The Keys to Sales: Are You Targeting the Right Keywords?

One of the ctones of effective content is that it’s helpful,  entertaining, timely, or some combination of the three. But what’s also  important is that it draws the exact kind of traffic you’re striving for  by targeting the right keywords.

With so many words in so many  languages, plus regional dialects and slang, how do you know which  keywords to target? Where do you begin?

The Keywords You Want vs. The Keywords People Actually Use

One  of the foremost challenges that marketers and site owners face in  driving traffic to websites is choosing the right keywords to target.  Often, they focus on they keywords that are easiest to work with as  opposed to what people are actually searching for. What intuitively  sounds like a focus keyword can actually wind up having less than  optimal search volume, or be a search term that makes sense to you but  isn’t actually being searched for.

Generally speaking, your best  bet is on long-tail keywords instead of vague keywords. If you’re  operating a site for a pizza shop for instance, a very broad term like  “pizza” will get lost in the wheel. In going for longer and more targeted keywords and phrases,  consider: Are people looking for pizza shops in your specific town,  region, or zip code? What kinds of pizza do you specialize in? Long-tail  keywords like “best pizza in Bayonne NJ” or “Chicago-style pizza 07002”  will yield better results.

Creating a keyword map to isolate the  search terms most likely to yield highly-targeted traffic is certainly  an investment that can put data science on your side. Keyword maps,  which are created by scraping search data, show global and local search  volume for different keywords in addition to how difficult it is to  achieve a high ranking for that keyword. You can see which keywords –  especially long-tail keywords with highly specific and/or localized  terms – have achieved high ranks for your competitors. Such insight is  more effective than choosing keywords based on search volume alone.

If you’re unable to make the investment, there are many free simple keyword research tools  that tell you what people are typing into Google, Bing, Amazon, and  others. Keywordtool.io, for instance, tells you all the variations of  what people punch into Google without you having to manually search over  and over.

How People Search and Where They Go

People aren’t just typing words into search engines manually anymore. They’re also utilizing social media and using spoken words to do everything from finding the nearest grocery store to researching important legal questions.

An  integral part of keyword research is accounting for variations not only  in how people type, but also speak, certain words and phrases. Regional  dialects can drastically change the shape of your content as well.  People speaking into their phones to find your business might use  different words, phrases, or languages than what you had in mind to find  what they’re looking for. Keyword data just might dictate that one  group of keywords in a certain dialect has higher search volume than the  keywords you initially targeted.

It’s also prudent to compare the  results of different search engines to see what phrases come up. In  addition to dialectic differences, users can have different behaviors  and expectations that vary by search engine.

Once you’ve found the  right keywords to target, consider where traffic is being directed as a  result of those keywords. Site owners tend to focus solely on a  specific landing page or blog post, when off-site content is also important. Targeting the keyword by subject matter may prove to be more effective than targeting it by location or some other “tail.”

Without  basic data science, it can be difficult to figure out which keywords  you should use. But even if your market research budget isn’t that  robust, there are many simple and free ways to find out what people are  looking for and work that to your advantage. Remember, you want what  people are searching for, not what words are easiest for you to come up  with.