Matchmakers: Match Your Key Phrases to Real Search Terms.

By Paula Mariedaughter and Jeanne Neath

Locating your bricks and mortar shop in a busy shopping area and advertising what you have to offer are central decisions for a successful business, yes? Selecting the best key phrases to describe your online business is just as critical as location and advertising! Key phrases describe your offerings and help potential customers locate your business online. How does this work?

More often than not shoppers depend on the search engines to find what they are looking for. Your potential customers type in a search term like “quilting supplies.” Since you have lots of quilting notions, you hope to cash in on the popularity of rulers, rotary cutters, glass head pins, etc. You are certain you have done well optimizing your web site for the key phrase “quilting notions,” but discover that your sales are flat. What is wrong?

You need to know the popularity of each potential key phrase you are considering! If you knew that 2481 people searched for “quilting supplies” this month and only 420 people searched for “quilting notions,” it would be clear which term is more valuable. (These are actual statistics for one search engine for one month in early 2006.) “Quilting notions” is not a bad key phrase, but you certainly would want to emphasize the much more popular search term, “quilting supplies.” When it comes to key phrases, don’t guess!

Selecting key phrases is a crucial decision for your e-commerce business. We often use this “Keyword Selector Tool” available free from Overture: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. The results are for a single smaller search engine, but provide you with useful information about the relative numbers of searches in the real world. To use the tool, enter a key phrase you are considering into the box provided and click the Submit button. Overture will list the number of searches conducted for key phrases that include the word or phrase that you entered.

Google has recently upgraded the keyword selector tool used by its pay per click advertising customers and made this tool available for free to anyone. The Google tool is more complicated than Overture’s, but yields more information. Try it and see what you find about your current key phrases: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Enter a potential key phrase in the empty box, select the “Keyword Popularity” (not “Keywords Only”) option, and click on the “Get More Keywords” button. Google will provide a list of related key phrases, along with little bar graphs showing the volume of searches and the degree of advertising competition for each key phrase. The search volume graph provides information similar to Overture’s, but does not give exact quantities. Still, the data provided are for Google, the most popular search engine, and therefore very relevant for you. The level of advertising competition is probably related to the amount of competition you will find in Google’s natural (unpaid) search results. Look for key phrases with high search volume and little competition.

To be a financially successful online business you must understand the relationship of key phrases to your traffic and sales. The search engines can direct customers your way when you use relevant key phrases to describe your business. Matching your site to ready customers is your goal. The search engines can send ready customers to the most relevant sites. You can make this equation grow your business.