SES London Day 3 - Keyword Remodelling - Social Informing Keyword Research, Keywords Informing Website Design #seslondon

I don’t know about you but to me it seems social is much more on the agenda than any other previous year I’ve attended SES. It’s been mentioned in the context of social search, search engine optimization and today –in the advanced keyword modelling session- social was almost likened to a free marketing focus group. It’s a way to know what your customers are interested in and moreover what words they are using when they are talking about it. Read on for some tips from Ron Jones, CEO of Symetri Internet Marketing and author of ‘Keyword research for search, social and beyond’. Find out how you can structure your keyword research and how your audience keyword insights can inform the design of a higher converting website. 

Phases of keyword research

Phase 1: Brainstorm: find all possible keywords.

Phase 2: Refine – Identify your best performing keywords.

Phase 3: Categorize – Break down your keywords into categories or segments.

Phase 4: Test performance.

Categorizing keywords

There are different ways to categorize your keywords. On Wednesday we attended ‘PPC campaign structure’ on which a blog post written by Efficient Frontier’s Jonathan Beeston will follow soon. Today Jones advised the audience to look at separating keywords into sections by

• Product category
• Product features
• Product attributes
• User intent
• Type of audience
• Price

Using social to fine tune your keywords to your audience

Whilst listening to the talk this morning I could almost see how you could liken social media conversations to expensive marketing focus groups. When I was a student I was once invited to eat chewing gum in front of a group of marketers and asked to talk about what I thought of the taste & packaging etc. Today you can simply tune into your social channels and listen. What do your customers talk about when they talk about your products? What words do they use? Is there specific slang used to refer to it? Words you may not be bidding on? Jones recommends finding out in what context words are used and use this to segment your keywords better and to include any words they may be using you had not thought of yet.

Keyword research informing your site structure

Now is your site up to scratch? This is kind of a funny one as oftentimes as a PPC expert you are presented with a website and set up a PPC campaign structure accordingly but I guess we should sometimes view how we work from various angles and this is a very different but logical angle from my point of view.

Jones suggest that when you know what keywords are most important to you and your users and once you understand what their needs are and how they search that this should inform how your site is laid out and how your landing pages are named. This may not be practical to anyone right at this moment but, when you are re-designing your site or starting from scratch, an interesting idea which may decrease the bounce rate of your site as customers are taken through – what is for them- a very natural and relevant journey. With discovering content in mind it is also to be recommended to create a broader and less deep site structure opposed to a narrow and deep on (i.e. less clicks needed to get to the information wanted). When you are designing the pages also pay attention to where you place the content and make a proto-type site you can look to research how people respond to it.

Serving up content guided by user intent

People search for different kind of words during different parts of their search journey. When they start looking around they are likely to use broad terms such as ‘camera’ when they know a bit better what they want they refine and search for ‘black camera’ and when they made up their mind and are ready to part with their money they’ll search for ‘Panasonic DMC-FZ20’.

Align your landing pages to the user intent. Are they researching – send them to high level informational pages, are they looking for information? Maybe direct them to ‘how-to’ pages. Shopping around? Pass them to category and comparison pages. Ready to buy – the most specific landing page possible from where they can buy, sign up whatever is relevant.

Benefits keyword remodelling

Not totally convinced yet? Those who tried & tested say they’ve noticed the following benefits to this approach:

• Increased keyword ranking
• Higher relevance of results leading to higher conversions
• Increased engagement
• Identified new product and service opportunities
• Offered the opportunity to learn the wants, needs  and intent of the target audience leading to being able to serve the audience better.

A few resources from us

If you are doing keyword research the Microsoft Advertising Tool may help. It’s a free excel plug in which you can download here. There’s also an interesting blog post on keyword research which may be helpful that you can find here.

Other blog posts from SES London 2012:

SES London Day 1: How To Optimize Your Landing Pages for Conversion Happiness #seslondon

SES London Day 2: Social Media Solutions on a Budget at #seslondon

SES London 2012 Day 2: Social Media Marketing - Killer Advertising Tactics #seslondon #socialmedia

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Simone Schuurer – EMEA Community Site Manager