Keyword Basics
Using Ones that Trigger Sales

Creating a successful for-profit website revolves almost exclusively around finding and strategically placing strong keywords. In today’s world, success in search engine marketing is directly related to your understanding of keywords.

Keywords, or key phrases, are defined as words or phrases someone uses in online searches for information. There are three types of online searchers: academic research, product research or product purchase. Be aware that the product purchase web search is the only one that consistently leads to making sales.

Professional search engine marketers (SEM’s) first priority is to identify keywords customers use when they’re ready to buy

These are the keywords, if used properly, that result in more sales. A lot of times, they are quite competitive – but can be quite lucrative as well. A site may use keywords tempered for all three kinds of searchers – again, only the product purchase web search that can statistically point to making sales.

Secondary focus for SEMs is working keywords into informational pages that lead users to sales pages as they move from the product research phase to the product purchase phase. After determining which keywords searchers use to research and which ones they use to make a purchase, professional SEM’s engage in a practice called reverse-engineering. This process is where they build their “buy” keyword phrase pages before broadening their focus to build their informational pages.

For instance, someone may be looking for a digital camera…which is a pretty general keyword that brings up a lot of results. They search for a while and determine they’re looking for a “point and shoot” digital camera, and come across the Canon Elph, a camera with all of the features they’re looking for.

A savvy web shopper then types in a search for “Canon Elph best price” - a totally different set of results appear, but this time, the searcher is now in the product purchase phase and ready to buy. The informational pages they visited on their first search prepared them for the sale, but were shut out in the end.

So, in the end, your pages need to rank extremely well for the buy keyword phrases for your market – target them first and make sure your pages rank well for those pages before building out your informational pages to target those searchers as well.

About SEO Advantage^®

Led by Stone Reuning, SEO Advantage®, Inc. is an online marketing and search engine optimization firm that helps businesses turn their web presence into a powerful revenue generation medium. Our clients enjoy dominance on Google, Yahoo and Bing through a suite of unique pay-for-performance search engine optimization and online marketing services implemented by a multidisciplinary team of SEO engineers, copywriters and web designers. You'll find us referenced in books such as "Writing Web-Based Advertising Copy to Get the Sale" and the BusinessWeek bestseller "The New Rules of Marketing & PR," as well as the popular ebook "The Small Business Blogging Blueprint." Find out more today by calling us at 1-800-366-1639 or email us here.