Keyword Research: Sonar for Online Marketing
Keywords are cool.
If your business is a submarine, then keyword research is your marketing sonar. It lets you see where you might otherwise be blind.
When you are running an online business, invest in keywords research to improve your marketing results. Knowing where the prospects are won’t guarantee you success. But it is better than sailing blind.
Keywords research can help you at many different stages of your online business. Developing and refining your online business strategy. During your online marketing planning. Right down to your day to day marketing actions.
Who this article is for
This article introduces you to keyword research and:
- explains what keywords are and why keywords research is sonar for online marketing.
- shows you how to start using keywords research for your online business, in strategy, planning and execution.
- points you to additional keywords information and resources.
Why Keywords Research is Marketing Sonar
What would a marketing sonar tool do? It would send out a signal that bounced off your prospects so you can tell where they are.
Think what you could do if you had marketing sonar…
Using keywords research as your marketing sonar is a different way of doing business. Learn how to use it more effectively than your competitors.
What are keywords?
Keywords are the words people type into the search fields for Google, Yahoo, Ask and all the other search engines of the world.
Keywords research analyzes the most searched keywords. It can help you understand what your prospective clients are interested in. And what their buying intent is.
Your potential clients are already typing keywords into search engines like Google to find a whole range of information and make purchases.
They may use a single keyword (organic), multiple keywords (organic garden) or multiple keywords that form a phrase or question (find organic garden design).
A lot of people have opinons about what people would be most likely to search on. But rather than guess, why not just go and look?
An example of keywords research in action
Lets try an example. Say you are an expert in growing vegetables biodynamically. You are considering launching a business to teach others how they can do this, but can’t decide what to call it.
We can use Wordtracker’s free keyword suggestion tool to help.
Wordtracker is a tool that lets you analyse the most popular keywords used in internet searches.
Organic. Wordtracker predicts 838 searches globally every 24 hours for the keyword ‘organic’. And 564 for ‘organic food’ , 526 for ‘organic foods’ and 423 for ‘organic farming’.
Biodynamic. Wordtracker predicts 35 searches every 24 hours for biodynamics, 12 for biodynamic gardening and 11 for biodynamic agriculture.
It seems people are more likely to be considering an organic garden than a biodynamic garden.
You may figure you could have guessed that. And I agree, sometimes the results seem intuitive.
But once you start doing keywords research, you will see that not all of the trends are that easy to guess accurately up front. And if you think one term will be more popular than another, knowing it is 2x or 20x or 200x more popular can make a big difference to your decision making.
What are your prospective clients thinking?
Keywords analysis is like sonar because you can see under the surface. You get to see exactly what your prospective customers are keying into search engines (like Google) when they are looking for the products or services you are offering.
Guessing about what they are thinking is not as good as having a look at the real deal.
So last century
Lets just stop for a moment and consider the implications of keywords research.
Last century, marketers used to wonder about what their prospective customers were thinking.
And expensive market research was conducted. Focus groups shared cheese and biscuits. Clipboards flashed to collect survey data. All to try and understand consumer sentiment and buying motivation.
Last century we did not have search engines to help with market research.
This century we have access to data from tens of millions of searches every day. We have access to incredibly direct information about what people are interested. We can see the actual keywords they choose to use. We can get insight into their buying intent.
There will always be a place for qualitative and quantitative market research of course.
But in the era of search we have a new tool for marketing research. It costs less, covers more people, and is probably more accurate.
What kind of market research do you do? If the answer is ‘none’, or your market research tools belong to last century, then its time to look at keyword analysis.
The benefits of keywords research
Getting your keywords analysis right has a lot of benefits.
Rather than try and restate them, I’m going to quote the smart folk over at Wordtracker who say that keyword research can help:
- Drive traffic to your site by using the words people use when they’re searching
- Write great website copy by incorporating terms that people immediately identify with
- Plan profitable pay-per-click campaigns by building up a broad range of keyword phrases that will capture your market
- Develop great content ideas that directly addressyour customers’ needs
- Understand your customers’ behavior and concerns by analyzing the words that they use
- Measure the size of a potential online market by the number of searches conducted, and
- Develop new revenue streams by using popular keywords to inspire new product and service ideas.
Hard to put it better than that.
Wordtracker is the keyword service we use and recommend for all our clients (and no, that wasn’t an affiliate link). There are other tools, but this is the best for smaller or home based businesses.
It is not an expensive service to subscribe to when you look at the benefits it can bring. But a lot of people do seem to think Wordtracker is too expensive for them, and can only be used by specialist search marketing firms.
You can get keywords research conducted for you. If you do, I would check that the firm doing the research does at least have Wordtracker in their tool set. Its not the only tool, but its a gaping hole if it is missing.
How to get started using Wordtracker
Becoming an expert at keyword research analysis takes time. There are some excellent keyword education resources available, and I’ve assembled some useful resources later in this article.
Here are a few ideas on what to do to get a lot of the benefits of keyword research without a huge investment of time or money.
When to use keyword research for your online business
Business strategy. Do you want to build an online business the hard way or the harder way? (The easy way - the million dollar home page - has already been done 
) Why not use keyword research to help identify a product or service that prospects already want? Then build a business strategy responding to that want.
If you have an existing business - online or offline - and haven’t used keyword research yet, it is time. Now. Do it.
Look at your expertise, your products and services, through the lens of the related keywords appearing in search. What related keywords are popular? Why? What buying intent can you see being expressed? How can you respond?
Business planning. You already have an online strategy, but how can keywords help you plan for success? Keyword research can help you enormously in planning your content marketing and search marketing campaigns. Pay Per Click search marketing is a low cost way of testing your findings. For example, if you identify popular, highly relevant search terms, launch a PPC campaign and test conversion rates.
How to use keyword research for your online business
Step 1: Find keyword phrases
Come up with a good selection of seed keywords. Using good seed keywords will help you assess the most popular keywords relevant to your area, and also keywords that express a highly relevant search intent.
Popularity. We’ve already looked at organic and biodynamic. But what about sustainability (1,607 predicted searches per day) and permaculture (173 predicted searches per day? You don’t want to miss keywords that are very popular, and finding good seed keywords avoids this.
Specific Search Intent. Using good seed keywords can also help you find ‘garden designs’. With only 104 predicted searches per day, it is not as popular as other related keywords. But seeing a reasonable volume of very relevant search traffic may help you decide to offer organic garden designs as a service.
To find related keywords, have a look at good websites in your area and notice what keywords they are using. If you look at the Page Source you may be able to see the meta keywords the site is focussing on. Notice the words used in advertising and direct mail in your subject area.
If you are using Wordtracker, you can use the Related Keywords function to scan related websites for the keywords they are using.
Finding a good set of seed words is important to do before you go looking at popularity.
Step 2: Finding your best keywords
The best keywords for your business is very subjective.
| Popularity | High traffic keywords are better at driving traffic than keywords that are rarely searched. A #1 ranking is more valuable for a popular keyword than a keyword rarely searched. Assess: historical and predicted search volumes and analysis of existing content |
| Specificity | Highly specific keywords are better at driving relevant traffic than generics/multiple meanings Relevance increases conversion rates. Assess: relative search volumes for different meanings |
| Relevance to Intent | Searching a keyword often expresses an intent. Aligning with the right search intent increases conversion rates. Assess: qualitative nature of search intent. |
| Context | Understand the context of the keyword, the quality and qualitative nature of the primary content for the keyword. Understand opportunities to build links from relevant content. Assess: nature of existing content: websites, blogs, photo blogs, news |
It is essential to look at the context in which your prospects are searching: How relevant is their search to your site? What is their search intention?
Take Ningaloo Blue as an example, a tour operator that lets you swim with Whale Sharks in north western Australia. Keywords research reveals words and phrases such as ‘Ningaloo’ and ‘whale shark’ have some search traffic, while keywords such as ‘adventure travel’ is very popular (and still relevant to the experiences offered by Ningaloo Blue).
The word ‘Exmouth’ is also popular, and since this is the hub town for the Ningaloo Reef, where most of the accommodation is located, it would appear relevant.
However an analysis of the context for Exmouth shows that most of the searches were intended for Exmouth in the UK, not Exmouth in Australia. So this keyword, while important, became less relevant for the site.
It is not worth investing in traffic for a particular keyword if there is no chance of a conversion. Better to have fewer visitors and a higher conversion rate than more visitors and a lower conversion rate.
Keyword Resources
Here are some excellent - and free - introductory resources that will help you learn more about keyword research.
The Wordtracker Academy has great resources that explain - in detail - the theory and practice of keyword research.
Brian Clark over at CopyBlogger has some excellent articles:
There are a number of free tools to help with keyword research. You can try the free tool provided by the largest pay-per-click advertiser of the all - Google’s Keyword Tool. There is a free keyword tool available from Wordtracker as well: Free Keyword Suggestion Tool.
Summary
Is keyword research relevant for your business?
If so, the resources mentioned here should help you get going with it.
Too busy to do keyword research yourself? You can always hire us to do it for you - check out our Keyword Plan service.
