The ability to do proper keyword research and extract market intelligence is the foundation on which, an SEO consultants skill set is often built. SEO keyword research is not just about throwing high volume keywords into a list and then using these in an SEO campaign, it’s about knowing your market, your audience, your capabilities to compete, your product trends and your global prospects. Keyword research can ensure you make a big impact on the numerous HiPPO’s you will come into contact with during a prosperous life as an SEO :). The following is part one of a 4 part post that will focus on:
1. Heads of Global Marketing
2. Your boss / His boss
3. Large publishers
4. Your clients
The Heads of Global Marketing
The heads of global marketing are a happy bunch, they are working for a company who are selling “camping gear” in 3 countries and are doing well. But shareholders need double digit growth. They need to expand into new regions. You are in a meeting to discuss this because of the SEO implications (building regional sites), but you have already done some global keyword research to help influence key decisions and make them aware of the market intelligence your role involves:
We use the Google tool “Global Market Finder” to assess global demand for “camping gear”. The company already sells into U.S / UK / Australia so we ignore these.
We are interested in researching Italy / France / Germany further, Russia looks odd due to high volume and low competition. We assume this is due to Google Translate not correctly interpreting “camping gear” into Russian, so we note Russian needs proper translation to continue investigation.
You can further segment this data to get a general break down of what language is being used in each country i.e.
This is important for the next step.
Next you can take keywords identified above (‘camping ausrüstung’,’campingausrüstung’,’camping gear’) and look at the general trend of them:
It’s interesting “camping ausrüstung” has no real forecast for 2011. The general trend of camping gear in Germany is down. Trends should always be compared against your key markets. You should know what is happening in these and can make logical assessments based on this.
Next you jump across to the Google Keyword Tool to look at actual volumes:
You note volumes of keywords and CPC cost (as per Global Market Finder). You also note any other related keywords showing volume. If you don’t understand them, save them and have them translated.
Making Recommendations
The above is a tiny snippet of the kind of research you could have done before attending the meeting. Once done you should have a couple of core bullet points relevant to the objective with data to back it up. For example, you may recommend a small Adwords campaign in Germany targeting core keywords identified. Land users onto a page where you capture more data i.e. answer 3 questions for a chance to win a free camping holiday in the tropics (I don’t got camping much, but if I did, I want it to be in the tropics).
The point being, you can put a strategy in place to target a market you have identified as a possible gold mine !!!
Make there little faces light up.
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