Why Profitable Keywords Are The Cornerstones Of Your Internet Marketing

Keywords are ground zero. They are essential to your online success. You must get the keywords right or it will be game over before you even start. Mainly because keywords are the most important element of your online marketing.

It cannot be stressed enough, especially for beginning webmasters or online marketers, choosing the right profitable keywords will largely determine whether or not you are successful with your online endeavors. You simply have to get this element right or your marketing will be in big trouble.

What are keywords?

Let’s start at the beginning, keywords are the exact words that someone types into a search engine to find what they are looking for on the web. Some keywords are valuable/profitable, while others are practically worthless.

Profitable keywords are those that convert into a sale, lead, or potential customer for your business or product. They are the words that someone searches to buy a product or hire a service. Someone searching for “honeymoon vacation packages” is probably in the market to book a honeymoon vacation and could turn out to be very profitable for the right website or business.

Profitable keywords are those where the searcher is in the right “mindset” or frame of mind to buy what they are looking for on the web. Tailor your online marketing to target these profitable keywords and it can spell success.

So what is the whole process of finding or choosing profitable keywords to use in your marketing? Let’s look at some ways to proceed…

Number of keyword searches performed?

You need to find out how many searches are done each month for your chosen keywords. Just use WordTracker or a site like SEOBook. These will give you a preliminary number of searches performed each month for your keyword. Highly popular and well-searched keywords with hundreds of thousands of searches each month will be extremely difficult to rank for because you will have stiff competition from top companies with unlimited resources.

I like to choose less popular keywords that get only a couple of hundred searches each day because my chances of appearing on the first page are greatly increased. But don’t look at the number of searches, some keyword phrases that only get four or five searches a day can still be very profitable.

For serious keyword research in a particular market niche, I like to use Brad Callen’s Keyword Elite, which is professionally designed software that makes all of your keyword research so much easier. But there are plenty of free keyword tools you can use. A useful tool for keywords is the Google AdWords External Suggestion Tool which will help you find valuable keywords: adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Commercial intent of the keywords?

But how do you know if a keyword is profitable? Well, one convenient tool is MSN which helps you “Detect Online Business Intent” of keywords. Just type in a keyword and it will give you a percentage or probability that your keyword query has commercial intent or benefit: adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/Default.aspx

Keyword conversion rate?

Once you have your chosen keywords set, the next thing you want is to have a landing page that converts those keywords or the traffic from those keywords into buyers or leads for your online business. This is another crucial element of your online marketing: you must have a landing page or content/site that converts into a sale or obviously you will not earn any income.

Keep in mind that if you engage in affiliate marketing, your primary goal is not to sell, but rather to “pre-sell” your products or services. One effective way I have found to do this is to provide customers/prospects with valuable information that they can use to make their final purchase decision. Comparison sites work well, as do review sites, top ten… potential customers use the Internet and keywords not only to find products, but more importantly, to find information about those products. Your goal should be to provide this valuable information to make their task a little easier and they will reward you with a sale.

What are long tail keywords?

Long-tail keywords are just that: long three- or four-word phrases that search engines use to find what they’re looking for on the web. Because they are highly targeted long-tail keywords, they have been shown to have better conversion rates than general keywords. This is also just common sense, someone looking for a “2005 Ford Mustang Convertible” may be in the right mindset to purchase such a vehicle; compared to someone searching for a more general keyword phrase like “sports cars.”

Study your website traffic logs religiously to find long-tail keywords that convert to a sale. Target these long-tail keywords in your marketing. Even buy PPC (pay per click) advertising on the top three search engines: Google AdWords, Yahoo! Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter: for these valuable and profitable keywords.

And build higher rankings in organic search for these long-tail keyword phrases. It’s really not that hard for long sentences, especially if they’re related to your site; many times you can reach the first position in a matter of days, especially in Google.

How to rank high for your chosen profitable keywords?

Of course, the million dollar question is: HOW do you rank in the first place for your chosen keywords? I believe that the key to ranking high in search engines (especially Google) is to be persistent in building rankings for your keywords. Take a long-term view or approach, it can sometimes take months, even years, to rank in the top five for your highly competitive keywords.

The best strategy is to “stick to it” and keep creating relevant links to your keyword landing page. Create related blogs with valuable content that links to your keywords. Write articles related to keywords and distribute them all over the web. Create Google Alerts for your keywords and place them as comments/links on newly created pages on the web that Google is indexing.

Be proactive, download the SEOQuake Toolbar and find your top keyword competitors. Check out their links and then go out and get the same links. Write better, higher quality content than your top competitors because Google always rewards great content. Also, use the free Addthis.com button and let your visitors bookmark your great content on all social bookmarking sites and build your keyword links for you.

Make keyword press releases with your embedded links and distribute them all over the web. Get these press releases on Google News and other top places around the web. PRWeb.com is really a great place for your press releases as you can embed your keywords in your links.

If you can, try to get your most important keywords into your domain name. Many SEO experts argue the merits of this goal from my own experience and marketing: It’s much easier to rank high for your keywords if you have them in the domain name. Again, it’s just common sense, if you have your main keyword in the domain, this keyword obviously tells search engines that’s what your site is about. I even bought domains and built sites specifically around certain keywords just to rank high.

Always remember, you have to be persistent, I have been fighting some keyword battles for over four or five years! For really profitable keywords, it can be a constant struggle to stay on the first page, but the trick is to not give up, just keep fighting your competitors. Persistence usually pays off in the end and those profitable keywords will get your links in the first place. Make ranking high for those profitable keywords your number one marketing strategy. Focus all of your marketing efforts on getting lots of quality traffic for those keywords, and you’ll be successful online.