Is the goal of your website to sell or to gain leads?

See, there’s a big difference here. And you better know the answer or you’re blowing a hole right through your winning strategy.  Your approach will be completely different depending on whether you want your visitors to pull out a credit card or simply hand over information.

How to deal with visitors once they hit your website is a copywriting issue.  But getting the “right” kind of visitors to your website is an SEO issue and keywords play a starring role.

If you want visitors who are interested in buying…you know, the kind of folks who have a credit card ready, you’ve got to target your keywords properly.

The way you do that is by determining the commercial intention of particular keywords.  So if you are selling an eBook on vegetable gardening, one of your keyword phrases might be “how to grow vegetables.”  Now using this phrase would be a mistake because it scores very high for non-commercial intention.

That means most folks searching this phrase are looking for free, how-to info.  You may attract a ton of visitors if you optimized your site well enough but your sales will fall flat.

If you use the phrase “vegetable gardening book,” it scores high on the commercial intention scale.  People you hook with this phrase are more likely to be searching for a book to buy.  They’ve already done their research and they’re ready to roll.  Those are the tye of visitors you want.

But…

If your goal is to build a list, the first phrase would be a better choice.  Offering a free report or email how-to series would be successful.

Do ya get it now?

Now if you’re wondering how the heck I know which phrase scores what, you’ll be glad to know there’s a handy little free tool that will make the calculations for you.

Microsoft’s adCenter Labs has created an online commercial intention tool.  Here’s the link: http://adlab.microsoft.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/Default.aspx.

Now have fun with the tool and go find success!

Evy Schwartz
SEO Services, San Antonio

It’s no wonder a huge number of the questions I get are about keyword research.  So I thought I’d open up my SEO Copywriter bag of tricks and let you in on a few keyword research secrets.

First off…you don’t have to spend money on fancy keyword research software.  There are 2 free tools out there that are all you need and here are the links:

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ and https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

The first is the Wordtracker free tool.  I’ve used the paid version and to tell you the truth, I didn’t find that much more value in it.  Google is a great tool as well.

But you have to know that neither tool is 100% correct 100% of the time.  The Wordtracker tool tracks daily searches and Google tracks monthly searches.  So I always compare the two.

Simply multiply the Wordtracker results by 30 and you’ll get a number that should be close the Google number.  If the two are somewhat equal then I trust the results.  If there’s a huge difference, I try to go by my gut.  Do I think the keyword has a large search potential?

Another area I look at is whether the keyword is being used by people who are buying. For example, if I was researching cameras, I might type in digital cameras.  This keyword phrase would probably bring in a lot of people who are in the researching stage…they aren’t in the buying mode yet.

But if I were to type in Kodak Easyshare M380, then I’m probably looking to buy that camera.  The odds of a sale are a lot higher but the traffic will be less.

But that’s okay because the quality of the traffic improves.

So how about your niche?  If it’s dog training, then someone searching for a dog training book would be more likely to be looking to buy than someone looking for dog training tips.  Are you starting to see the light?

Now the big exception here is if you’re building your list and not selling right away.  In that case, a keyword like dog training tips would work great.

Oh and by the way…Google’s keyword tool can really help you here.  Just put in your main keyword and scroll to see all of their keyword suggestions.  I’ll bet you’ll start to be able to pick out the keywords that will make you money!

Evy Schwartz
Internet Marketing, SEO Expert
San Antonio, Texas