3 minute readPublished 9 January
The best performing online content is when someone has taken the time to really get inside the head of a target audience.
And when I say target audience, I mean just one segment or persona. Yes, that’s right – one size most definitely won’t fit all! In fact, before you even start on keywords you need to identify all the different types of customers you have.
For a B2B audience this will be job role, sector, size of company, who they report to, their biggest concern and even identifying the next step for them in their career! Everyone’s motivations are different – even when you’re talking to a business customer, try tapping into the motivations behind their purchases.
Everyone’s motivations are different – even when you’re talking to a business customer, try tapping into the motivations behind their purchases.
What’s so special about ‘long-tail keywords’?
You will no doubt have heard the term ‘long-tail keywords’. This basically means a highly specific phrase of more than 3 words. Your aim is to identify long-tail keyword phrases that are relevant to the audience segments (or personas) you want to target. To make things even trickier, the long-tail phrase must have a solid number of searches and a low competition index!
Long-tail phrases tend to have a lower number of monthly searches than keywords – but they often convert better, because they catch people later in the buying/conversion cycle. A person searching for "air conditioning units" is probably browsing, and not ready to buy. On the other hand, someone searching for “what’s the best price for an air conditioning unit for an office” has already identified the requirement – now they’re comparing prices!
Ask your customers and sales teams
Talk to your customers and sales teams to discover typical terms used to describe your products or services. What search terms did recent customers use when they started looking for more information about your industry, solutions and products?
Go to Google Adwords Keyword Planner and create an account. Next click on ‘Search for new keyword and ad group ideas’. Add in your list of phrases and keywords and then click ideas to see Google’s recommendations of searches that relate to your list.
What are your competitors’ keywords?
Next find out what your competitors are ranking for. Once again, Google Adwords will find this out for you. Enter the url for each of your closest rivals into the field where it asks for ‘Your landing page’ then click ideas and download the results.
There are other keyword research tools such as:
- Moz Keyword Explorer
- Google Trends
- Microsoft Bing Ads Intelligence
- Wordtracker’s Free Basic Keyword Demand
Now you have all your potential keywords and phrases for the final steps:
Remove anything that isn’t relevant Remove anything that’s too competitive - it’s likely that competitors with bigger pockets will have these ones covered and you won’t stand a chance Finally look at the average monthly searches - you’ll want to target the ones that are left on your list with the highest volumes – no point writing a wonderful piece of content that no one’s looking for Start writing!
