Finding Your Keywords

First, figure out what you want your keywords to be. What sort of searches do you want to come up for? This is important because pinning yourself to the wrong search term, could get you poor results. Getting someone too early or too late in the buying process may get you a lot of traffic, but it may not be the right kind. Figure out where their point of entry is. This isn’t something that you can search online using Google AdWords, Trends or Insight—it’s something you learn by researching your market. I learned about this when I did my own research. I plugged in a bunch of keywords I wanted to rank for to see what came up.

First, gather some search terms. Not all of these will be your keywords, they are just your starting point. They might end up being perfect or you might scrap the list and start over. Your research will point you in the right direction.

Let’s say you have a series of keywords you are considering but you aren’t sure what other variables folks might be searching on. Hop on over to Soovle.com. When you land on this site, you’ll see a simple box to plug in your keyword. When you do, you’ll get back variations of searches that come up in sites like YouTube, Google, Yahoo! and Bing. It will also show these terms as used on Amazon.com, which can be helpful if you are selecting tags to go with your business. You’ll want to spend some time here, clicking the various links to find different ways that consumers search on these keywords. You also might find a better search term than what you currently use, or it might validate your research. Either way, it’s a fantastic site and one I use often.

Once you get your keywords nailed down, Google AdWords is a great place to research their popularity. You want to know that your keywords are getting enough searches to matter to your traffic. If you go to Google AdWords, punch in your keywords and then turn off the broad match so you narrow down your results a bit more. You can also play around with “exact” and “phrase,” but I usually stick with all three of those unchecked to see what kind of results I get.

Generally I look for Global Monthly Searches that are above 650; I’d rather it be higher, but if you are searching a niche term, that might be the best you can do.

How to Use Keywords

You now need to know how to use the keywords you spent so much time finding. First and foremost, incorporate them into the copy on your home page. I recommend keeping the verbiage on your home page to no more than 250 words, but make sure that this text is keyword rich. Address your visitors’ concerns, not yours. Remember that the first few lines of your website copy will show up in searches, so make sure it’s relevant to the audience.

The URL you’re using could make a difference. When we did our keywords, we established that we wanted to come up for the term “Book marketing,” so we started using it everywhere, in our Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/bookmarketingame) , on our YouTube Channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/BookmarketingAME) and even in our URL. I bought bookmarketingAME.com.

Now, we don’t use this URL per se, it just points to our main domain name which is amarketingexpert.com. Why did we do that? Because the use of your core search terms is key to driving traffic and getting higher in the search rank. Want proof? Before we did all of this, our website was generally at the bottom of page one on Google or on page two when you plugged in “book marketing” in the search bar. Three months after we made these changes (keywords on the home page and keywords in our Facebook branding, YouTube and URL), we came up #3 in search, sometimes #2 and on a stupendously good day, we’re #1. Now that’s a great traffic jam!

You also can and should use keywords in your blog posts. Not so much that your posts don’t make sense (this is called keyword stuffing), but sprinkle them throughout your content, like we did with this chapter (using words like marketing, book marketing, keywords, etc.).

You should also use the keywords in your YouTube videos and in Alt tags in pictures on your website. Keywords are fantastic, and once you go through the work of finding them, you can use them over and over again.

Excerpt from Red Hot Internet Publicity: An Insider’s Guide to Marketing Online by Penny Sansevieri, available now on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Red-Hot-Internet-Publicity-Marketing/dp/1480224952/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367371151&sr=1-1&keywords=Red+Hot+Internet+Publicity