Every business is always looking for that edge in their industry. However, online marketing is quickly becoming a saturated market that requires more and more precise moves in order to be successful. The techniques that work for one business will not necessarily work for another, but there are some overarching tenets that every business owner can subscribe to.
One of the best things to remember is to master the long tail keyword. If you do not know what the phrase “long tail keyword” means, you can substitute “keyphrase” and have approximately the same meaning. You are using the relatively new ability of the major search engines to find pages that are relevant to a string of related words rather than single words at a time.
Most of the marketing that can be done successfully on single word keywords has already been saturated by multinational corporations with million dollar marketing budgets. No matter how good your product or your SEM is, you most likely can not compete with this much money. However, no one searches for businesses by single phrase keywords any more!
The secret to success in the search engine optimization and search engine marketing world of today is to optimize your web site to the exact phrase that a customer might type into a search engine query box. If you can match your niche to the correct keyphrase, the world will be yours one customer at a time.
Although you will likely be seen by a smaller audience by targeting long tail keywords, the people that you do reach will be much more likely to purchase for you. If you do not see your conversion rates go up when you begin targeting certain keyphrases, then you have either targeted the wrong phrase or your niche does not match the keyphrase that you are targeting. This leads to the first step in successful keyword targeting:
Before you begin randomly testing keyphrases, focus on identifying your audience.
Your current audience will give you all of the answers that you will need if you listen to them. If you have enough data from previous sales, click throughs and web site visits, you may be able to determine the correct course of action from the search engine analytics that you have already amassed. If you are a newer business, you will have to take a more old school route.
Performing a focus group or doing surveys for foot traffic is a great way to get some answers to these questions: 1. Why do your customers patronize your customers rather than your competitors? 2. What advantages does this business have over other companies in the industry?
Once you have identified this audience, juxtapose their answers with the keyphrases that are searched in the major search engines. If they have not given you the exact phrases that you need, there will definitely be phrases that are close.
Be sure to optimize for phrases that you actually have a competitive advantage in, or your bounce rate is sure to skyrocket.
