Many website owners get frustrated with search engine marketing due to poor results. The biggest search engine marketing mistake is made right from the start. That optimization mistake: implementation of search engine marketing optimization of the wrong keywords.
You have to crawl before you can walk. The crawling stage of search engine marketing is just that slow, boring and overwhelming. This stage of optimization provides very little short term results. In the long run though, it is the single most important step. If you target the wrong terms you will get traffic without conversions. If you target terms that have high competition you will get very little traffic due to high competition. Both are equally a waste of your search engine marketing resources.
So how do you get the right search keywords? There are many keyword bidding tools and websites that show the top paying keyword. Some are free keyword services and others are paid comprehensive keyword research services that you can use.
So this is easy? I just search for a comprehensive keyword research tool and pick one. There are several problems with this approach to comprehensive keyword research.
- It costs money to enlist these keyword services
- There is a learning curve to all new keyword research tools
- It takes practice to target your audience and think laterally to get the best business keywords for your search engine marketing campaign
- How do you know who your competitors are?
- It takes a week to produce top paying keywords that drive target traffic.
Why does it take a week? When the keyword research process is performed at its best the following steps are taken.
- Identify your top business products and services
- Identify your top Internet competitors keywords across the top ten search engines
- Use your keywords to stem new keywords and phrases
- In the 100 or so keywords and phrases into keyword tracking service to find another 500 hundred keywords
- Use powers of research, reasoning and deduction to capture the top 200 keywords
- Take a day off - yes, take a break and come back and look at the whole process from different angles to ensure that you are on track and that you have every possible niche term.
- Use analytic software to compare the keyword effectiveness index (KEI)
- Select best terms from the above keyword research process.
So what do I do about my search engine marketing keyword research? Enlist a professional that has experience in comprehensive keyword research, which identify your business keywords.
