By David Chase
I have spent years doing search engine optimization; I have clients in some of the most competitive markets on the web. I’m talking hundreds of millions of directly competing pages. The core of my success is the detail, and care I put into my keyword research.
Ok, so you got a whole bunch of keywords now? (If you’ve read my last article: Creating a Killer Keyword List than you would know the significance of this step) So now what? What do you do with your exhaustive list of thousands of keywords? You filter your list to the keywords that convert the most sales.
I’m sure you’ve been told and even beaten over the head with this quote: “The longer the keyword phrase the more targeted it usually is, and the higher it will convert”. Yet it baffles me how many times people still overlook this. If you want to spend a year targeting keywords that get bazillions of searches go right ahead, I’ll spend a dedicated month getting a top ranking for a longer more targeted phrase. I tend to get the highest conversions from keyword phrases 3-5 words long, but it all varies on the site and market.
Please don’t do what everybody else does and use wordtrackers KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) as the be-all-end-all solution to keyword research. You’ll simply be doing yourself an incredible disservice as that data is not very accurate.
Q: So what is the million dollar secret to finding the keyword in your market that convert the most sales?
A: It’s simple: run a massive Adwords pay-per-click campaign.
Google Adwords is a very efficient and inexpensive way to find the keywords that convert the highest possible sales. Do these 4 steps:
- Create an Adwords account (as the other pay-per-click options don’t come close to the accuracy or tracking Google offers)
- Place all of the keywords you accumulated in your market into a single AdGroup (there are better ways of grouping your ads but its irrelevant in the context of this strategy)
- Bid high enough to have a top 8 listing for every word (this will ensure many impressions).
- Also, be sure to integrate the “conversion tool”, under the “Tools” tab in your Adwords campaign. Simply paste the bar of code Google gives you on the “thank you” page of the targeted site. This will give you the conversion numbers and ratios that make this technique work.
After a few good weeks of impressions you should have a large enough sample to know EXACTLY what keywords are converting at the highest percentage. You now know what keywords you should target with your organic search campaign, or bid for highest position if your Google Adwords campaign is profitable.
Don’t be afraid to spend the money on your pay per click campaign, the information this technique reveals is invaluable. Take note of the keywords that converted at the highest percent. You now have an edge on 99% of the competition in your market.