affect your marketing online. Who are the customer that need what you have to offer? Where do they hang out online, what social media hotspots are important to them? What are their questions? How are you going to answer them and meet their other needs as a brand?

Before you start marketing online, do some level of research. What is the market for your product or service? Who is doing it now? What holes are they leaving unfilled? If you’re going to build a brand online, then you need to make sure the most important questions don’t go unanswered.

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Posted in Branding | 5 Comments »

Two Google Keyword Tools You Must Bookmark

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Google has two keyword research tools (actually three, but I won’t count the Google AdWords internal toolbar) and you should be aware of how to use them.

The first tool is the Google AdWords External Toolbar. This is essentially the Google AdWords internal toolbar except that you don’t have to be logged into your Google AdWords account to use it. It’s a great tool if you are just doing cursory research that you don’t think you are going to use right away or you don’t have a Google AdWords account and want to do some keyword research.

You can generate ideas in one of two ways – using descriptive words and phrases or by associating them with a website. If you are generating a keyword list for a specific website that have already built then be sure to check the box for Website content.

Next, enter some keywords in the box and check “Use synonyms”. You can also filter your keywords to exclude unwanted words that you don’t want to target. For instance, if you are searching for keywords related to “widgets” but don’t want anything related to “red widgets” then you can exclude the keyword “red” or the phrase “red widgets”.

After clicking the box to generate keywords, you’ll see your keyword list pop up with the following columns:

  • Advertiser Competition
  • Local Search Volume (month specific)
  • Global Monthly Search Volume

The match type will also be set to broad. You can change it to exact, phrase, or negative. I recommend starting with broad and you can narrow it down as you do more research. You can also expand the columns that are displayed, but if you aren’t planning to do any PPC advertising then the other columns won’t help you much.

You can use this list to see which of your keywords are the most popular from month to month and to judge what your competition for those keywords is. It’s a good tool to use.

Google’s Search-based keyword tool is slightly different. With this tool you can actually get more specific in your research initiatives. Since the data is based on actual searches rather than broad research data it should be more accurate, but that doesn’t mean it will benefit everyone. This tool is a great tool if you already have a website built and you want to expand your list of keywords for specific pages on your site.

The search-based keyword tool allows you to compare keywords generated for a specific web page on your site and the keywords in your Google AdWords account. If you are currently running a PPC campaign then you can find new keywords to target. It is a great tool for showing where you might be missing opportunities.

I challenge you to learn more about these to keyword research tools. Use them when the time is right.

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Posted in search engines | 4 Comments »

Why Small Businesses Should Not Fear Competition

Friday, July 17th, 2009

While doing keyword research for a client I discovered that one of the client’s primary keywords was dominated by megacorporations with established name brands in her niche. Virtually all 10 of the page 1 listings for that primary keyword were taken up by top name brands within her niche and it would have been very difficult for her to have broken through. Not impossible; I don’t believe anything is impossible. But it would have taken a long time.

After a little digging I discovered that there were plenty of opportunities for this client with smaller, less popular keywords. Smaller name brands were left wide open. More generic keywords matched with other words that could help her establish a niche within a niche were left wide open. The big players weren’t even trying for those phrases.

This is why I think small businesses have a little more advantage online. The big guys are all focused on broad generic keywords and brand names. Less so are they concerned with smaller, less popular opportunities. But you can be.

When performing your keyword research, don’t go after the broad generic terms, especially if you see that large corporations within your niche have the front page of Google wrapped up. Instead, look for the long tail. A small business can build a profitable enterprise by capturing the top positions for 3-5 mid-level generic keywords and associated phrases. You can call it ‘stealth marketing’, ‘guerrilla marketing’, or whatever. But it’s the truth.

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Posted in SEO for Small Business | 5 Comments »

Keyword Research: Learning To Get First Things First

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

When you build your first website you may not know exactly what it takes get traffic. The first step to any online endeavor is research – keyword research.

Keywords are important because they tell you what people are searching for online. It does no good to optimize your website for terms that no one uses in a search query. A good keyword research effort can give you much of the information you need to begin your Internet marketing, and especially building your first website.

By conducting keyword research you’ll find out how many search queries for important keywords are conducted each month, how many websites currently are optimized for those keywords, and useful synonyms for the words you want to target. That’s valuable information and if you are wise then you will listen to it. Start with keyword research or don’t bother.

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Posted in Market Research, SEO for Small Business, website development | No Comments »