Bretts Marketing Bytes

Key Phrases or Keywords are at the heart of  every SEO campaign.  However, it is commonly the most over looked piece of the SEO puzzle. In this post I am going to share some of my ideas on how to choose the best key phrases for your campaigns.

Below I have outlined the phases that you will go through when determining key phrases for your campaigns. I would recommend using a spreadsheet program such as Excel to do this effectively.

Phase 1 – Brainstorm

Brainstorm about 10 -20 key phrases that reflect your products or services. It’s okay to have broad terms at this point as we will narrow them down later.  Examples: Sponge Candy or Crossword Puzzle Gifts. We will later add more descriptive words to these to make them more targeted. Example: Buy Sponge Candy Online

Phase 2 -Check the quality of your terms

Next we will check the quality of the terms. In order to do this, you will go into Google and type your terms in the search box. Check the results. If your competitor shows up or other related items that relate to your business, then you know that it is a quality relevant term. If it is a bunch of definitions or other mumbo jumbo that shows up, it is most likely not a good key phrase. In this case you should add words to the key phrase to make it more descriptive. Example: If you were a college and you first came up with the general  term MBA and got a bunch of definitions on what an MBA is, you should consider adding more descriptive words ending up with something like this, Accelerated MBA Program . People often think in broad terms, but the truth is more targeted descriptive terms are better. Refine all of your terms so that they are good quality terms. You should now have high quality  key phrases with the search volume next to it.

What about GEO targeting?

If you are Geographically targeting a certain region, now is the time to put regions in to make the keywords more descriptive. For Example: If you are a benefits company who works specifically in Buffalo NY and your original brainstormed keyword was Health Benefits you should now end up with something like this,  Health Benefits Buffalo NY. The same  company could do the same thing for  Dental Insurance by targeting the term Dental Insurance Buffalo NY .

Phase 3 – Check Search Volume

Using the Google Adwords keyword tool, check the search volume for each of you refined quality terms.  Write this number down next to each term. If there is no search volume, simply type zero. Note: Most GEO targeted terms will have little to no search volume.

Phase 4 – Check the  competitiveness of your terms

Next you will check the competitiveness of each  key phrase. In order to do this you will use Google in the same way that you checked quality.  This time you you will write down the number in the top right of the Google results page that tells you how many results come up for that particular term. This number will determine how competitive your key phrase is and how hard it is going to be to rank for it.  Example: The term staff augmentation only has 586,000 other sites that show up in the search results page. This tells us that it will be easier to rank than say, direct placement services which has 5 million results.

Phase 5 – Determine the most relevant terms

Next look through your terms and decide which ones are most relevant to your business. This is really a judgment call on your part. No one can tell you this but you. Some things to think about are: Will you feel comfortable writing about this term in your page copy? Is this term targeted toward what you do? Keep the terms that are highly relevant and get rid of the rest.

Phase 6 – Refine your terms based on the Magic formula

The last phase of refining your key phrases  is kind of a balancing act. The magic formula is ” High Search volume, High Relevance, Low competitiveness. ” Go through each of your phrases using this formula and eliminate the ones that do not fit the model. Note: If  your terms have low search volume but are very relevant it is worth keeping them. An example of this is GEO targets.

Good luck!