The most important first step when conducting any type of search engine marketing is to gain an understanding of what words and phrases people are using on the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN.  Once you understand what phrases are being used they will form the building blocks of your Web site structure and search engine marketing campaign.

There are a series of steps that you need to go through to gain an initial understanding of what key phrases will finally be targeted, the first of which is a series of brainstorming sessions.  We generally like to focus on three separate groups of people when it comes to brainstorming keyword phrases.

• Group 1: You and your employees
• Group 2: eMedia Worx staff (or your search engine marketers)
• Group 3: Focus group based on your target audience

These groups allow you to quickly cover a pretty broad and diverse audience that will have different experiences to draw on when it comes to your industry.

To get the process moving you will need you to organise some time with your key staff members to brainstorm what phrases you think that people will be entering into search engines to find information related to your business.  You will want your staff members thinking about keywords before they come to the meeting and I would suggest having them conduct their own research beforehand. As a guide I would recommend that you make sure that they explore phrases of at least 2-3 words in length and have them grouped in topic areas (such as products and/or services).

It’s important to do your keyword brainstorming before heading over to any of the keyword tools such as WordTracker and Keyword Discovery as they will only narrow your thought process at this early stage. Once you have completed your lists it is then that you should expand and evaluate your keyword phrase selections by using these great tools.

Keyword Brainstorming Tips

Don’t judge keyword effectiveness at this stage.  You really don’t want to crush your creative thinking by trying to evaluate the effectiveness of each phrase at this stage. Think laterally and explore all opportunities no matter how crazy they sound at first.

Create a group of lists not just one list.  Instead of focusing on one big long list try creating a number of lists based on different groupings such as products, services, industry sectors etc.

Create a specific industry related keyword list.  It is easy to fall into the trap of using industry jargon and assume that your customers will speak the same language, when more than likely they don’t.  On the other hand it is also important not to ignore this jargon, so I believe it’s a good idea to create a list of industry keywords early in your brainstorming session so that you can quickly identify your industry terms and focus everybody’s attention on them.  It also helps to get them out your system so evaluate if they have a broader reach or not.

Create Keyword Lists Based on Personas.  Before you start compiling any type of keyword list make sure you have your target audience at the forefront of your mind.  The best way to do this is to actually create personas of your ideal customers (and make sure that you give them a name). 

For example, Barry Kirk is a managing director who is extremely time poor and an advanced Internet user.  He is likely to know exactly what he is looking for, has probably already researched the subject and will tailor a search query that is quite long and detailed.

Focus on acronyms and their validity.  Every industry has acronyms that your customers may or may not be aware of.  In a lot of cases these acronyms can have completely different meanings depending on the industry.  Make sure that you identify your acronyms but at the same time be aware of their relevance outside your particular industry.  You may also need to explore modified search queries that include your acronym (e.g. “CPA financial advice”).

Ridding yourself of the mental block!  There is no doubt that while compiling your lists that you will have moments when your brain just doesn’t seem to work.  There are a number of techniques that you could use to get past these mental blocks, some of which may include using a thesaurus, reading existing sales collateral, looking at industry literature such as magazines and books, and studying (not pinching) your competitions Web sites copy.

Tapping into your existing customers.  Customers are a great source of keyword research and they are unlikely to be affected from being too close to the industry (think back to the jargon) and can provide you with some awesome alternative keywords.  There are plenty of ways to extract this data from customers including e-mail, a quick phone call or an online survey (make sure you have an incentive).  You can also look to your sales team who are at the coalface and are sure to have an interesting perspective on what keyword you should be selecting.

The most important thing to remember when brainstorming is to make sure that you don’t lock yourself into a closed mindset and that you explore all types of alternative terminology.  It never ceases to amaze me what people type into search engines to find Web sites so don’t be frightened to throw something out there, it may just be your best selling keyword.

I have been using Internet Explorer 7 for a month or two now and am really enjoying the built-in RSS feed subscription tool.  I know I know, I often hear — “You must be the only Web professional I know that isn’t using Firefox!!” (Many of you may ask why I am using IE7?  well the reason is pretty straightforward, I totally rely on using Dragon NaturallySpeaking for typing and I find it just doesn’t work too well on Firefox at the moment.)

Anyway I digress.  Recently I have been viewing plenty of commentary talking up the merits of Google Reader so I have decided that I will give it a test run for a week or two.

First thing that I did was to sign on and take a quick look around Google Reader.  I have never really been one for instructions so decided to head straight over to begin adding subscriptions and soon realised that I have way too many to warrant typing them in.  My dilemma was how the hell do I export my RSS feeds from IE7? I couldn’t remember seeing any functionality that would allow this in my travels around the browser.

It turns out that it is pretty simple:

Go to the add favourites icon

Select the option to import and export favourites

In the following wizard choose the option to export feeds

Save the file to an easy location to remember

Close the Wizard

That’s about it.  All that I need to do now is go to Google reader and import the file that I have just saved with all my feed information.

Recent years has seen mainstream adoption of quality web analytics applications, which has resulted in them having a critical role in the decision-making of online marketing spends. Any serious e-commerce merchants will conduct routine investigations into their Web sites ability to generate online sales, and more importantly what channels are best converting visitors into sales.

A long-time problem that many service-based business owners face is their ability to measure offline sales and leads that originate from their online marketing efforts.  Unless the business owner is diligent in probing the caller about how they found them they will have no idea of what marketing initiatives are driving a positive ROI.

A recent MarketingSherpa case study focused on the success of Jenny Craig’s ability to use “Click to Call” as a way to drive prospects to their call centre and retail outlets. Jenny Craig used a Click to Call tool (sometimes known as Web to Phone) to drive direct sales from their website, and at the same time initiated a sales cycle that gave them the ability to monitor offline conversions.

After a careful marketing analysis on improving sales, they were able to implement a system whereby their website visitors were able to request an immediate call from a service representative in their area.  Jenny Craig over the years has resisted conducting transactions online, as they did not want to abandon the in person and over the phone relationship between clients and consultants.

Not only does Click to Call allow you to monitor and improve online marketing initiatives, it also provides an easy way for potential customers to contact you, which has to have a strong positive impact on your Web site conversion rate.  The Jenny Craig Case study states that there conversions were seen to be about twice as high using this system.

If you are interested in a solution that allows you to better monitor your offline conversions keep an eye out for an upcoming post where we start evaluating a couple of options.