Are your Keywords Successful?

This series describes how to identify the best keywords to help your target customers find your company online. The keywords can be used to optimize your online content (e.g., your corporate website, landing pages, blogs, social media status updates) and other online channels. The more you use your target keywords throughout your online content, the easier it will be for your target customers to find you and the more relevant you will become in their minds. The ultimate benefit will be increased relevant traffic to your website.

The success of a keyword generation project will depend on 1) the quality of the keywords that are identified, and 2) whether the keywords are used correctly to optimize online marketing content, hence leading to higher traffic to the site.

Examples of measures include:

• There is increased organic search traffic for selected keywords.
• The position in search engine results of each target keyword is increasing.
• More visitors are coming in because of each target keyword increase.
• The bounce rate of visitors is low and the conversion of the visitors from the target keywords is high – which is ultimately what you are trying to accomplish. If they are low for certain keywords, then those particular keywords may not be driving the best relevant traffic.
• Decreased average cost per click.

Keep in mind, however, that even with the right set of keywords, traffic might not increase if the keywords are not used correctly. Therefore, increase in organic search traffic is only a consequence of good keyword selection — not a necessary result — and thus is not really a good success metric per se.

Stay tuned for more information on finding the best keywords for your target audience.  Next week I will shed some light on common challenges during the research process.