What's in a word? Four ways to maximize your search traffic through strategic keyphrase choices
by Heather Lloyd-Martin
Keyphrase research is the foundation of any search marketing campaign. Top search engine branding and visibility entail a keen awareness of prospect searching behavior. A well-targeted keyphrase campaign drives motivated targeted traffic to your site at every stage of the buying cycle. While an ill-planned keyphrase campaign positions poorly in the engines and sees few search engine conversions.
Sadly, many companies skim over - or ignore - keyphrase research and developing a keyphrase strategy. Suffering from interdepartmental hubris, marketing and IT firmly believe that "they know how people search," without understanding the serious implications of sub par keyphrase choices. These companies typically fall into two camps:
- Companies that ignore keyphrase research entirely, figuring that tweaking Meta tags or being a big brand will automatically score them top search engine positions, and
- Companies that try to optimize their site, but fail to create a keyphrase strategy.
The end result of this thinking? Poorly performing search marketing campaigns that do not gain targeted traffic.
Organic optimization campaigns (which include Google, as well as trusted feed solutions) demand that your keyphrases are strategically woven throughout your visible page copy. If companies focus on the wrong keyphrases, their site will not gain online branding for their main industry terms - nor will these companies gain targeted traffic.
If a company is planning a pay-per-click advertising buy (such as Google AdWords or Overture [a Yahoo! company]), bidding on the wrong word can be expensive. For instance, if you are a window washing company, an untargeted campaign could show your ad for irrelevant searches such as "Windows operating systems" or "residential glass windows." Clearly understanding the ramifications of every search term and then researching your search terms to confirm a market match are incredibly important for both site ROI and search marketing visibility.
Determining how your prospects search is a little bit psychology, a little bit user behavior and a little bit predictive science. However, there are some guidelines that you can follow to help guide your keyphrase choices and help with keyphrase research.
Ditch one-word keywords for B2C sites
It's exceptionally common for a CEO to insist that a company is #1 for single-word keywords like "travel," "solutions" or "design." These "vanity" keywords are not targeted because of any user behavior research or site log data. Rather, someone unilaterally decides that a single word is the holy grail of search marketing - and that they will gain tons of targeted traffic and conversions.
Single keywords - especially for consumer applications - do not match searching behavior statistics. A 2003 study by OneStat.com found that nearly 30 percent of users search using two-word phrases, with over 24 percent searching under three-word phrases. Although "newbie" searchers may originally begin their searching habits using one-word keywords, they quickly learn that specific searches using two words or more gain more relevant results.
This concept can be illustrated with a simple Web search (and using this double-check technique helps clarify searching behavior for overzealous CEOs). Imagine that you are planning a vacation in London and need hotel information. Now, type "travel" in your favorite search engine query box - and see how many results you can find about "London hotels."
A Google search on "travel" brought up 81,200,000 results. Out of all those results, "London hotel" information did not appear in the top three pages. Nor the top six pages. If your company was to optimize for an ineffectual single-word term like this, the results would be disastrous - and your site would not gain top positions or targeted traffic.
The key is to replace keywords with keyphrases. For instance, if you search for "London hotels," you'll find 2,480,000 results - all targeted exactly around London hotels. For even more specific targeting, a three word phrase like "London hotel Westminster" gains 103,000 Google results. The three-word keyphrase gains highly relevant results - and the search engine results reach motivated prospects with a very exact need.
Beware fluffy marketing phrases that mean nothing to your prospect
Generally, a business optimizes for two different types of keyphrases: legacy and buzzword phrases. Failing to embrace a savvy optimization plan for both types of keyphrases can be fatal for an optimization effort.
"Legacy" keyphrases are search terms that are common and typically highly searched upon. "Web design," "chat room" and "search marketing" are general terms that clearly describe the product or service.
However, what is not typically searched upon are "buzzwords," like "visual brand management" (for Web design) "global communication systems" (for chat room) or "online direct response" (for search marketing). These terms may be branded product or service descriptors and possibly even up-and-coming terms in an industry (like blog). But, they are not typically searched upon by a company's target audience.
Despite the best of intentions, marketing departments are not always in touch with their prospects' searching behavior. That is, for online branding efforts, marketing may rely on buzzwords rather than more general terms to describe their wares. This presents a problem during the optimization process. If a company optimizes for the branded marketing buzzword like "online direct response," rather than a more general "legacy" keyphrase like "search marketing," the optimization will fail before it launches. This initial communications gap is a main reason why good optimization efforts go bad - and must be rectified before search engine conversions can begin.
Companies must optimize for how their prospects search (which are typically legacy keyphrases) - not waste their efforts on internal marketing buzzwords that are not understood outside of the marketing department. For instance, imagine a time-management software product called "Time Solutions." Research through Wordtracker shows that the term "time solutions" was not searched upon at all within 60 days. However, when a legacy keyword like "time management software" is used, search hits jump to a predicted 106 searchers a day.
This doesn't mean that you can't include your product's branded name within your optimization efforts. Or, that you can't capitalize on a new industry term that hasn't quite hit its stride (like "blogging" was in 2002). In fact, sprinkling buzzwords with legacy terms is a fantastic way to capitalize on the best of both worlds. However, it's best to focus your optimization efforts on helping your prospects find your site - not feeding the corporate ego and optimizing for terms that your prospects don't search upon.
B2B vs. B2C traffic - target the right words
B2B marketers have unique keyphrase challenges. Rather than merely ensuring that a phrase is searched upon, B2Bers must also confirm that their desired keyterm does not have a consumer application. If it does, care must be taken to exactly pinpoint the business meaning, thereby ensuring targeted traffic.
For instance, consider the single-word "dryer," which can be an industrial dryer in a B2B sell, or a hair or clothes dryer in a B2C sell. If a B2B company specializing in industrial dryers optimized for the single word "dryer," they'd drive untargeted traffic to their site. Furthermore, if a company pays on a per-click basis for this term without factoring out the B2C applications, they would either see their ad ignored (wrong market) or pay for untargeted clicks.
Typically, this is an easy fix simply by transforming your single-word keyword "dryer" into a keyphrase "industrial dryers." This technique immediately targets your market using the search terms they would use themselves. This simple keyphrase tweak can immediately help a B2B gain more targeted traffic.
There is one exception to the "avoid the one-word keyword" rule, and that is when highly technical or industry-specific terms are involved. These terms would be highly targeted to those who are "in the know" about the particular term. Although it's always best when the keyword is paired with a two- or three-word phrase (for instance, "industrial pharmaceutical centrifuge"), single phrases can pull well in very certain applications.
Should you optimize for a single word on a B2B optimization? Perhaps - if the results are relevant. First do a Web search on your term and confirm that the pages appearing in the search engine results page relate to your industry. If the term pulls your competitors' pages and provides pertinent results, consider creating an organic and pay-per-click optimization strategy for the term. However, if you see irrelevant pages returned - or if you discover a consumer application for the single word - focus the keyword by creating a keyphrase around it.
Double-check your keyphrase choices
Searcher behavior will surprise you. You may spend hours honing the perfect keyphrase, only to find that no one ever clicks thru. Or, you may discover a bonus phrase that you've never considered - and that phrase pushes tons of targeted traffic.
Keyphrase research is crucial. No matter how carefully a company examines their site logs, brainstorms their keyphrases internally and imagines the different applications of every single keyterm, double-checking their terms with actual searcher behavior statistics is important.
Don't suffer from a keyphrase-lack mentality! It's common for companies to think that a small number of keyphrases (less than 20) apply to their site. In fact, a typical site can capitalize on hundreds - even thousands - of keyphrases. Imagine this - if your site has 200 pages (which is typical for a service site), you could conceivably capitalize on 400 or more keyphrases (assuming that you follow SEO copywriting best practices and optimized for two-to-three keyphrases per page). Robust ecommerce sites could claim over 10,000 keyphrases. And every one of those keyphrases can gain targeted traffic.
The industry standard tool is Wordtracker. Wordtracker collects metacrawler data (which is considered more reliable than a single search engine's keyword data, like Overture or Google). With Wordtracker, you can learn what terms are highly searched upon, how competitive they are and various keyphrase variations your site can immediately capitalize upon.
It's also good to do follow-up research with actual engines. This is as simple as typing in your main search terms and viewing what sites appear.
For instance, imagine that you are a translation company and want to optimize for the term "language translation." Although Wordtracker may indicate that this is a strong term to optimize for, a quick Google search finds that the top results for "language translation" are free translation sites. Therefore, this keyterm would not be advisable, as it does not target the exact market (corporations willing to pay for translation services), even if the research indicated that the term would be appropriate. The HotBot engine lets you view four engine results at once (Inktomi, Google, Teoma and Fast) and gives you a quick indication about a term's real competition.
Remember, keyphrase research is ongoing. Your site logs will indicate unique ways people search for your product or service - and you can feed this into your keyphrase strategy. Plus, your site search will also indicate popular search terms - and these logs should be examined at least once a month.
It is very possible that at least half of the entry keyphrases from search engines are ones that your company hasn't optimized for. In this case, consider creating relevant content around these bonus phrases. Using this technique, you are giving your prospects the information they want (additional content relevant to their search term) and you are building additional pages for search engine fodder. Everyone wins.
Keyphrase research should never be an afterthought. With a savvy strategy, your company can build the foundation for a successful organic and pay-per-click search marketing campaign.
Originally published in the Association of Interactive Marketing's SEMC Council's 2003 book "Search Marketing Demystified"
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