For marketers, getting found on search engines begins with finding the right keywords to target by way of an in-depth knowledge of their businesses, competitors and, most importantly, their customers. Setting up strategies to prioritize and plan for effective keyword development provides marketers with a proven method to find success on search engines and attract the intended audience.
Once keyword planning begins, it's important to identify and evaluate which keywords will be most effective to achieve the goals for a given search campaign. To hone in on the most valuable keywords and inform the most effective strategies, marketers must understand the searcher's journey within the context of the brand itself and top competitors.
1. Company Insights
Before looking outwardly to build keyword strategies, take an inward look at company messaging and goals. For example, marketers should evaluate which fundamental categories their brands fall into to build a prioritized keyword list that will result in the most traffic and the most conversions on terms where the company will profit the most. Likewise, surveying product or promotional marketing information and seasonal calendars of importance to a brand will likely generate priority keywords that support client sales, new campaigns and offline marketing initiatives.
While mining a company's products and services helps determine some mainstream keywords to target, using obscure product and category names just because they represent the terminology used internally doesn't help SEO performance. It's also important not to overlook variations or misspellings of keywords where potential may be high. We'll discuss later how opportunity exists in mostly untapped micro-strategies that capitalize on niche terminology to take results even higher. In the meantime, many marketers embrace the mainstream terminology most commonly used by shoppers.
2. Understand the Searcher
Listening to customers is one of the most effective ways to incorporate key themes into a search campaign. Marketers can use social listening to gain insight into customer behavior and thinking around their brands or product categories. Social listening helps advertisers identify what customers are saying about their products and what terminology customers are using when speaking about their brand and products—all of which provides insights that enable marketers to develop keywords based on consumer language. These insights increase the relevancy and effectiveness of search campaigns and creative messaging.
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