Simon Swan Personal Views on Cycling and Digital Marketing

6 reasons why Google+ needs to be taken seriously

The introduction of Google+ is sure indicator that the search engine is embracing the importance of social media and the impact social signals have on influencing search habits. The world of search is the foundation on how Google was built and how it leads the search sector A recent report highlighted the fact the Google is expected to command nearly 80% of search revenues within the US.

Google+ is the search engine's assault on the social media market and to raise the game back to Facebook and Twitter and here are a few reasons why:

1) Real Time Search Results

Google needs to think creatively on how it will fill the on-going void of not providing real time search results, something that the search engine relied upon Twitter to fill, that was until 2011, when Google's commercial deal with Twitter 'lapsed', it remains to be seen whether this was a deliberate and strategic decision by Google or if this played to the strategy of Twitter monopolising the market for "real-time" search results.

Either way, Google has looked to fill the Twitter void by introducing their own equivalent of "real time" search results in the form of Google+, this is the ace card played by the search engine, and in doing so, why it would be wise for SEO and Social Media managers to take Google+ as a key strategy of their campaigns.

2) Google+ Business Pages

In it's early days, social media was a platform catering for the customer to customer market (c2c) providing a branded platform for individuals to connect, interact and build  communities around similar interests such as hobbies, educational establishments, sports or lifestyle habits. Take for example the launch of Friends Reunited centred around schools or Myspace around music.

Facebook took this to another level in terms of its unprecedented global reach, but at the same time provided an opportunity for businesses to create corporate accounts where they could bring their messages and promotions to their audience on Facebook.

And so Google also saw the same opportunity, providing a platform for businesses on a global or local level to interact with their customers. With Google introducing local search results within their SERP pages, it was another way for companies to communicate with their local customer and gain visibility through the search engine.

3) Maximising the impact of Video through YouTube

With the impact of Google integrating blended results within the homepage of search results, Video now has a presence within page 1 of the SERPs and this in turn provides another channel to interact with your customer base through video. The importance of video becoming a main stream channel to interact with your customer is highlighted by the fact that YouTube users upload 48 hours of footage every minute and take into account, YouTube is now the second largest search engine (a Google product) demonstrates the strategy video has.

4) Dominate through Market Share

A recent report from Hitwise revealed that 91% of all searches conducted in the UK were on google sites up by nearly 200 million searches year on year - not only are Google sites are continuing to monopolise the UK market but provides a platform for Google + to benefit from the search engine's dominance.

5) Optimise through the Personalisation of results

Google+ has provided the user with the benefit of receiving personalised results. The aim of such results is to provide the user with more relevant (personalised) search results. If you're logged into your Google account, and based on your search history, Google will then begin to display the more popular websites you visit to display within their search results pages based on the user search history provides. By providing the user with a more "personalised" search results page, this will provide the user with more tailored, bespoke search results.

6) Knocking down the Walled Garden

There was much debate in the early 90's of the "walled garden" approach a number of internet brands adopted, the idea behind the walled garden meant that the company (or provider of service) took full control over the data, content and media. Brands such as Facebook and the Apple operating system operate within a walled garden where users are restricted to running pre-approved applications or accessing content that is hidden behind a log-in screen and which is not accessible to search engines and internet users who have not signed up to such platforms. Whilst this may add to the commercial value of the organisation on retaining individual users information (with a view to selling this data for commercial gain e.g. Facebook cost per click advertising campaigns).

Google in its very essence does not operate a walled garden, hence the opportunity for Google+ to harness and maximise individuals digital footprints to create a true social media presence through the many Google verticals that enrich their social media platform.

So Google+ is here to stay and it's here to be part of your SEO and Social media strategy for your organisation if you are looking to maximise organic traffic referrals as well as enhancing your brand through digital platforms.

 

 

 

6 Steps to create a SEO Strategy

I previously blogged about how in digital marketing, the skill-sets you acquire can be easily transferred across the many digital techniques. Take a look at two of my previous blog posts on:

1) Transferring your digital skills to create a link building or affiliate strategy and also

2) Defining a Competitor analysis for your link building or affiliate campaign

Following on from these posts, I provided a guest blog post on how to define and create a 6 step approach to integrate an SEO strategy into a marketing campaign which I was keen to share with my readers.

Any comments and thoughts are always appreciated!

10 FREE tools to use when planning your keyword research

Keyword Research is an important building block for any successful SEO strategy to understand where and what keywords and phrases you should be targeting to drive traffic to your clients website. As explained in a previous post on creating a 3 step guide to keyword research, below I have listed 10 free tools that can be used to help you create a list of relevant keywords for which your business needs to target, after all, it's essential to know what users are searching for so you don't waste time targeting keywords that generate little traffic.

Listed below are tools and tactics I use to assist me to in creating a keyword research plan. I used a number of these tools when creating my personal cycling blog which covered my 14 day cycle across the UK when completing LEJOG cycle route

1. Competitor Websites

Analyse competitor websites that operate in your sector by viewing their homepage and specific categories they are promoting through their homepage. What specific keyword and phrases have an emphasis? What pages of their website have internal text links with specific keywords used? Many websites still look to influence the search engines by embedding footers on their website, since the Penguin update by Google, having keyword rich footers on websites can now have a negative impact on your results pages.

As well as on page, viewing the source code of a website, and looking the meta tags (keywords, description). Also check out websites that have introduced Schema tags to assist with the mark-up of their pages and to influence search engine rankings - this also can provide a wealth of keyword rich content and to understand in more detail the type of keywords you should also consider.

2. Google Trends

If you operate in an industry with seasonal event content (e.g. news, weather, lifestyle or sporting sectors), Google Trends offers you a wealth of information on seasonal peaks of search terms and keywords. The screenshot below provides an example for seasonal searches for "pollen":

The Google Trends chart lists traffic peaks and different journals, regions, cities and languages interested in this content.

 

3. Google Insights

Provides a breakdown on the most common/popular search terms for a specific keyword e.g Flu - Insights allows you to set your report by filter e.g. Web/Image Search, Worldwide or specific country, time period and category. This is a useful tool to gather "real-time" data on keywords search for through the search engine

4. Website Analytics

Check out your Analytics tool that provides information on users interacting with the website such as types of searches performed through search engines to find your content. Run reports based on keyword phrases and terms from search engines.

 

5. On site search

Run a report through internal analytics on your on site search results from the internal search box. For e-tailers and content based websites, this can provide a wealth of opportunities on what users may have found difficult to find or navigate to through the website and search for instead.

 

 

6. Social Media

With the rise in social networks, consumers are influenced and led by the type of content they encounter through the various social platforms, this should provide you with a good insight into the type of key terms being used. Social Mention, technorati, Youtube and Google Blog search are all free to use social network tools that can provide you with a good idea of planning for keyword research

 

7. Adwords

The best way to start any keyword research campaign and to get an understanding of search volume for a set of keywords or phrases is to enter your keywords into Google adwords. Even though the numbers are not exact, it does give you a feel for the demand of search term on how many searches there are on a monthly basis.

 

8. Open Site Explorer

Developed by SEOMOz, Open Site Explorer provides a useful breakdown on websites links, specifically more for link building opportunities but does provide some valuable research for keyword research planning.

To get full access to the tool you do have to pay a monthly fee but restricted access to the tool can be accessed for free. Simply enter your competitor website and this will provide you with a list of external links from other websites. By running a report on "link anchor text" this should flag up what specific search terms the competitor website is looking to rank for.

 

9. Seo Book - http://tools.seobook.com/

A well directory for all things SEO, SEO Book provides a wealth of information and free to use tools to assist with keyword research. You are required to sign up but you can access free tools for your research.

 

10. Speak to your staff 

They surround you every day and you're interacting with them so speak with your team and other departments. Conduct a survey with the various departments whether PR, Buying, Merchandising, Communications as well as your own marketing department on the types of keyword and phrases they associate with your company

 

Feel free to add your own comments to this list and any other SEO tools you use

 

Simon

 

 

 

 

A framework to create a digital marketing team

The rise in digital marketing has created a wealth of opportunities and at the same time, removed barriers to entry to a number of sectors where a start-up, sole trader or large corporation is now competing with one another globally.

For example, take online retailing: A recent article from internet retailing reported that in the UK, shoppers spent £5.8bn online in March, a rise of 14% compared to the same time last year and this is within the retail sector, a sector that has taken a pounding within the current economic climate, witnessed by the closure of many established high street chains.

The chart above details the % of total sales that came from online in 2011 with the UK achieving 12%.

So what does this all mean?

For marketers and businesses alike, goal posts are moving and the rise in digital marketing is changing the business landscape, this means embracing new business models, understanding new marketing tactics and changing the business mindset (e.g. not being afraid to trial out and fail on new strategies to connect to your customer, or prospect or community and more importantly having the right qualifications and digital marketing expertise to embrace this new world).

But changing your mindset and embracing new strategies is easier said than done and therein lies the problem...

Lack of relevant digital qualifications

There is a distinct lack of digital marketing "qualifications" to support the growth within universities, colleges and schools, all not offering academic options that are aligned to digital for students wanting to specialise in digital communications and marketing (e.g. social media, affiliate marketing, search engine optimisation).

Digital marketing is still not on the list of primary or secondary curriculum subjects. Likewise for higher education digital marketing courses, a lack of suitable qualifications that are solely focused on digital marketing.

Until higher and further education embrace qualifications to satisfy would-be digital marketers, it is up to organisations to ensure they provide suitable framework  for their digital staff that provides the necessary training and ensures the business itself is hiring the correct staff and is providing the right opportunities to embrace digital skills.

Introducing a Digital Marketing Framework

A recommended framework could be applied within any business that is looking to recruit and develop their digital marketing team, to make sure they are hiring for the right blend of skills. This was taken from a book called Inbound Marketing by Halligan & Shah, and is called the DARC framework.

• D - Hire Digital Citizens – People that can understand the online environment and can display a working knowledge. It is important your team and individuals can  understand digital tactics and can display examples. This doesn't mean having a Facebook account and tweeting random comments but they're are using digital to support their own interests and hobbies e.g. can demonstrate they have their own blog, they have edited, created and posted videos on YouTube.

• A – Hire for Analytics – Understanding of digital trends and have a curious and analytical approach to what impacts product sales or why there has been an increase in traffic levels to a specific web page. They should also have a good understanding of spread-sheets and be able to interpret trends.

• R – Hire for Web Reach – They can display examples of how passionate they are on a subject area through promoting online, perhaps their hobby or interest through a blog, social media and can display examples of how they have increased traffic to their website or blog using  SEO or paid search or retail products through affiliate marketing

• C – Hire Content Creators – The importance of good content on a website can be a key USP over your competition so look to hire someone with good writing skills and more importantly can write for the web to engage with users. The internet has removed the barriers to creating content, anyone can now create content and publish it to the world. The skill is not necessarily writing content but how your content can stand out from the crowd, what USP can you offer that no one else can and more importantly can you create your own niche?

 

 

 

 

New England Football Shirt Launch – time for a rethink?

For every England football fan, the one shirt launch that whets the appetite and succeeds in driving a national media frenzy is the launch of the England football shirt. Manufactured by Umbro since 1954 (apart from the a decade of Admiral manufacturing the shirt between 1974 - 1984), the brand was established in 1924 in Cheshire.

It's now recognised for Umbro to launch a new England shirt annually, where the home shirt coincides with a non-tournament year and the away shirt on a tournament year (e.g. World Cup, European Championships). This year we see a break from tradition as Umbro launch a new England home shirt, the same year as Euro 2012.

 

Time to rethink the launch of the England football shirt?

It could be argued recent shirt launches have become over-hyped - The recent influx of retailers entering the sports retail market (particularly online)  has seen the focus shift from a shirt that once encapsulated good design, cutting edge technology and passion being dwarfed by what the lowest RRP is to sell the shirt.

A quick browse on Google trends displays a concerning dip in the level of interest for the England shirt promotion. I ran a simple graph focusing on some of the most popular search terms associated with the launch of the shirt e.g. "England shirt", "new england shirt", new england football kit"

The graph above displays the peaks in search traffic which correspond to the annual shirt launch (Feb/March each year). Since 2006 (world cup year) there has been a gradual decline in search trends for the cluster of keywords (apart from a climb in 2009). So why is this?

The performance of the England team has been well documented in failing to deliver to the hype of tournament years, hence a knock-on effect to levels of sales of merchandise associated as proven by a recent Experian Hitwise statistic reporting a 428% increase in visits from "Next England Manager" search terms to the website www.thesackrace.com. Clearly confidence in the team is at a low.

I think the concern is more to do with the trend in the low-pricing of the product and with it, a decline in value and aspiration, or even association with the product. With the influx of retailers promoting the shirt the battle surrounds it's price. Not long after the official launch of the shirt, retailers were already discounting the product and into a price war:

It has culminated in a race to the bottom, where the pricing policy being your USP must only mean "how cheap can we go and offer the product to our customers" and with it, damaging the long term reputation and credibility of the national football shirt...but there is another way...

Redefining and recreating the England Football Shirt Launch

Subside Sports a company that prides itself on offering one of the largest collections of football shirts globally ran a promotion with the England shirt in 2009 where they ran a partnership with the Royal British Legion - for every England shirt sold through www.subsidesports.com a donation was made to the British Legion. Subside also printed a poppy on your England shirt and featured a British forces badge.

So there is another way -  and perhaps Umbro, even the FA could consider assisting in such a campaign where the England shirt launch provides something different back to the nation?

An example of such a campaign was through Puma, who during the build up to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa launched an Africa World Cup Unity Shirt -

In partnership with the United Nations, the shirt was worn by all African teams during the World Cup during a tournament game. to quote the press release -

"PUMA unveiled their key fundraising lever, the revolutionary new Africa Unity Kit –the world’s first ‘continental football kit’ designed to be worn by the 12 African football national teams that PUMA sponsors. These include the World Cup qualified teams Ghana, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Algeria who are headed to the Africa Cup of Nations’ with hosts Angola and the national teams of Egypt, Mozambique, Togo and Tunisia, as well as non-qualified federations of Senegal, Morocco and Namibia. Puma also sponsors some of the continent’s best players — Samuel Eto’o, Emmanuel Eboué and John Mensah. Profits from the sale of the shirts helped fund biodiversity programs in Africa.

These are just two examples of how putting something back to the community/environment through the power of the brand that so many supporters can relate to can automatically transform a product.

So how about it FA or Umbro? It's time to think differently -  why not think a little more laterally and creatively when launching the next England football shirt? Why can't the England shirt launch associate a partnership with a charity? or to support national projects - not only is it giving something back?

It's clear to see a number of retailers selling the product as a "loss leader" as a way to generate footfall from the high-street and into high street stores has damaged the profile of the product - why not add that unique spark back into future England shirt launches and use the platform of the England shirt to offer something back to the country?

 

 

 

 

Looking for good career advice? Work for a start-up

I posted an article on this SEO forum sharing some insights into working for a  start-up during my career in digital marketing, I hope you find some time to take a read. The post focuses on some of the key skills acquired and the day to day activities I was involved in such as setting up a partnership program, building external relationships with suppliers and agencies -  it should provide some inspiration to you that working for a start up is sound career advice.

Previous to working in a start-up, I had been in a large organisation for three years which I really enjoyed, however it wasn't providing me with responsibility or allowing me to push the barriers of creativity to my work so I decided it was time to move on and look for something different in a fast moving business.

It provided me with a really good overview of how a business is run - something I believe is a key skill to have working in digital marketing, to be able to demonstrate a well-rounded compliment of skills. But most importantly, it gave me some life-skills I still use to this day:

• Think creatively - There was no large marketing budget to fall back on, there is no marketing agency at your beckoning call and usually there are a number of larger competitors operating in your sector.
• Learn to fail - You can't stand still in a start-up, you have to keep on pushing yourself and the company in not being afraid to try something different, putting something out there in the market that maybe, this time it's going to connect. If you fail you fail, dust yourself off and get back on it again - but it didn't stop me from dusting myself off and trying again, not giving up.
• Hustle - Whether negotiating over-ride fees with affiliate programs, learning to always get a deal on commission rates - just so you can say to yourself that you've gone that extra mile for your business to drive a better margin.
• Adapt your skills - You need to dive straight in and acquire as much knowledge as you can across the organisation.
• Teach - In a start-up it was common that the business may not have the time (or budget) for you to take a week off on a distance learning digital marketing course, you had to teach yourself on the job, read industry blogs and forum and apply your knowledge. At the same time, it is important you give the time to train up staff in the company.
• Ship - not being afraid to push the button on your new affiliate promotion, website deal, email campaign etc etc - Whatever it is, making sure you are continuing to deliver and to continue to raise the bar.

At some stage in your career work for a start-up,  the wealth of experience you can learn is unlimited. Getting yourself involved in a real business where you need to make real decisions that constantly puts you in a challenging environment is second to none. Hope you get a chance to read my post

In the current economic climate, it's pleasing to read a lot of positive press focused on the growth in the creation of start-ups, people taking the initiative and launching their own ventures. According to an article by real business, during 2011, there were 396,000 start-ups created compared to 362,000 in 2010.

In reply to this growing trend,  http://www.startups.co.uk/ has been launched as a resource to starting in business.

 

Time to create your own future

2012 will continue to witness the end of the industrial era, an era many of our parents were brought up in and educated through and which schools provided compliant workers ready to work on production lines. From here, we were taught to keep your head down, did what you were told and follow the instructions, you would then be rewarded with a handsome pension for retirement.

But we’re seeing the rapid decline in the industrial era, of production lines, of large organisations monopolising market sectors. This is all, gradually, coming to an end and at the same time raises questions on the education system that was created to support such a model. As business models change, shouldn't education systems?

The existing business model remains as it was in the industrial era – to produce products and services the cheapest as possible i.e. continue to race to the bottom, meaning how can we continue to mass produce our products or services the cheapest possible? Where can we outsource to retain our margins, what can we automate? As described in the book, Graceful “Modern society is based on a modern idea: get the work done by replaceable cogs, by individuals programmed to do what they’re told, follow instructions and work cheap. The attraction of this system is evident by how easily ordinary organisations replace ordinary employees”.

In his book "That Used To Be Us", Thomas Friedman mentions “For decades there has been a struggle between the American economy’s desire to constantly increase productivity and the desire to maintain blue-collar jobs. We watched as more and more machines and cheaper workers replaced American manual laborers. We compensated for this loss of blue-collar jobs by creating white-collar jobs. But how do we compensate for the loss of white-collar jobs, which are increasingly under threat in the hyper-connected world? We do it be inventing new kinds of white-collar jobs. But that requires more start-ups and better education…”

This is precisely the model that is no longer going to work in an era of globalisation where there is always going to be someone cheaper than you.

Friedman goes on to:  “As globalization ion and the IT revolution continue to merge, expand, and advance, the more they will destroy the old categories of “developed” and “developing” countries. Going forward, the world increasingly will be divided between high imagination-enabling countries, which encourage and enable the imagination of their people, and low-imagination-enabling countries, which suppress or simply fail to develop their people’s creative capacities and abilities to spark new ideas, start-up new industries and nurture their own “extra”.

I would also argue the same could be said about the organisations we work in – are they providing and embracing the capacity for employees to think creatively, to test new ideas and innovations, to not be afraid to fail and test out new products and service to appeal to their audience?

So what’s the alternative? A race to the top, described in more detail by Seth Godin – and a major factor in embracing the culture of a race to the top is the internet which has opened the opportunities for everyone, who has a vision and initiative to create their own future. Gone are the days where in order to succeed, you had to have healthy cash flow and own the premises of a factory or buildings – there are so many examples of industries that have been re-shaped and redefined thanks to the internet and with it individuals that have stepped up and began to take on the big corporations that once drove a particular industry – take the music business.

An industry once driven by a small number of record companies (deliberately setting a high barrier to entry) who dictated the product placement, price and promotion should be given to a music artist. The record companies held the keys to launching the artist or your record to a global audience, it was through the record company the artist’s work would be produced, promoted and price set.

Recently we’ve seen the this market completely reshape – artists have realised that they can engage with their fan base and audience directly through the internet and that there is a not a need for an interim body to dictate what can/can’t be done, take these two examples of redefining the music industry:

Example 1 - Radiohead selling their album where the customer could set the price on what they decided to pay (Interestingly where the customer could have downloaded the record for free, 2 out of 5 downloaders were willing to pay an average of $6 for the album)

Example 2 – Flattening the distribution of music – Traditionally, in order to get music published, distributed and sold was to work with a major music distributor e.g. Universal, Sony, Warner or EMI among many others. In 1997, Derek Sivers founder of CDbaby

CDbaby was created to provide a solution to the thousands of independent musicians who were at the mercy of the large music distribution labels if they wanted to get their music in large chain record stores such as Tower Records. So as a solution, www.cdbaby.com was born and in 2008 Sivers sold the business for $22 million bequeathing the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education.

Both examples are indicators that even in the most traditional of industries can be reshaped, redefined and barriers to entry removed for new entrants to the market. We’re also seeing this over and over again in other industries e.g. book publishing (domino project), further education (explosion of online modules & courses)

Post Industrial Era

CDBaby and the Domino Project are two examples of successful companies defining a new way of creating and launching a business that appeals to a global audience whilst at the same time thinking creatively, differently and meeting the demands of their audience by racing to the top – where the price of their good and services is not the definitive answer to success.

We can see this same culture apply in many different organisations across different sectors e.g. Apple, Threadless and even fast food chain Nathan’s – companies that may be long established but have adapted to change, redefined their product offering and their value and being not afraid of failure and seeking innovation…the same can also be said about us as individuals – not being afraid to fail, to question, to re-create and to seek out new ways and opportunities.

A timely reminder and 30,000 word manifesto was recently produced by Seth Godin, entitled Stop Stealing Dreams which is worth a read.

 

UK Snow – an opportunity for online retail search campaigns

The arrival of snow hitting the UK this February provides a print opportunity for online retailers to think creatively and look to optimise their digital marketing campaigns around weather.

For search marketing, how could you tap into these severe weather conditions for your SEO strategy? As an example, let's take a look at how an online clothing retailer that sells seasonal merchandise where its sales volumes are impacted by severe weather. 

• Keyword Research - open up your preferred keyword research tools (e.g. Google  adwords, Wordtracker) and begin to analyse search volume and competition around key weather search terms. It would also be worthwhile taking a look at weather operators too to understand what keywords they have optimised their content for. I provided a 3 step guide to keyword research in a previous post

•  Create a tactical product page - From the initial keyword research, look to create a tactical product page within your content management system. This will be the page you will use to target your keywords (analysed from step 1). The keyword research should provide you with the specific terms to determine the page's url, page title, description and anchor text to be targeted. Within the web page, you should also have a defined range of targeted clothing that appeals within this severe weather period. For example, if this is to be targeting snow keywords, you would be looking to embed outdoor weather (e.g. scarves, jumpers, coats etc). This is also a good time to open up your analytics and record any spikes in product sales that were impacted due to historic cold weather periods e.g. December 2010, January 2011?

 

• Partnerships - Look to drive external links to this page through your partner sites, suppliers, brands as well as any digital marketing tactics deployed. For example, look to engage your blog, press releases and social media activity. Ensure the anchor text is related to the keyword research defined in step 1 so you can look to optimise your content and promote this webpage within the SERPS.

This provides a brief actionable plan on how online retailers with "weather" impacted products could capitalise on severe weather outbreaks. More importantly it provides a creative solution to differentiate yourself from your competitors within the same sector.

There have been a number of clothing retailers operating in different sectors that have already embedded campaigns to capitalise on the colder weather examples include sportswear retailer Kitbag.com, Outdoor clothing specialist cotswold outdoor and clothing retailer Next - All creating product pages as well as generating awareness through their social media strategies

 

 

 

3 Step Guide to Keyword Research

In my previous digital marketing posts, previously we looked at creating an actionable 6 step SEO strategy to support a specific campaign from content creation, keyword research, social media, implementation and measurement.

This post looks more specifically into keyword research and creating a 3 step guide to use. There is a library of information that you can find on the subject of keyword research but if you're keen to dig deeper on this subject, I would recommend The Beginners Guide to SEO created by SEOMoz who provide an excellent account of the benefits and reasons why keyword research is the foundation to any SEO strategy.

Let's briefly go back to the basics of why Keyword research is important to any SEO strategy and the importance of Relevancy and Popularity.

1) Relevancy meaning that the relevance of a document increases if the terms or phrase shows up in the title of the work, or in headlines, subheadings, or if links to the page come from relevant pages and use relevant anchor text

2) Popularity measures the how the work is referenced by other work. Therefore the popularity increases with every document referencing it through links.

So to stand a chance of ticking both of the above boxes, you need to ensure the content you are creating is taking into account the most relevant keywords and phrases associated to the subject. How to do this? Well below is a 3 step guide providing you with some insights to ensure you are on the right track when researching the keywords of choice. So, you have identified the content, now what?

Step 1: Selecting the Keywords

• Brainstorm list of ideas of words/phrases - speak to your co-workers, friends, suppliers to your business of keywords and phrases they would associate to the content you are looking to create
• Imagine you are the customer - Put yourself in the shoes of your customer. What types of keywords and phrases are you going to refer to? Phone or email your customers, be open with them and ask them for their thoughts and ideas too
• Competitors - This is a great resource tool. List out all your competitors who are selling the same product/service and begin to form research into the words and phrases they are targeting. Check out the source code of your competitors website products page - here you can search for Meta Keyword and Description tags where they may provide you with hints on keywords they are targeting.
• Analytics - Consult your analytics and make a note of all the relevant keywords users have used to arrive at your website relating to the specific product/service.
• Define your list - By now you should have a list of keywords form this research you can now take forward. Do not make the list to exhaustive, try and look to define and identify 10-15 keywords.

Step 2: Defining the List

• From the initial selection of keywords in Step 1, now you need to define the list of keywords you want to target that you see as relevant and popular for search tactics.
• Sign into the Google Keyword Tool - this provides you with an insight into the search volume available for the range of keywords you have identified through Google e.g. how many searches are conducted on a monthly basis for that specific word or phrase. Take a look at this blog about the how to use the keyword tool for SEO.
• Copy and Paste the keyword list you created in Step 1 into the keyword tool and choose Exact match and set the region you are looking to target.
• Record results - The Keyword tool will then generate a list of keyword search volume generated for a monthly average.

Step 3: Choosing the Keywords

• Analyse Local monthly Searches - If you login to your Google account this will then break down the keywords by a monthly average figure and by region (Local) rather than Global. From here you can check to see peaks in search volume throughout the year
• Monitor Keyword ideas - underneath the keywords you included, Google will also provide a keyword ideas section- this is a list of alternative and associated keywords you might also want to consider that too drive potential search volume
• Do the keywords match your content? This is an important step, make sure the keywords you are looking to take forward match the content you have on your website. There is no point identifying keywords with lots of potential search volume if you don't have the content available on the website to support this.