Prospective Keywords: beyond the long-tail…

The best thing about keywords are that they generate traffic.  You could essentially be write the most ground-breaking piece of content on the “credit crunch”, but if you don’t use those or related keywords then it might not capitalise on what is already there.  This is where search engine optimisation plays it’s biggest role…

Responsive (and misguided) Keyword Research

The fundamentals of keyword research are based around the principal that you must immerse yourself in what people are searching for using various keyword research tools, such as Google’s, WordTracker and Keyword Discovery, 3 of my favourites, but in my opinion this immersions doesn’t always go deep enough. Being a marketer I believe this to be a little responsive, missing the up-and-comers that even long-tail keyword research may not pick-up on as there may not yet be a search volume for those keywords.  Keyword research therefore has to be designed to be far more proactive.

Prospective Keywords

The thing I found so interesting about digging around for prospective keywords is that essentially you can create your own search volume, build your page / website around these terms and essentially be far more effective in ranking in the future. For instance, my site is currently relatively new, but I woudl hope to start to see “just me and my” and “justmeandmy” further down the line in my analytics data.  Arguably, this example is brand building, but the notion goes far beyond this.

…think about the credit crunch. Not words people strung together before June 2007, but they’re now words that are high on people’s agenda now. Take a look at Google Trends, a tool that maps keyword usage over time:

Keywords in your Community

One of my favourite bits of ‘keyword research’ is spending time in the community of their sector. This is your chance to learn how people use the keywords, how they don’t and how they string them together by spending time reading sector blogs, forums, social media sites…

I put together a mindmap using a new tool of mine that I’ve been playing around with to highlight the opportunities that exist around proactive keyword research, click to expand:

Proactive Keyword Research: click on the image to expand...

Keyword Recognition

Search engines are not the only way people use the internet. Keywords that people use within communities can be quite different to those that used in search engines, so when they do come across your site, see those same words that they themselves use in their community, that may well lead to them valuing your site a whole lot more simply through keyword recognition.

Community Keywords > Trigger Words > Keyword Recognition > Value > Returning Visitors

And just because the visitor found your site initiallly by searching for “SEO”, it might be that next time when they want to find you they look for the words “justmeandmy blog”…simply create your own keywords.