Internet Marketing – Keyword Competitiveness
Posted on 11. Nov, 2009 by GrooveAdmin in Keyword Research
Not all search terms are equal for generating revenue for an online business. Some terms are for people researching how to do things at home while others represent information searchs for details on a particular product the searcher already owns. What we need to find are keywords that represent searches to BUY a product in sufficient volume to market a business arond them. Also some keywords may represent buyers intent but are so competitive that it may not be worth your time, resources, and budget to pursue them. So the things that we need to consider when researching a keyword are:
1. Search Volume
2. Buyers Intent behind that keyword.
3. Search Term Competitiveness.
4. Your Marketing Time, Resources, and Money.
Internet Marketing Keyword Analysis – Search Volume
Search volume simply put is how many people search for your term in a given period of time, normally a month. We are going to focus on the needs of a small business with under $500,000 in revenue since the resources and marketing requirements differ from a larger organization. When you are on a shoestring budget you definitely need to look for the low hanging fruit. What is ‘low hanging fruit’ from the perspective of search volume? We would recommend a minimum search volume of atleast 1,000 searches a month which will break down to about 30 a day. The nice thing about Market Samurai is it lets you set that as your floor and it will not show you results below that number.
Internet Marketing Keyword Analysis – Buyers Intent
As we have said before not all keywords no matter how good the search volume or other metrics are will be good to make a sale. This is one of the hardest lessons to learn in internet marketing training programs by those soaking up the knowledge. If you look at the associated image you will see the keyphrase “used golf clubs”. While otherwise the search metrics are good on this term, people buying used anything are usually not looking to buy a new product. You might get lucky and upsell them to a new product but your conversion rate, sales to searches, will be low on that term when compared against the other terms which is not the low hanging fruit we are looking for. We will move on from this key phrase but keep it on the secondary list for future efforts. So think about keywords and the people behind them using that word to find something. You need to divine their buying intent with that word!
Internet Marketing Keyword Analysis – Search Term Competitiveness
Determining what level of competition there is for a keyword is important from several different aspects. A keyword with zero competition is often not a direct buying keyword. A keyword with 40 adwords ads targeted against it is likely very competitive to rank for so is not a piece of low hanging fruit in the search marketing world. Another indication of competitiveness is a high amount of competing search pages. You can test for this in google by enclosing the search (as in the image below) in quotations like “Golf Clubs”. In Market Samurai it is the column SEOC. Low hanging fruit for a startup web business would be anything below 150,000 competitive pages. What this means is it will be very easy for you to rank on page one Google for a term with those competitive pages if you follow our guidelines within 30 days.
As we referenced earlier, Adwords targeted at a keyword is also a good indication of competitiveness. You want to see atleast 5 to 10 adwords placement against a term. 10-20 is the sweet spot. More than that you are probably in a hyper competitive market for which there will be other indications as well.
Internet Marketing – Your Time, Resources, and Money
I sat down with several CEO’s of good size companies and asked them what they thought was important to a startup. Unequivocally every single one said “Hold on to your money as long as you can” followed by “Make Alliances” and “Hire Smart People”. Small business owners will generally tell you to spend money when you need to spend it, but don’t waste it. So we are telling you always go after the low hanging fruit. There is plenty of money to be made right there with the right set of keywords.
In respect to “Make Alliances” you need to find people with non-competitive businesses that you can learn from. Join your local chamber of commerce and look for the small business owners. Many small business owners where multiple hats in an organization and they will have many nuggets of good advice to share if you listen. When you find them make it a point to develop a relationship with them and stay in touch. Try to send them some business. It will pay dividends for you.
“Hire Smart People” speaks for itself. Andrew Carnegie made a career out of this and his business empire became huge. Today when people try to run virtual businesses it is just as relevant for contractors that you hire or if you outsoucre a business function like marketing, payroll, hr, etc.
