Why Keywords are your Friends

Choose your FRIENDS wisely… they will make or break you.” ~J. Willard Marriott

The same can be said for keywords.  They will make or break you.  Okay, perhaps that’s a bit dramatic… but they are a central and important component to your marketing strategy – like your brand, they can be looked at as one of the foundational pieces that is necessary to define when building out your online presence.  You can look at keywords from two different perspectives… the way people are defining your business (consumer point of view) and the way you would like to define your business (brand point of view):

Your approach to keywords will also directly feed into your content strategy – as your keywords will not only be incorporated into your content but also impact the distribution and categorization methods you employ.

It all comes back to “Find Ablity” as my friend Michelle from GetScrappy refers to it. While the traditional advertising reach models of the past still do apply (superbowl ads, broad display buys across networks); Marketers now need go to where their customers are.. this means not only expanding on content that is searchable and “findable” by search engines (blog posts, video, images, etc) but also finding your customers where they are (social networks, content sharing sites, niche online communities, review sites, etc).  More and more, keywords are now being used beyond search to classify and uncover new content – this is already happening today in the form of tags and on twitter in the form of #hashtags.

Not only that, all content is social and developing valuable content that appeals to your customers and their desire to share will also positively impact  your “find ability”.   Content and links to content are shared, spread and talked about.  And since customers live connected everywhere now- there are ample places to get your content found… Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter to name just a few of the important ones.

Getting back to your brand and why keywords are so integral… As you develop content for all these channels, you will require a solid brand platform one that clearly identifies your audience, ideal consumer persona, and your brand’s personality and voice.  Once you have these basic questions answered, you’ll be able to come up with a set of keywords that will be the center of your content strategy.   Also take a look at your referrer traffic to see how prospects are finding you.

Here’s four easy steps to developing a keyword strategy and approach that will work for you:

1. Identify keywords integral to your brand identity and category
2. Look at your analytics program to see how people are searching and coming to your site
3. Look at keyword expansion tools to identify long-tail keywords (keywords that are 2-3 words and are less competitive to rank for)
4. Start integrating these words into all your content – blog posts, tweets, video, photos, comments, etc.

Coming up in natural search results takes time, especially in categories that are established and which have lots of competition – but the best approach is to start with your customers in mind.

• How can you help them to understand your offering?
• How can you help them understand the landscape?
• What information do you have that could be relevant or helpful to them?
• How can you make the discovery process fun and entertaining for them?

Keeping the customer in mind from the start and integrating keywords that are integral to your business is a win / win situation that will keep your brand on top – First, in terms of Find Ability (real-time search and SEO) and secondly keeping your brand top of mind and relevant to customers and prospects as they come to those all important decisions of where to spend their money.