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Inner Circle Roundtable of 21st Century Marketers |
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Chapter Three
It’s About Getting Your Keywords Right
By Ben Hart
This brings us to the next piece of the puzzle – getting your keywords right.
This now is the lynchpin of your success – anticipating the keywords and phrases that your target audience is typing into search engines to find what you are selling.
Keyword research is a big part of your market research.
So, how do you begin?
You first start with a little brainstorming. And then you move on to more formal research and testing.
The first step is to ask yourself: “What keywords would I type into a search engine if I were looking for what I am selling?”
You must always put yourself in the place of the customer. You must think like your potential buyer is thinking. You must learn how to walk in the shoes of others. You must be a kind of amateur psychologist.
Now remember, we have told Google only to show our ads when a searcher has typed in the “exact” keywords and phrases we have selected for our ad. We have selected either “Exact Match” or “Phase Match” that at least requires your exact keywords to be part of a phrase the searcher is typing – but not “Broad Content.”
It safest just to start with “Exact Match.”
This means you will need to do a lot of work on your keywords and phrases.
You will need to come up with every possible keyword combination that describes what you are selling – or you won’t get much traffic . . . because your ads are only showing when there is an “exact keyword match.”
Fortunately, there are some wonderful tools that can help you.
The simplest keyword research tool is Yahoo’s Keyword Selector Tool. You’ll find it at: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
It’s free and it’s very good. I always go here first when I start my keyword brainstorming.
If you plug in a keyword, Yahoo will give you the number of searches for that keyword, in a recent month plus the number of searches of every term that includes that keyword.
Google also has a Keyword Selector Tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
But I don’t like it for this purpose because it does not give you the actual number of searches for the keywords you are researching – just silly bar graphs. So that’s pretty useless to me. I want the actual number of searches for keywords.
Yahoo gives me the number for searches on Yahoo (and its search partners). Then just roughly triple that number for searches on Google.
So Yahoo’s Keyword Tool is much better than Google’s for initial market research.
Let’s say I’m thinking of starting an online business related to tennis.
I plug the word “tennis” into the Yahoo tool to see what comes up.
I find that there were 216,000 searches for terms with the word tennis on Yahoo in January 2007.
Yahoo then gives me the entire list of terms, with the number of searches for each term. I see there were 20,479 searches for “tennis racket,” 12,631 searches for “tennis shoes,” 11,734 searches for “tennis elbow.”
My criteria for a promising niche market to potentially get into is there must be at least 6,000 searches a month on the keyword phrase on Yahoo. Less than that, the niche probably is not big enough to make any real money.
With more than 11,000 searches per month on Yahoo, “tennis elbow” looks like a promising market.
Because I have studied marketing, I also know that the two primary motivations for people to buy are:
1) To stop pain
2) To find pleasure
Of these two motives, stop pain is by far the stronger motive to buy.
I also notice there that Google shows 2,100,000 sites and pages on its organic search results for the keyword “tennis elbow.” But there are only eight pay-per-click ads for “tennis elbow.
Anyone who has had tennis elbow knows how painful that can be. And it ruins your ability to do what you love, which is play tennis.
So those who are suffering from “tennis elbow” will try almost anything to get rid of their tennis elbow – are likely to try all the cures offered on all eight pay-per-click ads.
So this looks like a very promising niche to target.
That’s what a little keyword research can do for you.
I never would have thought of “tennis elbow” as being the basis of a business until I saw it so high up on Yahoo’s list of what people search for under the broader category of “tennis.”
Do you see how your market research can take you in a whole new direction?
Your mindset should be to go where you market is telling you to go.
People are telling you with their keyword searches exactly what they want. You then adjust your product offering accordingly. This often requires just a minor adjustment – called “positioning.”
One of the big keys to success with PPC advertising is to have a specific solution to a very specific problem. The more specific the problem and the more specific your solution is to that specific problem, the stronger your “message-to-market-match” will be.
Achieving a “message-to-market-match” is just about the most important principle in marketing. Without that you have nothing. Specificity is the key to it.
That’s why a headline aimed at golfers such as “Cure Your Slice in Five Swings” is much stronger than “Improve Your Golf Score.”
One is specific. The other is too general. People have specific problems they want solved. That requires specific solutions.
“Think niche, and grow rich!”
Now, Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool does not tell you how many searches there have been for a keyword, but it will give you an avalanche of synonyms for your keywords.
This can be very useful. It will save you hours of digging through your thesaurus. Synonyms are different words that mean the same thing, or nearly the same thing.
When people type keywords and phrases into search engines, they don’t just type in one phrase and call it a day.
They type in many combinations in an effort to find exactly what they are looking for.
Google tracks these combinations and gives them to you as suggestions for keywords and combinations to try. You can then head back on over to the Yahoo Keyword Selector Tool to get the exact number of searches for your new batch of synonyms Google has just given you.
Good market research requires you to mix and match your use of these tools.
All these keyword combinations that describe your product or service are important because, remember, you have told Google only to show your ad when there is an “exact” keyword match to your ad. You are not giving Google the latitude to show your ad when there is a “broad content match.”
So this might require you coming up with hundreds of keyword combinations.
According to Google, 16% of all searches on Google are unique and have never occurred before in the history of Google.
In other words, people are typing all kinds of keyword combinations into engines to find what they are looking for -- including all kinds of misspellings
Now if you invest the time and develop ads that include the more rare and unusual search terms, this can create a strong message-to-market-match for those using those search terms.
Yes, your traffic will be much lighter than for a more general obvious search terms. But you’ll get much more targeted traffic.
If you see a 3% “click-through-rate” on your ad for your keywords, this is an indicator you have a good message-to-market match. That is, these keywords line up well with your ad and your searcher. Your ad is what your searcher is looking for. A 3% click-through-rate is pretty good. That means 3% of those who saw your ad (that’s an “impression”) actually clicked on your ad and went to your site.
When I have picked an unusual keyword combination and then tailored my ad to that unusual keyword phrase combination, I sometimes see a 50% click-through-rate and a near 100% conversion rate.
If your keywords, ads and landing pages all line up and match for the rare keyword combination that your searcher has just typed, your searcher almost won’t believe his eyes when your ad pops up in the Google listing with their search term in the headline. Your searcher will wonder, “How did they know what I was thinking?”
When you see your exact words and thoughts staring at you from the page – especially if it’s an unusual phrase – it gets your attention.
Plus, all these kinds of unusual keyword phrases are always super cheap. And you find a stronger buyer with a cheaper keyword phrase.
Isn’t that our goal here?
We don’t want lots of clicks and expensive clicks if they are not the right clicks. We are trying to find the most targeted clicks (traffic) possible.
The great news is that the most targeted traffic is both your best traffic and your cheapest traffic. This is how you do target marketing the right way.
This is how you can cut your Google AdWords bill down to 5% of what others are paying, while getting almost as many sales.
That’s why you need keyword research and selection tools to help you drill down deeply and find all these phrases that accurately describe what you are selling.
The two best keyword research tools are www.WordTracker.com and www.KeywordDiscovery.com
You pay a monthly subscription to use these tools.
I mentioned Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool that will give you all kinds of words and terms related to your root keyword or phrase.
But Wordtracker’s Keyword Universe Tool is more exhaustive still.
I love it!
It will give you up to 300 suggestions for a related term.
You can then do a“deep search” by plugging in these terms and asking Wordtracker again to come up with all the words and terms related to each of those terms.
Wordtracker will then tell you how many people are searching each day on each of those terms across all the major search engines.
This is how you drill deeply and go well past the obvious keywords.
KeywordDiscovery.com is just as good, better in some areas. Each tool has its strengths. I also like GoodKeywords.com
Another great tool is www.LexFN.com. This is a web-based thesaurus, but it’s much more than that. It will help you come up with all kinds of related word and phrase combinations.
Again remember, this is especially useful if you are choosing the “exact” keyword match option on Google AdWords – which you should be doing.
Wordtracker.com, KeywordDiscovery.com and GoodKeywords.com all give you the most common misspellings of words. For example, here’s how people often spell restaurant with their searches:
restauraunt
And that doesn’t even take into account the plural version of the word!
Go here to see how many ways people spell Brittney Spears: http://www.google.com/jobs/britney.html
This will blow your mind. 40,000 people in three months typed in the most common misspelling, which is “Brittany Spears.” 36,000 searched for the second most common misspelling.
If you have told Google “exact match” only for keywords, you must include the most common misspellings of words.
Other tools that will help you do this include Microsoft’s Keyword Mutation Detection tool and Searchspell’s Typo Generator.
Acronyms are another category you must include: FBI, IRS, ACLU, AARP, FEMA, PPC, SEO, CEO along with the actual names signified by the acronyms. Then there are abbreviations and slang terms. People also put apostrophes in the wrong place. Is it “drivers license” or “driver’s license”? You need both if these are your keywords.
Then there are words that are sometimes one word, sometimes two words, sometimes hypehnated words. Is it “click fraud,” “clickfraud” or “click-fraud”? Is it “fund-raising,” “fundraising” or “fund raising”? You must have all variations if you have the “exact” match only option turned on.
If you are requiring “exact match,” your keyword research must be exhaustive.
And you must have every combination of keyword phrase. You need Wordtracker.com, KeywordDiscovery.com and GoodKeywords.com to do this well.
Here’s another terrific little free tool called www.spyfu.com
If you type in keywords, it will estimate your average cost-per-click and how many clicks you’ll get per day. It will also tell you how many advertisers there are competing for the keyword and how difficult it will be to rank in your preferred position.
Other keyword brainstorming resources include glossaries of terms in your field, and indexes of books in your field.
By being exact and exhaustive, you will dramatically cut your cost-per-click. “Aspen skiing” and “helicopter skiing” are much cheaper than just “skiing” by itself.
The more exact, the cheaper . . . and the better your ad will do because your message-to-market-match will be stronger. Having lots of “exact match” keywords is key to getting low click prices, higher click-through-rates and many more sales. This is how you dominate little niche markets all across the Web and drill deeply into untapped markets.
Is this easy? No. I don’t teach get-rich-quick. This is a lot of work. But it’s work that will be richly rewarded.
Every keyword or phrase represents a type of customer. Your job is a marketer using Google Ad Words is to meet the customer exactly where the customer is – not to try to pull the customer in some other direction.
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