High Volume Search Phrases vs. Low Hanging Fruit.

If you are actively involved in search engine marketing or if you are planning to be, you will be spending time developing your keyword strategy.

Are you going to target the high volume keywords that are very competitive or are you going to go after lower volume phrases that you can rank highly for more quickly and easily?

It’s tempting, when you are doing keyword research (see keyword research links below), to go for the keywords that have the highest search volume.  However, if you are in a competitive industry, this can prove to be time consuming and even costly.  Contrary to popular belief, organic search rankings are not free.  There is a significant investment in time required.  Sometimes actual hard costs are involved; if you want to engage in a good link building campaign, hire SEO experts, etc.

When it comes to SEM, keyword buys on Google AdWords or other ad networks can get expensive.  For example, to bid on a highly competitive keyword, it can cost 10x – 25x per click more than a low volume search term.

Here’s a real-life example of what I have been describing.  My company currently ranks #1 (Google organic search) for a search term that isn’t extremely competitive in our industry.  However, it delivers the most traffic out of all the search terms we rank for and it converts at a high rate.  Contrast this with a highly coveted search term in our industry that we show up for on the 2nd page of Google for (it was the 3rd page).  Even though this keyword phrase gets 10x to 15x more search volume, it delivers a fraction of the traffic to our site because we aren’t in the top ten Google rankings.

Let’s take a look at these same keywords for our paid search campaign on Google AdWords.  The lower volume term costs us 1/2 the per click price of the higher volume term.  Did I mention that the lower volume phrase converts better?

If you are a smaller player in your industry, you may not need the high volume web traffic that the larger companies do.  They are probably ignoring less searched keywords that could really give your business a boost!

If you take the time to do the research, you will most likely find some decent keywords that cost 10 – 50 cents per click – a real bargain.  Do the research, be creative and reap the benefits.

Free Keyword Research Tools

• SEOBook.com Keyword Suggestion Tool – free to use if you opt-in to the email list.
• Google AdWords Keyword Tool
• Google Search-based Keyword Tool
• Wordtracker – paid service but they offer a limited free version
• KeywordSpy – paid service but they have a Free Trial and offer some free keyword searches
• SpyFu – paid service but they offer some free searches with limited information

Online marketing terms used in this post defined

• SEO - Search Engine Optimization. Organic/natural search rankings (non-paid).
• SEM – Search Engine Marketing. Paid search marketing, such as Google AdWords.
• Link building – The process of getting external links (backlinks) to your site.

Google is clearly continuing to dominate the search engine market.  Nielsen Online reported this month that Google has a 64.2% share of the search market, with Yahoo trailing in second with a 15.8% share of U.S. searches.

Top Search Providers for March 2009

Top Search Providers for March 2009 from Nielsen Online

I’m not saying to ignore the smaller search engines as they may be less competitive and easier to rank higher on.  However, focusing your search engine optimization and search engine marketing time and efforts on Google will definitely give you the best exposure.

Source:  Nielsen Online – http://www.nielsen-online.com/pr/pr_090410.pdf

Do your Google Adwords ads, banner ads, e-mail marketing campaigns, etc. point your visitor to your homepage?  If so, you need to read this blog post.

It’s important to have continuity between your ads and the page visitors first enter your site.  We’ve all clicked on ads that promoted a specific product or a special offer only to be driven to the company’s homepage that has no mention of that offer or product.  It’s frustrating and most people won’t take the time to search the site for what the advertisement was promoting.  Why spend money marketing your product and service only to frustrate and turn away potential customers?  Building continuity between your ad campaigns and your landing pages will increase your online sales conversion.

Here’s a good example of lack of continuity, which will usually result in a lower sales conversion rate.  I did a search on Google for “Angels baseball t-shirt”, and a number of paid keyword ads showed up with some reference to Angels t-shirts in the ad copy.  However, a few of the ads I clicked simply brought me to the t-shirt company’s homepage.  In order to find any Angels t-shirts, I would have had to navigate my way through their site.  It was easier to go back to Google and find a link that brought me directly to what I was looking for, which is what I ended up doing.  These sites lost a major opportunity to make a sale.  Not to mention it was a waste of their marketing dollars.

To optimize your chance of converting a visitor into a customer, create a landing page for the related keywords you are buying.  In the above example, a great landing page would have been one that specifically listed the Angels t-shirts that were in stock and perhaps highlighted the newest and best selling Angels shirts.  Better yet, if the landing page had a special offer such as free shipping for purchases made today, it would have been more compelling and increased the chance of converting me from a visitor to a customer.

To increase your website conversion rate even further, institute direct marketing tactics to write compelling sales copy for your landing pages.  A powerful headline and compelling copy, can make huge differences in your online sales.  I’ll write in more detail about this in future blog posts.  In the meantime, check out my friend Robert Stover’s copywriting blog – Copy Ideas (http://www.copyideas.com/archives/).  He is an expert copywriter and has some great resources on his site to help you improve your website copy.