Not all keywords are created equal. The Pareto principle states that roughly 80% of effects will come from 20% of the causes. Search is no exception to the rule. In fact, search marketing efforts often exhibit an exaggeration of the principle because it’s very common to observe 1% of the keywords in a given account driving 50% of the cost and even more of the revenue.

So, what does this mean? Behavior is unique for these high volume/value keywords and as a result, steps need to be taken to make these terms more visible for daily account management and analysis. The first step is to identify and isolate these top terms to help prioritize where to focus.

Here’s a simple exercise to identify the top terms in an account:

1. Run a keyword report and sort the data by cost.
2. Filter out branded terms, as these terms should be isolated in a unique campaign.
3. Filter out terms that constitute the top 50% of the non-banded cost.

Typically this keyword set is very small, but accounts for the same cost as the remainder of the account. It’s important to note that the top terms as I have defined them only refer to top spending terms. If your SEM effort is ROI focused, at this point, take the opportunity to identify if there are terms that are in this keyword set that do not drive revenue.

Now we’ve got this keyword set comprised of the most significant keywords in an account. What to do with it? It has been rumored that isolating a keyword in a unique AdGroup will increase quality score. While this is not necessarily true, it highlights the reason why it’s important to have an organized account: control. By placing each of these top terms in a unique AdGroup, you can create keyword/ad/landing page associations that are more relevant—effectively increasing Quality Score, clickthrough rates (CTR), and subsequently driving down cost per click (CPC). While it seems logical to do this for all terms in an account, it’s not a scalable solution for an account with thousands, if not tens of thousands or more terms. Thus we have identified a small sub-section of terms, our “top terms,” that have a very significant effect on the account. Because this set of terms is a cross-section of the account, we can take successful elements, such as ad copy and landing page combinations, from the top terms and apply them to similar terms in the rest of the account to increase CTR and Quality Score.

As I mentioned before, another important set of terms to isolate and manage independently from the rest of the account is brand terms. Brand terms generally have very high Quality Scores, are cheap, have great CTRs, and observe the best conversion rates, often making them the most efficient terms in an account.

As a result, you can maximize the impact of brand terms by activating them on all match types: exact, phrase and broad (for more on this, see my earlier post Best Practices For Auditing An SEM Account). The same rules for optimization apply: isolate high volume terms into unique AdGroups within the brand terms campaign, create relevant ad copy, and make sure landing pages are as relevant as possible.

Side note: Josh Dreller has been posting articles recently about ways to use excel for SEM analysis beyond standard reporting. In his first post in this series, How To: Excel at Excel for SEM Applications, Part 1, he outlines a process to create a catalog system for keywords so you can pivot your data to display in various ways. Building on his catalog concept, you can set up a label (column) for these top keywords, allowing rolled-up reporting on top terms vs the rest of the account. Furthermore, you can build a second label for Brand and Non-Brand terms. Now you can analyze brand vs. non brand as a sub-set of top keywords vs. the rest of the account. Very cool.

Identifying top terms in both brand and non-brand keyword sets will create a very controlled environment to test and optimize ad copy and landing pages. Small changes in quality score and subsequently CPC will have a very significant impact on the account and the best practices identified in the top terms effort can be rolled out across the campaign.

One of the toughest challenges facing pay-per-click marketers is keyword expansion. Marketers need to be adept at selecting keywords that will not only drive traffic, but more importantly, will drive conversions in a cost-effective manner. As competition intensifies, identifying unique, high quality keywords becomes increasingly important-and difficult. While basic keyword research remains important, search marketers need to look to other tools to gain an edge.

Basic keyword research

Keyword research generally begins with one of the popular keyword-research tools. These include-but are not limited to-Google’s keyword tool, Wordtracker and Keyworddiscovery. These tools allow marketers to research topics, identify search-volume data, and find additional permutations of their “seed keyword.” To illustrate my point, a search in the free version of Wordtracker for “dog training” produces the following:

This list is a great starting point for anyone promoting a dog training service. It includes several highly searched keywords relating to “dog training” as well as a vast number of less searched terms as you move down the “tail.”

While basic keyword tools help marketers generate keyword ideas for their pay-per-click campaigns, they also create a huge problem. As most keyword tools are readily available to the public, there is nothing prohibiting your competitors from including the same highly trafficked keywords in their campaigns. Naturally, as more and more competitors enter your niche, the costs-per-click begin to rise. Following this keyword research methodology will undoubtedly leave you with a long-but thin-list of keywords, not to mention that you will be paying too much for “overbought” keywords.

So what is a PPC marketer to do?

As competition increases, intelligent PPC marketers realize that it is imperative to not only build out long keyword lists, but to also “widen” those same keyword lists. What do I mean by “widen?” Let’s revisit the dog training example from above:

Traditional keyword tools suggest that you include terms like:

• dog training
• dog training tips
• dog obedience training

In general, these potentially useful keywords speak directly to your target audience’s needs. But these are also keywords that are most likely to be bid on by your competitors.

What if we dissected this keyword list and expanded on the term “dog?” Think about how many breeds of dog exist: Golden Retrievers, German Shepherds, Beagles etc. Now, lets replace the word “dog” with specific breeds:

“dog training” and “training a dog” become “Golden Retriever training” or “training a Golden Retriever.”

By incorporating breeds and replacing the term “dog,” we were able to exponentially increase the size of our keyword list.

Some simple math to consider

If you choose to focus on 10 dog breeds and combine those with 50 seed dog-training keywords, the result would be 550 unique keywords! 10 unique dog breeds * 50 seed keywords = 500 + 50 original seed keywords, for a total of 550 keywords. Additionally, the new breed keywords probably have less competition and are much more likely to convert with a targeted landing page (a topic for another time).

New tools from Google can help

Google Sets and Google Squared are amazing free tools that will allow you to quickly identify elements of a set.

Here are examples of both in action:

To summarize, basic keyword tools are excellent for exploring generic topics and developing a set of keyword permutations. However, in order to differentiate your keyword list, and to avoid complete reliance on highly competitive keywords, I encourage all PPC marketers take steps to widen their keyword lists by utilizing Google Sets and Google Squared. This approach will increase the likelihood that you will find less competitive, and more targeted keywords that ultimately produce conversions at more cost-effective rates.

Optimal bidding for performance is a complex task for search marketers. When placing bids every day, you must be mindful of the volatility in the marketplace due to changing search traffic, competition, matching algorithms that vary across search engines and the changing needs of your business. For many of you, particularly if you work in the travel or retail sectors, seasonality—the cyclical patterns in the demand for various product offerings—adds an additional layer of difficulty that can make search marketing campaign management seem daunting.

It would be extremely time and cost prohibitive to manually sift through historical data on all keywords used in a large campaign to identify statistically significant seasonal patterns. But this information can be critical to ensuring the success of a campaign. In the retail sector, for example, summer clothing doesn’t sell in winter and vice-versa. Hence, to ensure optimal performance, seasonal keywords must be continuously identified and bid upon to appropriate positions.

The solution to this problem is to build predictive keyword models that correctly estimate expected revenue and spend patterns, while taking seasonality into consideration. Ideally, you should do this within an automated framework that, in addition to analyzing search traffic patterns, also helps to determine seasonal keywords that have a high probability of improving the overall portfolio ROI, and prioritizes the learning of these keywords while keeping the advertising budget in check. This automated identification of revenue-generating seasonal keywords can be particularly valuable to large and medium sized advertisers, as they must often create predictive models on hundreds of thousands of keywords a day.

There are three steps that cover the basics of predictive modeling to enhance campaign success.

1. If you have a seasonal business, try to combine seasonal keywords in a campaign. This will make monitoring easy. For instance, an apparel retailer can have a ‘winter sweaters’ campaign and a ‘summer shorts’ campaign.

2. Ensure keywords reflect the seasonal nature of the product to best optimize for results.

3. If you cannot combine seasonal keywords into a campaign, then make sure they can be tracked. One way to do this is to label the keywords in your database.

Once you have a seasonal campaign established, it’s important to analyze the data and then take action based on your discoveries.

Look at historical data for the season you are interested in and find keywords that have experienced a sharp spike in ROI. Then account for keyword position. In general, the lower a keyword position, the higher its ROI. So if you find an uptick in ROI at a lower position, the spike is not necessarily due to seasonality. The opposite – i.e. keywords with a spike in ROI despite an increase in position – present a strong indicator of seasonality. Remember, seasonality refers to both upward and downward spikes.

If the historical data points to a sharp increase in a keywords’ ROI, promote the keyword by a bid increment. A 20 percent bid increment/decrement is a good starting point. You’ll want to track the performance every two-to-three days and increment/decrement the bids as needed.

In a large campaign that contains many seasonal keywords, manual intervention is likely impossible. In this case, look to an automation tool with logic/optimization built in.

Recently, I was at an internet marketing convention where the question was posed to a panel: “As a search engine optimizer (SEO), what would you advise your clients to do if an extra million dollars fell into their lap?” The response from the SEOs on the panel was essentially “invest it all in creating great content.”

When questioned, the panel agreed that links were important (since Google’s algorithm prioritizes their analysis of links so highly), but the general implication was that if you create great content the links will come.

It would be fair to say that sometimes good content gets linked to, but it’s rare. According to Google, as of late 2008 they’d indexed one trillion pages. So the probability that one new page of content would be found by a surfer randomly clicking from one link to the next on the internet would be one in a trillion. Man, those are not good odds.

There are many ways to help good content get linked to, but the practical reality is that these same techniques are more often used to help all content get linked to, regardless of the content’s quality. So SEO is just as much about creating “great” content as it is about being great at getting content linked to. I am not suggesting that the quality of the content doesn’t matter, but that the purist approach of simply putting great content into the world and waiting for unnamed altruists to link to it on merit alone relies too much on luck.

Five steps for creating & distributing content

When trying to improve organic SEO, creating great content is just as important as doing a great job of distributing it. These tactics, however, should not be pursued in a vacuum. Instead, you should approach SEO using a holistic strategy. Here is a sample five-step plan that you can customize to fit your company’s objectives.

Step 1: Search Google Trends for keywords that relate to your business that have received heightened attention recently (either because of seasonality or other special events). On a search for “outdoor chairs,” for example, you will see that the number of people searching on this keyword spikes every summer. If you sell outdoor chairs, now would be a good time to target that phrase aggressively.

Once you’ve chosen a topic area you are ready to move on to Step 2.

Step 2: Use the Google keyword tool to find terms related to the concept of “outdoor chairs” to write about. Through appropriate analysis you may find that the terms outdoor chairs, lounge chairs, wood chairs, and folding chairs are relevant to the products you sell, and that they get a lot of search volume.

Refine your target keyword list and move on to Step 3.

Step 3: Search Twitter for the keywords you selected in Step 2 to see what your target customers are talking about in order to get content ideas. @Macktacular is talking about painting children’s Adirondack chairs. @endlessrant seems to need outdoor chairs in a hurry. @jherskowitz is looking for comfy chairs to fit a rooftop bar. Try to pick content ideas that correspond to the keywords you decided to target in Step 2 because you know there is substantial search demand for those keywords.

Once you have your topic, target keywords and specific ideas you are ready for Step 4.

Step 4: Create your content and be sure to include the keywords you identified in Step 2, while also being conscious of what you’ve learned from browsing Twitter in Step 3. Popular content and articles are highlighted on Digg.com, so you may spend some time there browsing popular content that relates to your topics to learn how to structure your article’s title and body copy.

Your article is now written and you’re ready to focus on distribution.

Step 5: Determine a concrete “distribution” goal for each piece of content you’ve created, whether it’s an article, a how-to guide, etc.

Here’s an example:

Now it’s time to get to work. You are ready to distribute your content in accordance with your plan and enjoy the benefits of creating great content and leveraging it to increase traffic, search engine rankings, sales and brand awareness.

It is no surprise that the recession has affected online consumer spending habits. In lean times, people are more apt to curb spending and seek out the best bargains. From a search perspective, it is now more important than ever for marketers to adapt their campaigns to these changes in consumer behavior to better optimize performance.

As consumers modify their spending patterns, their search behavior—the keywords and terms they use to locate products and services—also change. We recently culled over half a million search terms containing a certain modifier. For instance, queries containing the word “cheap” would include “cheap flight,” “cheap car rental” and so on. Next we aggregated the keywords into groups based on the modifier and measured their year-over-year changes in impression volume and revenue per click (i.e. the per click monetization change).

The conclusions were significant. In the financial vertical, keywords such as “credit,” “lending” and “mortgage” have seen a huge jump in impression volume, while queries containing “loans” have seen a drop. Interestingly while mortgage and credit monetize better now than last year, loans and lending related keywords are not performing as well.

In our experience, changes in traffic patterns and behavior are closely related to changes in the economic environment. An increased number of consumers are searching for financial information but are not necessarily converting on the clicks. This is because they are not qualified as they once were (due to more stringent lending criteria) or are simply looking for information and are not interested in buying a financial product.

In the travel vertical, “cheap” and “discount” related keywords have seen big jumps in impression volume and are monetizing better. The same is not true for “cruise” and “hotel” related keywords where the revenue-per-click is lower than it was last year.

At a more granular level, the “hotel” set includes several thousand combinations of hotel with location names, hotel brand names, etc. This indicates a shift in consumer thought patterns. People are less brand focused, and more value conscious. Clearly frugality is in.

In order to effectively prompt the new frugal consumer to action, you must recalibrate your search marketing approach. Here are a few strategies to consider:

• Employ thrift-related messaging to your ad copy, stressing value over brand.
• If your business operates in the travel space, consider promoting cheap and discount-related combinations instead of focusing on brand and location-related keyword combinations.
• Monitor federal announcements related to loan and credit oriented policies, as they will have a direct and immediate impact on the quantity and quality of your traffic.

Maintaining focus on ROI while seeking greater efficiencies in keyword marketplaces will provide significant opportunities to increase your market share in key categories and obtain additional, valuable traffic at discounted prices.

While SEO is a part of our daily lives, the process of digging into keyword research hasn’t gotten any easier. Yet, as we know, keyword research is critical to any SEO effort. While you may find the process of uncovering and selecting the most appropriate keywords for optimizing your site to be fairly painstaking, it doesn’t have to be. Using information from your site’s search box can save you time and provide additional keywords for consideration.

Compiling a list of keywords to use in SEO traditionally entails discovering the terms people are searching for on search engines, how often, and which other sites appear for those terms. The keywords you uncover must make the most sense for your business, since you are relying on them to improve your natural search rankings and deliver targeted traffic to your site. However, determining the best mix of terms isn’t easy. Search terms used are as varied as the people typing them in. In fact, Google estimates that up to 20 to 25% of the queries its sees are unique. And volume can be a barrier; the sheer numbers of unique search terms many sites attract make it difficult to monitor and analyze trends in the terms customers use.

You may be using any of a number of tools available to help with keyword development, such as Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool, Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker, to name a few. But, remember, the keywords they help you generate are still just educated guesses about the ways prospective customers might come to your site, and aren’t guaranteed to increase traffic. You can significantly strengthen your keyword lists with terms you’re customers are actually using.

Of course it is important to assess the search terms that led people to your site, and where that traffic came from. In conjunction with this, you should determine the search terms your customers are using once they are on your site. This can help you take important steps to ensuring you are not only creating the most focused keyword lists, but are also optimizing your web pages for the language of your customers. These terms don’t emerge from a weekly marketing brainstorm, but rather are the real words your customers are using on your site today. For example, someone may have come to your site through a Google search for the term “clown costume.” But, using the search box on your site, they typed in “Bozo.”

Use the search box. Any good site search platform will provide you with a list of the top phrases customers are using when searching your site. You will likely uncover customer search terms that are unexpected. Considering these terms in your keyword discovery process and making adjustments to your SEO or PPC campaigns by including these terms can significantly increase your conversions. Many of our customers have used this technique in their search marketing campaigns with significant results.

Mine analytics reports. All of the top analytics tools provide options to explore the ways customers are searching for information on your site. Google Analytics and Coremetrics, for example provide reports that outline customer search terms on a site. With this information, you can define keyword lists using terms that your customers think of before you do. These terms can be help you optimize your site and drive greater traffic, and are great terms to include in paid search campaigns.

Automate the process. Tools are available that automate the process of generating keyword lists based on the terms people use most often while searching a site, and the items they click on. These tools are also able to create product landing pages, based on customer search activity, that are search-engine-optimized. This process usually proves too costly and time-intensive for most companies to replicate manually, particularly if they are optimizing a site based on hundreds or thousands of site search terms.

Conducting research to determine the most relevant keywords to use in SEO isn’t something new, but there are new ways to take advantage of all the information at hand to streamline and improve the process. Remember to analyze the search activity going on inside your site, and incorporate that information into your search marketing efforts. The keywords discovered can help to significantly improve your results.

As search engine optimization (SEO) professionals, we obsess with search data from a wide variety of resources. Which one is best for our clients? Which keyword research tool reveals the most accurate search behaviors when rebuilding a site’s information architecture? Does our web analytics data validate our keyword research?

And, more importantly, did these tools provide your most desired information? Some answers might surprise you.

Keyword research data

I love keyword research tools. I use all of them because I can discover core keyword phrases, which are commonly used across all of the commercial web search engines. And I can also tailor ads and landing pages to searchers who typically use a single, targeted search engine (and it isn’t always Google, as one might imagine).

However, keyword research tools are not a substitute for a knowledgeable and intuitive search engine marketer. All too often, website owners and even experienced search engine optimization professionals launch into a site’s information architecture without gauging user response. As good SEO professionals, we should understand when it is appropriate to implement keywords into a site’s information architecture: when keyword usage overwhelms users, and when keyword usage needs to be more apparent.

This situation occurred recently when I was performing some usability tests on a client site’s revised information architecture. This particular client website is being delivered in multiple languages. We were testing American English, British English, and French. Therefore, the test participants were American, British, and French.

All of the keyword research tools showed the word “student” or “students” (in French, “étudiant” or “étudiants”) as a possible target. The appearance of this word in both keyword research data and in the site’s web analytics data led my client to believe that we should make this area a main category.

If we had relied on the data from keyword research tools, we would have been wrong. If we had relied on the data from web analytics software, we would have been wrong.

The face-to-face user interaction gave us the right answer.

The facial expressions were enough to convince me. Almost every single time the word “student” or “étudiant” appeared during the usability test, I saw confusion. When I asked test participants why they seemed confused, they said that the particular keyword phrase was not appropriate for that type of website. They then placed the student-related information groupings in one of two piles:

• Discard – Participants felt that the information label and/or grouping did not belong on the website at all.
• Do not know – Participants were unsure whether the information label and/or grouping did or did not not belong on the website.

The discard pile won, with over 90% from all three language groups.

Now, imagine if this company did NOT have one-on-one interaction with searchers during the redesign process and only relied on keyword research tools. How much time and money might have been wasted?

Keyword research data is not the only type of data that can be easily misinterpreted.

Web analytics search data

One search metric that clients and prospects inevitably mention is “stickiness.” In other words, one of their search marketing goals is to increase the number of page views per visitor via search engine traffic, especially if the site is a publisher, blog, or news site. Increasing the number of page views per visitor provides more advertising opportunities as well as a positive branding impact. The average time on site (if it is longer than two minutes) is also commonly viewed as a positive search metric.

Or so it might seem. Here is an example.

Many SEO professionals, including me, provide blog optimization for a wide variety of companies (ecommerce, news, software, etc.). Not only do we provide keyword research for blogs, we must also monitor the effectiveness of keyword-driven traffic via web analytics data.

Upon initial viewing, the blog’s analytics data might indicate increased stickiness. Searchers are reading more blog entries. Searchers are engaged. Therefore, the blog content is great…that is a common conclusion.

For an exploratory usability test, I ask test participants to tell me about a blog post that they found very helpful. I asked them why they liked the blog’s content, and I listen very closely for keyword phrases. Audio and/or video recording makes this job a little easier.

When I asked test participants to refind desired information on a blog on the lab’s computer, I did not hear, “This blog content is great!” Comments I frequently heard were:

• “I can’t find this [expletive] thing.”
• “Now where could it be? I saw it here before….”
• “I think this was posted in [month/day/year]….”
• “Where the [expletive] is it?”

As you might imagine, the use of expletives became more and more frequent with the increased number of page views.

Sure, searchers who discover great blog content might bookmark the URL, or they might link to it from a “Links and Resources” section of their web site, or they might cite the URL in a follow-up post on another website. All of these actions and associated behaviors make it easier for searchers to refind important information.

However, when I review web analytics data, I often find that site visitors do not take these actions as frequently as people might think. Instead, with careful clickstream analysis combined with usability testing, I see that the average page view per visitor metric is heavily influenced by frustrated refinding behaviors.

Conclusion

I have always believed that search engine optimization is part art, part science. Certainly, keyword research data and web analytics data are very much part of the “science” part of SEO.

Nevertheless, the “art” part of SEO comes into play when interpreting this data. By listening to users and observing their search behaviors, having that one-on-one interaction, I can hear keywords that are not used in query formulation. I study facial expressions and corresponding mouse movements that are associated with keywords. I see how keywords are formatted in search engine results pages (SERPs) and corresponding landing pages, and how searchers react to that formatting and placement.

I cannot imagine my job as an SEO professional without keyword research tools and web analytics software. In addition, I cannot imagine my job as an SEO professional without one-on-one searcher interaction. What do you think? Have any of you learned something that keyword research tools and/or web analytics data did not reveal?

Shari Thurow is the Founder and SEO Director at Omni Marketing Interactive and the author of the book Search Engine Visibility. The 100% Organic column appears Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool no longer takes you to the tool; instead, it redirects you to the Yahoo Search Marketing landing page. I emailed Yahoo for a statement, and they have confirmed that they have decommissioned the tool.

There are tools you can use within the Yahoo Search Marketing console that you can use instead, but it requires that you login. The Overture tool has been plagued with issues for a long time. Overture’s tool, to me, is a historic SEM tool that will forever be remembered amongst SEMs – it is a bit sad to me to see it go. There are many good alternatives that are much better then the Overture tool. For more, see our Search Marketing: Search Term Research category.

Microsoft Live Search’s xRank feature got some attention when it launched as a way to track celebrities. But you might not realize the service also now tracks buzz about musicians, politicians, and — yes — bloggers.

Let’s go back, then forward. Last September, Live Search rolled out xRank. It showed you a list of the most popular celebrities "Top Ranked" based on searches for them. You could also see "Top Movers," celebs that were rising in the rankings. And you could chart buzz over time.

For example, Lil Wayne is the top ranked celebrity at the moment, and you can see the chart below showing he’s been number one for several weeks, with occasional dips:

But Tori Spelling (you go Donna!) is moving up, now at seven after interest in the birth of her baby girl (congrats!).

From the xRank help pages, we get just a bit more about how all this is calculated:

xRank keeps track of notable people and puts them in order for you. We count Live Search web searches for movie stars, musicians, and other famous people. Then, we compile our findings into an insightful ranking formula that tells you who the world is searching for most. The result is a cultural snapshot of who’s hot and who’s not!

The Live Search blog also covered a bit more about the celebrity search feature back in April, stressing that it really is the number of searches that get people up tops. What it doesn’t cover directly is that there has to be a master list of "celebrities" behind the scenes. It would be nice to see that shown, the full list of everyone tracked in the celebrity category, even if they aren’t ranked.

Moving on, in May, Live Search rolled out xRank Musician. Now you could get a top ranking of just music stars. And by doing so, popular entertainment idiot me learned that Lil Wayne is apparently a musician, because he’s still at the top of the list there. Tori Spelling disappears — and hey! There’s Coldplay at number four. I do know Coldplay.

I said Live Search rolled out xRank Musician in May, but I actually think it was live at the end of April — Live just didn’t say anything then. So were two other features that might not have been noticed before, but now some are spotting as "new." According to Wikipedia, both xRank Politician and xRank Blogger were part of the service as of the April 25 Wikipedia edit. So I’m pretty sure these things were just live. Microsoft just didn’t mention them.

Currently, Barack Obama is the top politician, followed by John McCain, so there are your early election results! Meanwhile on the Blogger rankings, it’s Perez Hilton who is number one.

Since more of our readers are likely to be bloggers rather than celebrities, musicians, or politicians, how can you find yourself? You could next your way through the results 20 at a time. But it’s easier just to search for yourself on the service. At the moment, there are 305 bloggers in totally being ranked.

For fun, I wondered how our Search Engine Land bloggers fare. I came in at 38, Chris Sherman at 90, Vanessa Fox at 130, Greg Sterling at 165 (and that’s soooo not his picture!), then Barry Schwartz at 305. Someone search for Barry a lot. He really takes these lists seriously. :)

One more thing. You have to be using the US version of Live Search to see some of these additional categories. Use the well-hidden Live Search Country Picker Page to make that change.

One of the reasons search marketing is so effective is that it delivers information on products and services to people who are actively seeking them out. People enter search terms into a search engine and the engine provides sites and ads that are relevant to the terms. This arrangement is beneficial for the user because they are provided what they want and it’s profitable for the company selling goods because their products are put in front of motivated buyers—so the potential for a sale is high.

The success of search marketing hinges on whether the keywords the searcher puts in the query box match the keywords the company has targeted in their online campaigns. If the company selling goods has properly identified the keywords a searcher might use to find products, then there is a good chance a conversion will occur.

The process of identifying keywords is wrought with pitfalls which can reduce the effectiveness of online campaigns. Here are eight common mistakes companies make in selecting keywords for their campaigns.

1. Targeting keywords that people never use

You don’t have to look very far on the web to find companies targeting phrases that visitors seldom enter into a search engine.

There are several ways this error can manifest itself. The most common is when a company selects keywords from insider jargon that they use within the company, but with which the outside world is not unfamiliar.

Even the most enlightened of us can fall into this trap. We use terms in our day to day vocabulary and the words are so ingrained in our mind that we overlook the fact that the rest of the world isn’t familiar with our internal corporate-speak. In many cases the company is suffering from a form of myopia: they are so close to the products that they don’t see that the rest of the world might call it by another name.

Another situation where obscure keywords are targeted is more nefarious. Although most online marketing companies are honest and want only the best for clients, there are a few bad apple SEO firms that have purposely selected off-the-wall keyword phrases so they can guarantee rankings on those phrases. Obscure keywords are usually not very competitive so the SEO firm can easily win the term.

They tell a client, “We’ll get you ranking on phrase X”—often the phrase sounds good on the surface. The trusting client approves the term, not realizing that the phrase will never receive any traffic or bring conversions. Alarm bells should be going off in your head if your SEO firm is claiming guarantees. Ask for popularity numbers of the phrases they are selecting, test the phrase in PPC to get real performance data, then decide if the phrase is worth pursuing in organic marketing.

2. Confusing keyword popularity with keyword appropriateness

Professional keyword tools like KeywordDiscovery and WordTracker are valuable tools for providing insight into the traffic potential of search phrases. This is useful information to have, but sometimes this one criterion gets blown out of proportion in importance. Other considerations like relevancy, user intent, and the competitiveness of a phrase are overlooked.

Something to keep in mind is that many popular phrases are also extremely competitive, making highly popular phrases an expensive choice. PPC bid prices will be higher and winning a top organic spot will require more work because more competitors are targeting that phrase. An alternate approach, especially for a small business, would be to pursue more focused, more relevant terms that are less popular but would be better choices because they convert better.

3. Not considering user intent in keyword selection

Selecting good keywords requires the ability to get inside the mind of the user to learn what they wanted when they entered the phrase.

The phrase a user enters reveals much about the state of mind of the user and where they are in the buying process. For example, a search for “car reviews” might indicate that the searcher is in the research phase and is comparison-shopping. In contrast, a searcher entering “fast auto financing” is actively looking to buy—he wants that hot car in time for the weekend.

4. Selecting single word keywords

Only on rare occasions is a single word a good choice, and this happens mostly for big powerful sites. If you are Maytag, the single keyword “washer” might be fine. For most sites, however, single terms are just overly competitive and expensive. They tend to be overly broad, too competitive, and not perform well.

5. Keyword misalignment

One needs to be careful when selecting keywords to make sure that you select phrases that do not unintentionally conflict with unrelated industries. For example, consider the phrase “mobile marketing.” A company selling advertising on mobile billboards might unintentionally be competing with a company selling advertising on mobile devices. Careful keyword selection can help prevent this misalignment.

6. Not considering the competition

Many companies blindly select keywords and don’t stop to consider the competitive landscape of that phrase on the web. Put the candidate term into a query box at a search engine and take a look at the sites ranking for the term. Do they have .gov and .edu extensions? Examine how optimized they are. Compare the backlinks of the sites ranking to your site. If you want to rank, you’ll need to outdo what the other sites are doing. Pick your battles carefully: can you realistically afford to pursue that phrase?

7. Failing to periodically review keywords

Language isn’t static. New words come into the vocabulary of people and other words drop from use. Scanning forums and blogs where people are discussing products like yours is a good way to watch for new terms. Wordspy.com is a favorite free tool for learning new expressions.

It is important to periodically review your keyword list to see if there are phrases you’ve overlooked or terms that are new or grown in popularity.

Another good reason to review keywords is that, upon closer inspection, you might find inappropriate keywords that are not performing well and are costing you money. Perhaps when you made your original keyword selection you only had limited data on which to base your decision. Revisiting your keywords when you’re armed with performance data can guide you to refine your choices.

8. Not allocating enough resources and time to perform good keyword research

Almost all online marketing has its foundation in keywords. The words you buy in pay per click, the terms you target for organic, the phrases you focus on in your images and videos, all depend on making good keyword choices up front. It takes time and resources to do keyword research properly.

If you were constructing a building, you would take measures to ensure your foundation was strong. It is the same with the keyword research process. Unfortunately, what happens in many companies is they rush the keyword process and do not allocate the necessary resources or time to do it right. This leads to poor keyword choices and costing the company more money in the long run.

A better strategy would be to take the time it takes to do the project right. A sound keyword process is one of the best investments a company can make. Take a few minutes today and review your keyword lists. Chances are you can save yourself and your company a lot of money and improve your return on your search campaigns by simply improving the keyword pool.