Keyword Research: Down and Dirty

By: Ashley Lichty

Keyword research is one of the most important stages of developing a website - especially if the purpose of the site is to generate money and business. Your first step is deciding exactly what you will be selling on your site - is it a product, service or information? Next is taking the steps to find out the type of things people type into the search engines when looking for your particular product or service.

The thousands of terms people use to search for things related to your industry online will help you target your pay per click advertising and other web marketing, as well as help your SEO efforts (especially so you know what anchor text to use when link building). The wider your subject and more services or products your provide, the more in-depth your keyword research will get, sometimes resulting in lists tens of thousands of words long.

Much of keyword research is just old-fashioned brainstorming. You sit down, think about your target audience and get in their frame of mind. Think about the types of things they might type in to find your service, and get yourself a general list of several terms. Once you have that together there are one of two ways to conduct keyword research - this is where the 'secret' comes in.

The more traditional way to generate keyword lists and conduct keyword research is to use online tools and software. Google's keyword tool will give you a list of keywords related to the terms you entered as well as related terms you may want to consider. There is also software you can purchase that will search several keyword tools on the Net, including Google's, Yahoo's, WordTracker and even find common misspellings of your keywords so you can target those with your search marketing as well.

If the purpose of your keyword research is for your pay per click ads in Google or Yahoo, there's a better way to conduct your research. How is that you ask? Just a bit of experimentation involving your pay per click program.

This technique involves spending a little cash on for your research, but it often yields better results than more traditional keyword research. Just take your first general list of keywords and build your text ad campaign around them in whichever program you use. Most marketing programs allow you to chose a broad or exact keyword match for your terms - choose the broad option. This means whenever someone searches for a combination of words that include one of your keywords, your ad will show.

By running a test campaign for a week or two and spending a little bit of cash, you can cut your keyword research time in half and actually raise your marketing results as well. As people search and click your ads, you can tell exactly what SPECIFIC keyword terms (long-tail or short) will attract you the most business for the least amount of money. Once you let the campaign run a while, you can start building a more detailed campaign, and eventually get rid of the "broad" match option and instead spend your ad money on a long list of exact keywords.

It's really that simple - a great way to better-target your keywords to your audience and save a ton of time and energy on keyword research. (Not to mention your eyesight - if you've ever had to go through a spreadsheet 1000 words long to clean it up, you know what I mean!) This should help you have higher conversion rates as well, leading to more sales generated. Go ahead, give it a shot, and see if it works for you!

About the author: Ashley Lichty, along with her colleagues, do keyword research, content development and other search engine optimization practices for ProspectMX.com. You can learn more about her and her team by checking out her website.

Article Source: http://www.marketingarticlelibrary.com

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