Posted by: Brooke Caesar, Account Manager

Building the keyword list is the backbone to any successful search engine marketing campaign. If you target keywords that are too competitive, you end up chasing dreams of grandeur. If you target keywords that are too niche, you’ll get the results, but not the traffic. There are many steps in finding the right balance that will get the results and the traffic.

Begin your strategy by brainstorming keywords that are central to your organization and your audience. Once you have compiled a complete list, move onto what your competitors find important. One of the keys to creating that successful keyword strategy involves investigating what is central to your competitors’ strategy.

Review their meta data
What keywords are they using? How are they enticing people to come to their site (call to action)? Go to the competitors’ site and view their code. Take a look at the keywords that they think are beneficial by looking at their title, description and keyword tags.

Examine their content
What keywords are they using in their page copy? Scan through your competitors’ top level pages. Take a look at their sitemap and navigation. What keywords are they using to describe their products and services?

Find their listings
Where do competitors show up in the top search engines? What searches are they getting the most traffic for? Leverage a keyword tool, such as SpyFu, to find where a competitor has paid listings or to find what listings they are achieving organically.

Are these keywords in your strategy? If not, then they should be. Compile a list of keywords as you are looking through your competitors’ site and add them into your keyword universe. Once you have a full list of all possible keywords then it is time to begin the process of analyzing the effectiveness of each in order to get the perfect combination of keywords that will provide the results and the traffic.

The keyword strategy can be one of the most complicated processes in your search engine marketing strategy, but it is well worth the time when you see the results.