Determining the best keywords for paid search initiatives

With more consumers performing searches online, sites such as Google and Bing have quickly become essential to navigating the internet. According to comScore, more than 16 billion searches were conducted in the month of February alone. If entrepreneurs want to drive traffic to their small business websites, they’ll need to leverage these portals as a part of their marketing initiatives.

One of the best ways to generate traffic is through paid search. While this strategy costs money, as opposed to search engine optimization, which can generally be done for free by the website owner, paid search can help raise brand awareness and drive short-term traffic.

As business owners engage in paid search campaigns, it’s crucial that they develop a comprehensive list of keywords. These keywords act as triggers for their paid search advertisements – whenever a consumer types a related phrase or term, the ad will be displayed to the searcher, helping the company reach relevant prospects.

“Arguably, one of the most important basics of search marketing is selecting the right keywords,” Julie Batten, a search marketing expert, wrote for ClickZ.

Determining the best keywords

Business owners understand their products and services in a completely different way than their customers. For example, entrepreneurs may know their products by a number or SKU, while consumers may have developed their own names or terms for products. This leads to several challenges when it comes to determining which keywords should be a focus of search marketing campaigns.

Obviously, the best solution to this problem would be to think like a customer. However, even this can be challenging. As Batten notes, entrepreneurs may be better off by doing a bit of market research and asking customers themselves how they would describe companies’ products to friends and family members. This can be done in two ways: asking customers directly or analyzing data.

Most businesses have some sort of customer satisfaction survey. If entrepreneurs are trying to figure out how customers describe their products, they could simply add a question to that survey. To get the best results, business owners should offer incentives for completed surveys.

The other way businesses can develop their paid search strategies is by using their webmaster analytics tools. These reports will often show which keywords consumers are searching on portals to get to a website. If these keywords make sense for a company, entrepreneurs may want to consider prioritizing these terms in their search strategies.

Refining keyword selection

By polling customers and using analytical data, businesses will undoubtedly discover a variety of new keywords. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that these will all be good keywords to use. Once entrepreneurs have devised a comprehensive list of keywords, they will need to further refine them.

There are a number of ways companies can do this. First, they should eliminate any broad or vague keywords. For example, if a business sells MP3 players, it may want to consider bidding on a specific brand, not MP3 players in general. Similarly, they should avoid using any acronyms that could stand for something else. If a software company made a product called Computer Information Application, bidding on the term “CIA” may not be the best idea.

“The best way to determine whether a keyword makes sense or not is to think about relevancy and specificity – if you typed this term into the search engine, what are the various types of products or services you might expect to see in the results?” asks Batten. “If you can count more than a few, it might not be specific or relevant enough of a keyword.”

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