Do You Know the Value of Your Keywords?

In the world of Internet Marketing we have a distinct advantage over other mediums. Our analytics programs allow us to measure the value, success or lack of success of our work directly from our consumers almost instantly. Other advertising efforts are not as fortunate. Traditional advertising takes previous consumer data, analyzes trends and sets up focus groups in order to find that "sweet spot." Online marketers know it is important to convey the value of our work to our clients and educate them about why we make the design, copywriting and keyword choices we do. Search engine marketing professionals use numerous tools when determining how to proceed with the focus of a site.

Let's assume client a wants a full site, start to finish, to compete in a competitive online market. Your fantastic design team has whipped up a beautiful, user-friendly, spider-friendly site with all sorts of "sticky" features to drive the consumer to that final sale. But it's up to your SEO/PPC team to make sure the consumer can find your site in the first place. "No problem" you think, "I'll use one of the many keyword tools available in the industry to pick the most valued terms out there, and based on relevancy to my client's market we'll get them to 1st page in no time."

That's a good start, but how will you keep them on that first page? With those fantastic analytics tools we mentioned earlier. Don't be fooled into thinking you can maintain number one rankings in a competitive market using just a "Wordtracker" score alone. A truly effective long-term Internet marketing campaign in a competitive market must be monitored on a recurring basis to understand the traffic coming to that site. What word brought them here? What page did they come in on? Did they make it to a conversion point? These are questions that you should be answering for your clients. These are also the things that will justify your keyword efforts, or show where your targeted campaign may be needing help. Measure those seasonal trends if they apply to your industry. Make sure your pay per click campaign isn't wasting effort on useless terms.

Just because Wordtracker doesn't think your term has value, a program like WebTrends or even Google Analytics can show what searched phrases are driving traffic to your site (or on to conversions if your analytics tools offer that level of reporting). This is more valuable to your client than any "score" that some tool can provide. With plenty of due diligence you can sift through all that boring traffic and trend data to make sure you’re covering all the bases for your site. You may even come across that long tail diamond in the rough that will turn all those visitors into the conversions your client is paying you for.