7 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Doing Keyword Research Mistake Number Two

This lesson often comes as a surprise to many readers.

 

Mistake Number Two: Not taking advantage of correctly targeted keywords.

"You Simply Must Have Massive Lists of Well-Targeted Keywords!"

Question: In the headline above, which word is more important to your online success, "massive" or "targeted"? (Answer later in the article).

There's an old axiom that every offline sales professional has probably heard more than once. It goes something like:

"If you throw enough pasta against the refrigerator door, some of it's going to stick".

That's the way to begin the quest for your keyword lists. Get enough of them, learn to use them effectively and you'll find some that work. You'll find that others do not work so well for you.

And then you'll occasionally stumble across what seems to be the next Holy Grail; a keyword that is both relatively inexpensive (if you're paying for that keyword through Google AdWords or another pay per click marketing campaign (PPC) - more about this in the 5th article in this series) and extremely effective in its ability to draw massive amounts of traffic that result in tons of sales.

Yessir, the thought of that type of keyword makes me smile. Heck, it makes me drool. I love finding those diamond-in-the-rough keywords that my competitors don't even have a clue about, much less use!

However, before you run off to your favorite keyword tool(s) (and I believe that you need to use more than one. Actually I use 7 tools for my really extensive keyword research - but that's coming up in the next article), stop for a minute and take a few moments to digest the next paragraph.

Massive keyword lists are your goal but you what you really want is the traffic that these keyword lists will ultimately generate.

You want these keywords and the corresponding traffic to be:

1) Well targeted - you don't just want traffic no matter what anyone has told you in the past. You want traffic that's interested in what you're offering. You want the real potential customers to visit your website with their checkbook or credit card, ready to make that purchase. You're not after the tire thumpers.

2) Passionate enough about whatever you're offering (and affluent enough to be able to purchase it) to the point that price is not the deciding factor in consummating the sales process.

In order to accomplish those goals, you need to generate massive keyword lists. Then you need to learn how to manage these lists even further, depending on exactly the type of online sales you're doing.

If you are attempting to optimize your website, be it a brand-new website or 10 years old, you'll be performing what's called search engine optimization (SEO) on your site. You'll learn more about this on Day 6 of this series of articles.

But if you're just salivating to get started using keyword research with your SEO activities, I can think of no better place to start than with a subscription to PlanetOcean.com. (Please see the active link for Planet Ocean in the Resources Box at the end of this article).

The folks at PlanetOcean are among the best SEO strategists around. Their eBook called "The Unfair Advantage to Winning the Search Engine Wars" (which comes with your subscription) takes you from "complete SEO newbie" all the way to the level of the pros.

The book and the website are updated monthly to assure you that their highly respected advice on optimizing your site (for the dozen or so top and second tier search engines, no less) is current and up-to-date.

If you're trying to find great SEO advice believe me, you will like and benefit from these folks. And they have a great, 365 day, "even if the dog ate it" guarantee. You simply cannot go wrong by checking them out.

Now if you are doing PPC campaigns with Google AdWords (or Yahoo which used to be Overture) that's a horse of a different color. You need to generate massive keyword lists as well. However, you will want to employ and manage your keyword lists in a much different manner than the folks looking to employ SEO to achieve great "organic" search results will.

Heck, you're paying for your keywords and the traffic they generate. You need to learn the basics from an expert in order to make money with the keywords that you are going to generate.

The man who is simply THE AdWords Guru, IMNSHO (In My Not So Humble Opinion), is my associate Perry Marshall. Perry is the author of

"The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords". If you're an AdWords wannabe, you absolutely, positively want Perry's eBook (HINT: Your competitors probably already have their copies!).

And if you're an intermediate AdWords user (a semi-pro, so to speak) and you haven't read Perry's book, you need to. And if you have read it, you want to read it again with the version that's just been updated (for Autumn 2005) to bring yourself up to speed. Click the link in the Resources Box at the end of the article for more information or to order this Great AdWords eBook.

OK, that's enough for today.

Oops, I almost forgot the answer to the question I posed at the beginning of the article.

ANSWER: IMHO, both words are important but if I had to choose only one of them as THE most important, I'll take "targeted" over "massive" when it comes to traffic any day of the week, especially if it's in a PPC campaign where I'm directly paying for that traffic. But in reality, I want them both! (I'm a firm believer in the quote "Be happy with what you have, so make sure you get enough!")

Again, though, that's just IMNSHO. ;-)