Preface
This article is about choosing the best keywords to match your marketing message and website content.
Introduction
I was once described by one of my longstanding clients as a chameleon due to my ability to adapt to changing circumstances and assignments. I have consulted companies for twenty years in the IT and financial services and one of the first lessons I learned in business is that you need to change to market conditions and you need to monitor the state of the market frequently.. Continuous market appraisal and competitive analysis is essential to succeed. I haven't written a book, I don't have an impressive list of fortune 500 or FT 100 companies I have consulted for. There is a good reason for this. I wanted to help the little guy. I wanted to help the small business entrepreneur that wants to grow his business and needs help from time to time in promotions, campaigns and events without spending tens of thousand of dollars, sterling or Euros in doing so.
How do all the parts fit?
The web is your most important marketing channel if you are marketing your products or services on the internet. The features and benefits of your products or service must be clearly expressed to your target audience in a very short, concise and accurate message. Once your message is formulated it should be integrated into all your marketing efforts, such as your website, printed material, TV and Radio advertising, with the goal of becoming an effective product promotion.
This article will briefly explain what Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is, the steps to create a marketing message and how to integrate it into an SEO strategy. Let's first start with SEO.
What is Search Engine Optimisation?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is about directing traffic to a page on your website to achieve a goal. All pages of your website create an impression on your visitor. If the first impression is relevant to the visitors search results, and he's motivated, he will purchase from you. The goal of a home page is substantially different to the goal of a landing page. Landing pages are designed to achieve the highest conversion rate possible towards meeting a goal, obtain product data or sign up for a demo, newsletter or free offer. Home pages have the objective of getting you through the page on a path where the visitor wants to go,that meets his needs or solves his issue. SEO will get the visitor to the home or landing page while the marketing message that's incorporated in the pages will help the visitor decide.
How do I optimise my website? How do I create a marketing message? And how does a business integrate them?
I'll explain how to optimise website pages. Businesses and careers may rise or fall on the outcome of online marketing programs. That's why a well optimised website pages will help your business grow. The fundamental cornerstone of SEO is: keywords and unique optimisation of pages - not only for the home page but all the pages in your website. Choose relevant keywords for your products or services and place them in:
(a) domain name
(b) page URL
(c) page title
(d) page description
(e) page content
(f) Keyword meta tag
(g) Headings
What is a Keyword Analysis? How do I choose the right keywords?.
First do this.Create a spreadsheet with 10 columns with the following headings going across the page:
1 Keywords - chosen by you and from your analysis.
2 Keyword density
3 Keyword percentage
4 Monthly Local Searches for keywords and from your analysis.
5 Monthly Global Searches for keyword term from your analysis.
6 Number of competitors for keyword term - manually by you.
7 Keyword Efficiency Index - calculated by you
8 Commercial Intent Factor - extracted from online commercial index
9 Non Commercial Intent Factor - extracted from online commercial index
10 Date Tested
Read the following paragraphs to calculate or extract the data required to complete the fields in the spreadsheet and make notes.
Keyword Analysis:
(i) if you are selling products or services on the internet, think about them and your competitors.
(ii) Look at your competitors and analyse their behaviour from a marketing perspective.
(iii) What are their distribution channels?
(iv) What are their marketing channels?
(v) How do the distribution and marketing channels differ from yours?
(vi) Decide what problems your products or services solve for your customers.
(vii) Think about the features of your products or services. Are the products or services differentiated from your competitors? If so in what way?
Whilst doing all this make a list of keywords that describe your product/service. Write down anything that comes to mind - anything. Create groups/families of keywords - similar to themselves but different. You should end up with groups of similar keywords that are all related to your product. Using a relevancy scale like 100%, 80% or 60% grade all the keywords according to your opinion of relevancy to your products.
How do I get to know how many people are using keywords who want my products/services?
Thankfully Google can help you for free. To get to know how many people are searching for your products/services using your groups of keywords you can use Google External Keyword tool. Place all your keywords in the appropriate box and tick the box for "results for my keywords only". You can also do an advance search in the local country and local language of your targeted market. The number of searches locally and globally will display (a guesstimate by Google but pretty accurate) will display, plus a competition factor, and if you uncheck the box that says "results for my keywords only" you will get suggestion keywords as well.
How do I choose which keywords are the best to use?
Now you have groups of your keywords - the list that you put together and grouped into families as well as the suggested keywords from Google. For each keyword you have the number of local searches (the country and language you have inserted) and the number of global searches (on the whole Google network). The best keyword is that which is searched by the greatest number of people and where the competition factor is the lowest. When you have competing keywords it's difficult to know which one.
Now Complete the 10 column spreadsheet.
A. Keywords - chosen by you Insert the keywords in column
1. For each keyword complete.
2 Keyword density - Copy and paste the content of one of your website pages into a word count program.. Extract the keyword density and keyword count for your chosen list of keywords.
3 Keyword percentage - extracted from your word density analysis
4 Monthly Local Searches for keywords - Find Google suggestions. From the Google results list find your keywords and extract the number of local and global searches for the latest month.
5 Monthly Global Searches for keyword term
6 Number of competitors for keyword term - In the Google search box manually insert the keywords and from the search engine results page extract the numbers of pages/competitors found by Google.
7 Keyword Efficiency Index - You need to insert a formula as: number of local searches squared (SV*SV) divided by number of competitors.
8 Commercial Intent Factor - extracted from online commercial intent index
9 Non Commercial Intent Factor - extracted from online commercial intent index
10 Date Tested
The keyword with the highest index is the one most likely to incorporate into your website page and Marketing Message. However you must also look at the commercial intent factor of the keywords to determine if the keywords is of a non commercial value or commercial value.
Which Keyword do I choose? Only you can chose which one.
The last column of the spreadsheet is dedicated to testing. You will probably not get the desired results you want first time around. So it is imperative to TEST.
Marketing Message and Search engine optimisation in more tail. There are two tools to help you here: they are approximate but are helpful in assisting you. The first is the keyword efficiency index and the second is the behavioural index.
First I'll explain the keyword efficiency index.
For each keyword you calculate the number of searches squared divided by the number of competitors. The result is a relative factor and the highest factor for the group of keywords' chosen is theoretical the best to use. This is the keyword efficiency index. You can introduce a relevancy factor that reduces the factor calculated by a percentage. The percentage reduction factor for a keyword that 100% relevant is NIL, for 80% relevancy its 0.2 reduction, for 60% its 0.40, for 40% relevancy its 0.60, for 40% relevancy its 0.60 reduction, for 20% relevancy its 0.80 reduction.
The second tool to use is the buying behavioural index. Back in 2007, Microsoft Ad Centre Labs, introduced "Detecting Online Commercial Intent" algorithm that was designed to display two levels of commercial intent: informational and transactional. The index is divided into commercial or non commercial intent to buy. You can integrate this value into your keyword analysis spreadsheet.
What's Next?
Well you now know what SEO is and the keyword placement strategy. Now you should think about your marketing message.
What's a Marketing Message?
Your marketing message is the attention grabber for your prospects. It tells them how you can solve their problem, the benefits you bring to them, why they should trust you, and above all else you should answer the following question:
"If I am your ideal customer why should I buy from you and not from one of your competitors?"
A marketing message needs to describe:
A. What you do for your customers
B. How you solve your customers needs, or problems or issues and
C. How you help potential clients understand the solutions.
How do I create a Marketing Message?
There are basically five investigative phases I propose you should follow:
a. Identify your target audience.
b. Identify the issues your target audience experiences
c. Present solutions to you target audience
d. Demonstrate the results of your solutions
e. Differentiate yourself from the competition
Your marketing message should be brief, clear and concise. It should last less than 30 seconds. In the first 15 seconds it should be engaging and at the end of the conversation it should prompt your prospect to say "tell me more".
I firmly believe that an effective marketing message is the key to your success on the internet. Your marketing message needs to generating leads, Your products/services should add value to your customers and provide benefits to your prospects as well as increasing your profits. A powerful marketing message and products/services delivering real value and benefits creates an enormous advantage for your business. The integration of keywords into your Marketing Message and SEO Strategy. You have all the pieces of the jig saw. To complete the picture you need to piece together the keywords into the marketing message and marry them into your SEO strategy for specific pages of your website.
