Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [73]
Learn What Searchers Want
In analysis of the demand, using the previous Figure 6-18, it is interesting to see that there are significantly more searches for 1957 corvette parts and accessories than 1975 corvette parts and accessories. This could be an indicator of many things and could be used to compare to market research data, current purchasing trends, and any annual purchasing trends.
Keyword research is much more than finding terms for optimization. It is also a window into searcher intent and market trends. Finding these trends can help businesses find a competitive edge by adding an additional facet to their market research. By viewing search trends throughout the year and also the content of those trends, companies can get an understanding not previously found through typical market data.
Many companies are using old market data to understand trends, and the search trend data is beginning to show that with the Internet, behaviors change. One business in particular (we’ll call them “Company X”) was able to change its offline marketing campaign, which typically kicked off in April. By researching keywords and their trends, they found that their business-to-business prospects were searching for their products two to three months prior to the “regular” marketing schedule. By moving up the marketing schedule to coincide with the research that was being done by their prospects, Company X was able to significantly increase sales by meeting the searchers in an offline direct mail campaign that matched the online search behavior.
Find Alternative Phrasings
The next stage of organizing keywords is to find alternative spellings, nicknames, slang terms, or shortened versions of words. In the case of Corvettes, the term vette is also a search term that could not be overlooked (see Figure 6-20).
This also shows the value of understanding your audience enough to find the shortened or abbreviated words within the market. In most cases, one can find the alternative versions or misspellings by researching a “root” phrase. In this case, a root phrase would be vette, which would then show all the misspellings and variations that contain the root vette. I have also found this to be a particularly effective method of capturing all the various misspellings of searches for the word chandelier—by first searching on the keyword root chand.
By finding the most commonly used root letters that are spelled correctly, you can gather most of the referrals. I find that there are always some that slip through. If you still need to be convinced, take a look at the hundreds of misspellings of the name Britney Spears that Google gathered for only three months: labs.google.com/britney.html.
In this case, we found significantly different behavior being shown through the search terms of those searchers using the term vette. The searchers using the abbreviated phrase tended to be focused on the experience of the Corvette—magazines, pictures, and performance—but not concerned about parts, accessories, or engine parts. They were not as targeted as the conventional spelling of the phrase, and knowing this trend helps in understanding the different motivations of the searcher.
This is another area where the comparison of behavior based on the search term will be an important analysis. As always, ranking for terms is not the goal; profit is the goal, so rankings should be a consideration, but the primary measurement is the profit-generating capability of those terms and focusing on the most profitable terms, not the ones that simply rank well.
Figure 6-20: Find the other terms being used in your niche.
Start Optimizing
Now, with your keyword-performance spreadsheets nearby, you have a guide to optimizing your pages, based on the content, to meet the needs of the searcher. The owner of a Corvette-parts website would be able to use the spreadsheets’ content to develop phrases based on popular searches and trends. If there is a page about the 1957 Corvette, then the prefix columns, anchor term, and suffix terms will provide