Keyword Research: Compile a List of Candidate Keywords

This entry is part of an ongo­ing series on how to iden­tify the best key­words to help your tar­get cus­tomers find your com­pany online.

Last week, we looked at part one of the quickstart guide for keyword researchers — working with the project sponsor. Now let’s move on to part two.

As the keyword researcher, one of your first steps is to gather an extensive list of keywords and key phrases from primary and secondary resources. Do this through interviews and review and analysis of existing materials.

INTERVIEWS

Interview people in your organization to identify keywords they use to describe, market, and position your product. Consult the following to ensure a multi-faceted response:

• Members of the marketing team: How do we message to our prospects?
• Members of the sales team: What are the key selling points of our product?
• Members of the customer service team: How do customers derive value from our products?
• Senior executive team: What is our organization’s vision?
• Product managers: What is the vision/future of our product and what is the market’s reaction?
• Senior members of marketing, product management, and management teams: What specific branded keywords (and phrases) would we like to feature prominently in our content, regardless of the prioritization process?

Note: If you have an online content manager on staff, he or she should be the person who conducts these interviews. This will help the online content manager develop a better understanding of the perspectives and inputs of each team member, resulting in a better understanding of how the keywords can be used while generating content in the future.

REVIEW AND ANALYSIS

Of your marketing materials — to identify keywords already in use, effectively leveraging prior research and analysis done by your marketing department and/or outsourced consultants. Typically, these materials include, but are not limited to:

• Results and data files of prior keyword generation/keyword research projects
• Website content: home page, product page, features description, testimonial page
• Downloadable content: whitepapers, blog posts, case studies
• Sales collateral: sales presentations, sales e-mail scripts, call scripts
• Any market research outputs such as survey responses, interview transcripts, etc.
• Product marketing and marketing strategy documents or outputs

Of your competitors’ publicly available marketing materials — to identify keywords used to describe your competitors’ products and positioning in the market, effectively leveraging their product marketing and market research results. Competitors can typically be segmented into the following groups:

• Direct pure play competitors — Competitors that directly compete with the products/services you offer in the segment that you are targeting.
• Direct non-pure play competitors — Competitors that directly compete with the products/services you offer, although they also compete with other product/service offerings outside of your scope.
• Substitute/services competitors: Vendors that do not compete directly with you, although their products/services are considered alternatives or substitutes for your products/services.
• Mindshare competitors: Vendors that do not compete directly against your products, but whose marketing and sales activities compete for the mindshare of your target prospects, capturing buzz and attention that would otherwise benefit your sales and marketing effort.

Collecting and analyzing competitors’ material is harder than reviewing your own, so the review should be more limited in scope, typically involving:

• Website content, website keywords, website text links, features description
• Communications: newsletters, blogs, social media content, whitepaper, case studies
• Search engine marketing: paid keywords, paid search copywriting

Of important industry reports and related resources — to identify keywords that are used and widely accepted in your industry. If your timeline and resources allow, consider the additional research step of interviewing key industry experts and influencers.

Of internal data sources — that provide information on your company’s website visitors and customers’ behavior, such as:

• Website analytics data, in particular data around key searches being performed by users on your website, keywords/links that lead visitors to your website (search referral)
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software database, which typically contains information about prospects’ interaction with the marketing channels and the sales channels
• Customer support database, such as a support ticketing system, which contains rich first-hand data on customers’ experiences and reactions with your product and services
• Customer forum (if your company has created a customer community), which gives you a great, low-cost way of getting in touch with customers to gather their input on the potential keywords for your organization and product; the forum is also a great repository of customer interaction and feedback, which will definitely contain relevant keyword content.

Stay tuned for more infor­ma­tion on find­ing the best key­words for your tar­get audi­ence. Next week I will delve into the concept of keyword categorization.