Using Keywords
A nine point plan for growing your website revenue
Introduction 3
1. Expand your keyword lists 4
2. Optimize your current content 6
3. Generate search engine friendly content 8
4. Squeeze every bit of value from pay per click 10
5. Choose keyword rich names 12
6. Optimize your press releases 14
7. Build keyword rich inbound links 16
8. Use keywords in offline advertising 18
9. Identify and exploit niche markets 20
2
Using Keywords www.wordtracker.com
Introduction
The question Wordtracker gets asked most after “what are my best keywords?” is “how do I use my best keywords
on my site?”
Of course there is not a single answer to this question – there are scores of answers. With the right team on board,
there is literally no limit to how you can use keywords to improve the performance of your website.
In this plan, we’ll give you nine ways to use keywords on your website. The list is not exhaustive – invest the time
and you are bound to come up with your own innovative ideas. These nine suggestions will act as a stimulus and
take you past the obvious, and into the realm where you are really profiting from your keyword research.
As Wordtracker has grown and developed over the last eight years, we’ve worked with tens of thousands of website
customers and we’ve seen keyword research mature. Eight years ago keyword research was a tool to feed all sorts
of tricks to ‘fool’ the search engines.
But those days are long gone; the old tricks don’t work anymore, and the complexity and quality of today’s search
engine’s algorithms mean that efforts invested in ‘playing the game’ rather than ‘gaming the system’ will pay
dividends for business websites.
Keyword research is now recognized as a marketing tool – a tool to help marketers better understand customer
behaviour. The classic definition of marketing, “the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating
and satisfying customers needs profitably” is as relevant today as it was when the theory and practice of marketing
emerged as a business discipline from the 1920s onwards.
Now, marketers have a terrific tool for engaging with customers – the world wide web. Search engine tricks have
gone but what remains is the need to engage with customers online.
And what better way to engage with customers than to use their language on your website.
Andy and Mike Mindel
Founders of Wordtracker
3
Using Keywords www.wordtracker.com
1. Expand your keyword lists
• Long tail keywords that give
you depth and allow you to
dominate a particular
market – so, moving from
‘chocolate’ to ‘chocolate
gifts’ to ‘corporate
chocolate gifts’.
• Related keywords that allow
you to broaden the range
of market sectors that you
can target. So if, you’re
selling gourmet chocolate,
you may find opportunities
The objective of a business website in related keywords such as
is to attract potential buyers and ‘truffles’, ‘fudge’ or ‘luxury
convert them into paying foods’. Related keywords
customers. can make you aware of
markets that you might
Relevant keywords allow you to fulfil now have considered.
this primary objective. They help
you attract relevant traffic that want So in building your online business,
to buy the types of products you you need to make sure you have an
have to offer. effective sales process in place. Do
that and you will have real benefit
The more relevant keywords that from expanding your keyword lists.
Rather than just you rank well for, the more business
concentrating on the top you will do. So by constantly You need to convert people who
expanding your keyword lists, you arrive at your website into paying
terms, look for value is
expand the potential market for customers. If you don’t do that,
the longer tail of
your business. then it doesn’t matter how
keywords that might extensive you keyword research is,
appear low, but still offer There are two fundamental ways of or how effective your optimization
profitable opportunities expanding your keyword lists: efforts are in drawing new visitors to
your website. If you can’t convert a
4
visitor into a customer then your per month. terms, look for value in the
efforts will be doomed to failure. • With a conversion rate of longer tail of keywords that
3%, those 20 keywords may appear low, but still
Only when you have got an effective bring you 720 paying offer profitable
sales process can you get the real customers every month. opportunities.
benefit from expanding your Now, if you could find
keyword lists. another 20 keywords (iv) Look for niche or emerging
that perform just as well, markets that you might be
And when you have that sales then you could add another able to identify before your
process in place, like any business 720 customers, giving competitors do.
you will want to expand. You could you a total of 3,720
add new product lines, associated customers per month – Keyword research is an ongoing
products and other ways to expand an increase of 24% process and you should always be
your potential income from each of adding to your keyword lists. As you
the customers you attract. And if you could achieve this growth learn more about the words your
once, could you do it again? Of customers use to search, you’ll be in
However, before you embark on the course, the answer to that depends a better position to see and exploit
path of product development you on the potential in your new opportunities.
need to be sure that you are getting marketplace but the underlying
maximum return from what you principle is that good keywords will
have already. bring additional revenue to your
website and you really can’t get too
Let’s suppose you’ve got a website many of them.
that performs well – you get 100,000
unique visitors per month and you Here are four strategies to consider:
have a conversion rate of 3%. That
equates to 3,000 paying customers (i) Find out how your top
per month. Not a bad business keywords are used inside
situation to be in. longer phrases. ‘Business
Now look at your log files. From telephone’ also appears in
these you see that 30% of your ‘business telephone system’
traffic comes from search engines. and ‘small business
Dig a little deeper and you find that telephone system’.
80% of this comes from around 20
good keywords. Here’s a quick (ii) Look for related keywords –
calculation of what this means: for ‘business telephone’
related keywords are ‘voice
• 30% of your traffic comes over ip’, ‘voip phone
from search engines so systems’ and ‘internet
that’s 30,000 unique visitors telephony’.
per month. 80% of these
come from your top 20 (iii) Rather than just
keywords – that’s 24,000 concentrating on the top