Keyword Analysis and Web Promotion - The Value
of Niches
Published: 25th of March 2007
The first step in any competent web promotion campaign
is invariably a detailed keyword analysis programme to
establish which search terms are the most potentially
productive for any given market sector. Indeed, without
a comprehensive record of the most popular keyword-phrases,
any search engine optimisation regime will ultimately
lack the necessary focus to achieve optimal results.
But effective keyword analysis and web promotion are
about more than just search volume.
If promoters only concentrate on high-volume search terms,
more or less sidelining ‘lesser’ words and
phrases, they are missing out on a potentially profitable
source of enquiries. These niche keywords, despite producing
fewer visitors, will often yield a far greater proportion
of enquiries since they are far more ‘targeted’ than
their more commonly used cousins.
Why would popular keywords produce a lower proportion
of customer enquiries than less commonly used niche keywords?
We will take the tried and tested ‘Blue Widgets’ key-phrase,
used in other articles to illustrate the overall value
of lower volume search terms.
Let’s say that the most commonly searched for keyword
in your market is ‘Blue Widgets’, with an
average monthly global search volume of 40,000, whereas
the term ‘Remote-controlled Blue Widgets for sale’ only
has a monthly volume of 3,000. Based on the sheer number
of searches carried out each month, there is no doubt
as to which key-phrase will produce the greater number
of visitors if successfully promoted.
Unless your web site income is driven by advertising
revenue however, you will not only be concerned about
visitor numbers, but also customer enquiries and successful
sales conversions. After all, who cares if your web site
gets a hundred thousand visitors, but none of them choose
to buy anything from you?
Keyword analysis and web promotion are not about visitor
numbers, but conversion rates. Which brings us back to
our example; whilst the keyword-phrase ‘Blue Widgets’ may
produce a high number of visitors; it is quite a general
term and will thus attract a large proportion of ‘browsers’,
visitors not really interested in buying but merely gathering
information or killing time.
By contrast, the term ‘Remote-controlled Blue Widgets
for sale’ is a focussed keyword-phrase. In most
cases, users making a search like this are already committed
to making a purchase and are merely looking for the right
outlet to buy from.
Therefore, whilst you may get a customer enquiry for
every hundred ‘Blue Widgets’ visitors, you
are likely to get one enquiry per ten visitors (or even
better) for the lower-volume search term, since you don’t
have to convince them to make a purchase in the first
place, merely that your web site is the right place for
them to buy from.
So before you dismiss lower volume search terms as an
important part of your keyword analysis and web promotion
efforts, you might want to think about more than sheer
visitor numbers.
Keyword Analysis and Web Promotion are about more
than visitor numbers
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