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Successful online marketing begins with targeted keyword research
Most businesses recognize that the Internet is fast becoming a major marketing tool for virtually any type of product or service.
By Paul Tobey
But, what most people don’t realize is how to actually go about it.
Unfortunately, due to a lack of information available, the biggest mistake businesses will make is going out and blindly hiring a web designer thinking marketing is their area of expertise, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
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While some web designers may have some marketing skills, it is not their main purpose. What they do well is design websites. Internet marketing, on the other hand, is a completely different ball game and something few people, even web designers, know a lot about.
Having said that, you must recognize it is your responsibility to educate yourself on exactly what Internet marketing is and how to go about it.
Targeted keyword research is the art of finding out how many people use a major search engine everyday using words that correlate to your products and services, and exactly what keyword phrases they use to do this.
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Why is that Important?
Because when you consider approximately 85% of North Americans use a search engine before any other medium of research, it becomes clear it’s pretty important to know exactly what their search habits are.
Even if you know, on some level, that you have to use keyword phrases in your website, the sad truth is most people just guess at what those phrases are. And, while you may choose some pretty good ones relevant to your products and services, most of the words and phrases you end up choosing won’t bring you much search engine traffic.
The reason for this is that you have not factored in your competition. Think about it: If you choose relevant keyword phrases solely based on guessing, what you haven’t considered is how many other websites there are in cyberspace using exactly the same keyword phrases.
One of the ways you can find more relevant keyword phrases is to use a membership site such as Wordtracker.
What Wordtracker can do is suggest relevant keyword phrases based on your products and services, and tell you exactly how much competition there is for each phrase.
For example, the keyword phrase Sign Company gets 4,800 searches a month, but there are 120 million competing websites. On the other hand, a more targeted search for phrases like, Sign Company, Toronto, gets much less searches, but only has 458,000 competing websites. That means you have a much better shot of competing for longer, (long tail), more targeted keyword phrases, than shorter ones.
On top of that, Wordtracker can calculate the Keyword Effectiveness Index of each of your keyword phrases, and then help you choose exactly the right ones to create more traffic to your site.
Once you have chosen your keyword phrases you must strategically place them within your site surrounded by significant amounts of content. This strategy is known as Keyword Density, and we’ll tackle that one in an upcoming column.
For now, be aware that choosing good keyword phrases, which have high search volumes and low competition, is a great starting point for any online marketing plan.
My suggestion is to come up with at least 20 good targeted keyword phrases before constructing your site or a least before your next site re-design.
Paul Tobey is well-known in many business circles as an Internet marketing guru. As CEO of StreetSmartMarketer.com and TrainingBusinessPros.com he delivers engaging training seminars on Internet Marketing to over 6,000 businesses and owns his own Internet Marketing Company, which formulates and implements online marketing campaigns for several medium to large corporations. |
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