Doing Detailed Keyword Research

Hand-in-hand with the whole process of identifying your ideal customer is doing detailed keyword research. Even if you know who your ideal clients are but have no idea how to lead them to your site, you will not be successful in converting them to actual clients. This is typically a one-time task done at the beginning of your online marketing campaign and can be delegated to a keyword research specialist for extremely effective results.

The Necessity of Keyword Research

Keyword research is like turning on the light. By doing keyword research you will know, and not guess, exactly what your potential clients are searching for when they look for services and products like you offer. Simply knowing who your ideal clients are is not enough. You have to know the phrasing they use when they search. When you discover those phrases, your keyword research is done.

Luckily, the keyword research portion of the marketing plan only needs to be done once, unless you diversify the line of products or services you offer, new uses are discovered for them or you open a new division of your company.

In order to nail down the keywords that are being used to find companies in your field, ask yourself some questions.

How Will People Search for You?
What types of phrasing will potential customers use when searching for you? Will they look for a person, position, a firm or a solution? Will they use geographic modifiers like city, state or region? Will their level of motivation come through in their search, by using specific words?
• Specific person: “Plumber”, “plumbing contractor”, etc.
• Geographic modifiers: “plumber Atlanta”, ”plumber Atlanta GA”
• Motivation levels: “emergency plumber Atlanta”, “24 hour plumber”
As a critical part of your keyword research, you should employ a keyword research tool. While there are a variety of such tools on the market, Google AdWords is a free one that can help greatly, as it generates keyword ideas for you, as well as synonyms. Cross-reference your keywords with geographic modifiers. This will often help you be as effective as possible getting ranked according to strong keywords. The more precise the keyword, the better conversion rate it will have for sales.

Use Nitro Samurai (http://www.nitrosamurai.com) or another pay site for further building a list of long-tail keywords. They can help you determine which very specific keywords are most valuable. It will also give you an inside look into which words your competitors are using and the quality of the SEO competition they present, when you do a keyword search for them.

Document Data for Future Use

Be sure to keep a running tab of all the keywords you discover. This will give you information to work with for your online content. It will also keep you from having to repeat the keyword search.
Keywords will be used in every aspect of your online marketing. Therefore the research you do in the beginning about your ideal client and how they search will carry over in all your online content. You will use those keywords for:
- Articles
- Blogs
- Search Engine Optimization
- Press releases
- Ads
- Social media
- Videos and audios
- Tags
Even simply adding one or more traffic methods per month to your existing traffic generating strategies will earn significant results. Target a couple more keywords from your keyword list each month.

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The Importance of Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is a term used to refer to any applications that allow users to interact. Social networks, blogs, video sharing sites, wikis and more are some of the commonly used Web 2.0 applications that can be used as an effective part of any online marketing campaign. In fact, many of these types of applications allow an excellent source for feedback to a company.

One of the major purposes of using Web 2.0 in your quest to drive traffic to your website is to create backlinks to your site. So you will need to make comments on other sites with links back to your own sites. You will also need to create your own blogs, videos and social network identities to share useful information for those who would be potential customers for you.

As with any of the online writing you do, pay close attention to make sure that it is search engine optimized. Use keywords strategically in your content. This will ensure that you get the best ranking possible in relevant searches.

By using Web 2.0, you are opening up your business to explosive growth. It is easy for fans of your service to share it with others.

The feedback you receive from Web 2.0 gives you a wealth of opportunities.
- As individuals leave testimonials, you build credibility.
- As customers leave comments and suggestions, you get important feedback that allows you to tweak your product to best serve your customers. You will be much more on target with their needs.
- As complaints are dealt with your reputation for customer service is built.

Right now, Google, the leading search engine worldwide, loves Web 2.0 content sites such as:
- Videos
- Press releases
- Articles
- Hub Pages
- Squidoo

Therefore careful use of search engine optimized content on such sites will help give you the ranking you want in the search engines.


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Keeping On Top of Things

By keeping a finger on the pulse of your industry you will easily find new topics for blogging, articles, press releases, videos, audios and even social networking comments. This way you can quickly jump on new trends as they become popular. Technology can help you do so by
staying on top of the latest developments, trends and hot spots in online marketing, you will have a much better chance to keep your online market domination. There are always new developments in the dynamic world of online marketing. Therefore, staying abreast of new technologies and new trends is essential. You can do so by:

- seminars
- webinars
- following blogs
- watching the competition
- subscribing to RSS feeds
- being on email lists
- social media

In addition you can use Google Alerts to keep on top of things happening in the media in either your industry, in a field relevant to yours, as well as in online marketing trends. By setting up a Google Alert, you are automatically informed when information concerning the topics you choose are updated in selected online formats. This helps you to keep on top of things so that you can share relevant information in a timely manner and drive people to your website for relevant solutions.

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Additional Traffic Strategies

By using a wide variety of traffic strategies, you will have the best chance of being able to attract the maximum number of potential clients to your website. Apart from the techniques already mentioned, there are other ones that will help you drive traffic to your site. Some of them are even completely free, while others involve a varying amount of investment depending on the quality of equipment you want to use to create the medium.

 

Classified Ads

By placing carefully created online classified ads you can easily drive traffic to your website. Many of these websites are free of charge, like Craigslist.org. You can choose to put an ad in the sections that best fit the services or products your company provides. You can even put links directly back to your website in many of these ads. The sheer volume of traffic on such sites will help people find you and your website more readily, as there are numerous people who use such sites as their go-to resource for many things.

To get the maximum amount of use from your classified ads, create links to your ad using social bookmarking sites and other social networking sites. This will create additional backlinks to your ad and help it get ranked in the search engines. Any content that gets ranked in the search engines is excellent for your online marketing.

Make sure that the ads you place on classified ad sites are search engine friendly, like all your online content. Use keywords correctly, without stuffing them into the ad, to maximize your search engine result ranking. Such ads need to be placed monthly to stay current in the search engines. Vary the content though and add seasonal specials, if appropriate.

Some of the best classified ads include:

• Craislist.com
• Backage.com
• Topics.com/classifieds/city
• Olx.com
• Oodle.com
• Kijiji.com
• UsFreeAds.com 

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Local SEO and Natural SEO

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is vital to the implementation of your online marketing plan. While this is a part of the 5 one-time things you must do to get your plan started successfully, it must also be monitored and updated, so that your local business results and your natural search results remain ranked near or at the top.

Local Business Results

Local business results will impact not only the traffic to your website, but also the phone at your place of business. Because your phone number is listed in the local business results you will find that once your business is successfully located at the top of these results your phone will ring much more often.

Submit your business to the three major local business results sites. Monitor and update listings regularly to secure top spots. Make sure that your listings are search engine optimized. The three sites you must be on are:

• Google—the most important one as it owns 2/3 of online traffic
• Yahoo—also very important
• MSN/Bing—growing in importance, but not as prominent as Google and Yahoo

These local business results each pick up on select keywords and use different location modifiers when ranking listings. However, most listings include address, phone number, directions to your physical address, website and customer reviews. The ones with the best reviews containing targeted keywords, in addition to location modifiers will find their way to the top of the search results.

In order to be listed in the top 10 search results, follow these 7 tips:

1. Optimize every aspect of your listing with strategic keywords.
2. Get reviews from clients.
3. Obtain backlinks from local online directories.
4. Strategically choose the areas you want optimized even establishing different addresses and phone numbers for other areas.
5. Get listed in about 4 to5 categories related to your business for your business results listing.
6. Place coupons with the listing to increase conversion rates.
7. Use YouTube Videos and photographs with your keyword in the title.

After listing in the top local business listings, seek out other directory listings to use such as Kudzu, City Search, cmac.ws, Best of the Web local and more.

Track the changes you make, so that you can keep the listing as relevant as possible. It will also help you monitor what works and what doesn’t. Be patient, it sometimes takes 3-4 weeks to see your listing appear.

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Making Changes to Your Online Marketing Methods

In order to make the changes to your online marketing methods there are a variety of things that you should know.

First the potential to grow your business using online marketing is phenomenal, no matter what industry you are in. You just need to cultivate it.

There are 5 extremely useful Internet marketing techniques that no one is doing.  Learn them and put them into practice and you will outperform all your competitors quickly.

You need to achieve local online domination. It is a 4 step process. Focus on it to get the results you want.

There is a simple online marketing plan that you can follow to make sure you get all the tasks done in order to get to the top of the search results and get more new clients to your site.

Before implementing your new marketing plan, take the time to thoroughly analyze what you are already doing, so you know where to go from here and so you can have a baseline to measure against.

Make your tasks more reasonable by breaking them down. Start with the tasks that are one-time jobs, as they provide the foundation for your marketing plan, and you will have the pleasure of checking things off your list.

Only when the one-time tasks are completed should you begin the tasks that repeat. These are long-term commitments that will require monthly, weekly or even daily attention.

You should consider seeking out subcontractors for a portion of or the entire online marketing plan, for the sake of expediency and skill. There are many who can take on select tasks to facilitate the process for you.

You will conclude the implementation of your marketing plan with an increase in your business income.

Please comment on this post and tell us what you think.

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Finding the Ideal Customer

Finding the ideal customer for your business is a one-time job. You are probably thinking that any customer at all is ideal. However, there are some that are much better than others. Knowing how to identify them and who to stay away from will make your business run more smoothly. In addition, your marketing campaign will be much more effective because you will be able to target that customer precisely with the very keywords they use when they search for goods and services.
In order to uncover your ideal customer you will need to conduct keyword research by analyzing the different markets that you serve. This will also help you to determine which niches you should target with your products or services. Often marketing campaigns fail because this crucial step was not taken prior to implementing marketing strategies. Even setting up a website without doing this step is a waste of your time and money.
Do It Now!
The very first step in your marketing strategy is to do your research right away so that you get started properly.
Identify the buyers of your products and services. What problem does what you offer solve for them?

The 4 Quadrants of Business

When it comes to identifying your ideal customer, it is necessary to analyze the 4 quadrants of business. This will help your determine which types of clients you should focus on attracting. The 4 quadrants of business are based on the combination of two factors:

·         Customer Value: How much is a client worth? If a client will be worth little to your bottom line, you need to spend less time trying to attract him or her. More time and energy should be devoted to attracting those who make sizeable purchases.

·         Search Volume: Are there lots of people searching for the product or service you are offering? If you have multiple services or products in your business, concentrate your marketing strategies on the ones that more people are actually searching for.

The 4 quadrants of business, when it comes to Internet marketing, are:

1.      Low customer value, low search volume: a poor choice to target.

2.      Low customer value, high search volume: better, but not great.

3.      High customer value, low search volume: even better but not ideal.

4.      High customer value, high search volume: the best.

If you pinpoint the customers who have high customer value and high search volume you can feel confident that those people are very good ones to target. Make sure they also have buying intent, which is also very important.

While all customers are valuable, the others who are not high customer value and high search volume will likely come across your business as you are advertising to that target group. Marketing specifically to the group that has the most potential simply makes good business sense. 

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