It's All in How You Say It
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Your own keyword analytics data is the most valuable marketing asset of your company, says WordStream’s Larry Kim in an article at MarketingProfs. The data contained in the keyword report from your Web-analytics application—which tells you how people are finding your site through paid and organic search—comprise a far more effective targeting vehicle than, say, customer surveys and demographics, he notes. Here's why:
- They're more accurate. Keywords reveal your customers’ specific desires and pain points.
- They provide more insight. With accurate data, you can calculate the ROI for different keyword niches, determining which customer segmentations to pursue and in what order.
- They're usable. "Your keyword taxonomy is a gold mine of data that you can directly rely on to build and optimize PPC and SEO efforts," he notes.
To help you start turning your keyword data into real value, Kim offers tips like these:
- Use traditional tools like the Google Keyword Tool to seed your keyword list. However, Kim advises that you need to migrate away from this initial list by "refactoring new keyword opportunities, as well as actual click and performance data, derived from your keyword report."
- Consider tools such as Google Analytics or WordStream. These "more robust" tools can help reveal which keywords are driving traffic and conversions, he notes.
- Bid more aggressively on keywords that convert. Hunt for long-tail variations of those terms to expand your paid efforts.
The Po!nt: Set a high standard, and write to it. Growing your proprietary keyword list, and applying what you learn from the resulting data can help better your targeting and generate more traffic, leads and conversions.
Source: MarketingProfs. Click here to read more.
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Comments
Keyword analytics are invaluable because they track behavior rather than intentions--something that was hard to do in the past. The risk, however, is that those who come to your site may not be in your target audience. For example, you may want to attract purchasers but really be attracting students. Hence, the importance of tying keywords to conversions that indicate that visitors are progressing through their buying process.
That said, I believe that qualitative research about past behavior can often yield deeper, more useful insights as to what triggered the behavior (which is often something that happened offline or in the distant past.
The good news is that it's not an either/or decision. The goal is to use multiple tools to get the information you need to accelerate sales.