Keywords are the words or short phrases that businesses embarking on a SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION campaign choose because they want to come up at the top of the natural search results when a potential customer types the phrase in to their search engine.  Starting a SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION campaign without first finding the correct keywords is like starting a journey to somewhere that you have never been without using a map.  How do you know that you are going starting out in the right direction?  More importantly, how would you ever know if you arrived at the right place?

 Thorough keyword research is essential for small businesses who are investing resources into making sure that their website appears in the search engine results for potential customers that are interested in buying their products or services.  Though it sounds intuitive, my experience has taught me that people often make mistakes in choosing the right keywords, and sometimes these mistakes are critical and require time and even more resources to correct.

The most common mistakes that small businesses make when selecting their keywords are those having to do with keyword search TRAFFIC.  First, most businesses (and, unfortunately, some SEO companies) do not take the time to use available tools to find out if keywords actually have any search traffic coming to them.   There are tools (some free, some at a nominal cost) that can tell you how many searches there are each month for any combination of keyword phrases.

For those businesses that do look at the raw search volume numbers, there is a temptation to optimize the website for only those keywords which show massive amounts of monthly searches, and not necessarily those that have modest search volume but are most RELEVANT.  Remember, you cannot make your site valuable to someone who has absolutely no interest in buying your product or service.   Be specific when you start your campaign and start with the very low hanging fruit – for those people specifically looking for your exact product or service.  One is far more likely to have a conversion rate of over 90% of consumers looking for your exact model (“Fender American Vintage Stratocaster ’57) than even 1% of consumers searching for a large broad category term (“electric guitars”).

Also, very broad terms tend to be extremely competitive.  If the level of COMPETITION is too high for a broad term, a very good professional search engine optimization program could make you number one in those search results, but it may take a very large investment in an SEO program and certainly a lot of time.  Many of the same tools that measure search term traffic also measure the competition level for keyword phrases.  A good approach is to keep those broad search terms in mind, but focus on achievable rankings on well trafficked, targeted and relevant keywords in the short term, and this will make it easier to rank high for highly competitive broad terms in the long term.

The best approach is to balance the TRAFFIC, the RELEVANCE, and the COMPETITION in order to find a set of keywords that will work best for YOUR business.  By doing the right amount of research at the beginning of the search engine optimization process, you can save lots of time, money, and frustration later.

In our last blog (August 19^th - Power to the Small and Mid Size Business Owner), we covered the basics of why it is important to take control of your website with a Content Management System (CMS) website.  Once you have designed a site that you really like, the importance of analytical data that measures the behavior of visitors to your site becomes paramount.  As a business owner, or someone who has been put in charge of measuring the success of your company’s website, here are a couple of questions to ask yourself:

Are the analytical results telling me that I am targeting the right geographic area?

If your product or service is sold online locally, regionally, nationally, or even worldwide, you will want to make sure that all of your time, effort, and resources go into bringing in customers who you can actually reach and serve.

How many of my visitors are “unique”, and how many visitors are returning to my site?

It is important to measure “unique visitors” (different IP, or computer addresses) to get a sense of traffic and trends, especially if you are heavily relying on completely new visitors for your business model.  For other types of business models, measuring customer loyalty or an interest in new content from previous visitors is more important.

What are they doing when they get to my site, and how long are they staying?

“Bounce Rate” refers to the ratio of the amount of people who leave after viewing just one page vs. the total amount of visitors.  This number is relative, but it is a good indicator that visitors are finding your home page interesting enough to browse the content.  If you have an e-commerce site, a poor Bounce Rate can be a big red flag, because visitors might be looking at your storefront but not shopping.

What are traffic sources of my visitors?  How are they finding me?

If you are doing any type of paid search marketing (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO), e-mail marketing, or social media marketing, you will want to measure the value of the campaign so that you can get an accurate value for your return on investment (ROI).  There has never been an advertising medium in history that allows business owners to so precisely measure their ROI.

What have I defined as “success”, and how many of my visitors are doing what I want them to do?

First, you need to define a “conversion”.  Is it a sale?  A donation?  An expression of interest?  A lead for a sales team?  Once a conversion is defined, you need to measure how many conversions are coming in from your efforts.  A “Conversion Rate” is the ratio of the number of conversions vs. your total unique visitors.  This number is relative to your business model and industry, but it is valuable to benchmark and compare to your competitors and your own previously collected data.  Businesses create goals based on Conversion Rates and watch mid to long term trends to get a true idea of a website’s success.

There are several ways that business owners can find the analytical data that they need.  There are some professional consulting companies that work exclusively with medium to large sized organizations and specialize in analytics and web strategy.  For most small to medium sized businesses, however, free applications like Google Analytics can provide a wealth of information.  Many times this wealth of information can be like having a map when you are lost at sea, so it is best to get advice and opinions from colleagues in your industry before making decisions based on short term trends or questionable data.  Some marketing companies that serve the small to medium sized business market, like SmartROI Consulting, can also help implement free analytics packages and help interpret the results.

 Without some sort of measurement, you would have no idea how your website is working towards your goals.  It is speaking to you loud and clear.

Are you listening?