Identify Target Markets and Match Keywords for Increased Web
Visibility
As your company evolved its web presence did you have a clear
picture of the market for your product? Or did you put up a web
site and hope that the right people would somehow manage to find
you? Did you develop your web presence around your potential
customers? Or was it developed around your company and its
products? It has become clear that a customer-focused web site
that targets a distinct market offers you the greatest
opportunity for growth. Perhaps it is time to re- evaluate your
potential customer base.
The first step is to figure out what the target markets are for
your product. You then need to focus your web visibility on
attracting and keeping those visitors.
Your target market consists of the groups of people who are
potential customers for your product. What is my target market?
Begin by looking at your existing customers. Analyze their
characteristics by observing their demographics, psychographic
and behavioral differences. Do you notice different group
characteristics? These groups are your market segments. These
are the markets that you can target. You then customize your
marketing efforts towards these groups or target markets.
It is a good idea to determine the priorities of your different
target markets. Are there some markets that offer you more
opportunities? Analyze the size and potential growth of each
market. These should be in line with your own company objectives
and resources. You may have to focus on one or two markets.
By now you should begin to develop a clear picture of your
potential clients and your competition. From this you can plan
your marketing strategies to maintain an advantage over your
competitors. This should be done for each target market.
You should try to develop an in-depth understanding of these
markets. What are your customer's needs, their motivations and
their interests both now and in the future? The marketing
program for your particular target markets should be carefully
thought out with this in mind. This is easier to do for smaller
sized niche markets. One important goal would be to communicate
the idea that you are the market leader to potential customers.
The main marketing communication vehicle for many companies is
their web site. The goal is to develop a strong web visibility
program which will attract and reach your target market. This is
done through effective search engine rankings. Once you have
attracted your audience your site must be effective in
communicating with and retaining your customers.
An important aspect of your marketing communication will be your
web site's content and its focus on keywords and search terms
used by your potential customers.
Keywords are very important. If you choose the wrong keywords
you will miss your target market, and attract the wrong type of
customer. You should not use keywords that you think are the
right ones. You should know in advance that they are the right
ones. When it comes to visitors you should be looking for
quality not quantity. To find out what keywords to use you
should undertake some research.
How do you choose keywords? Your keywords are generally phrases,
not words. You should listen to your customers and how they
describe your product. What are your industry buzz words? What
keywords do your high ranking competitors use? Look at your
server logs and determine what search terms people are using to
find you. Use tools such as Wordtracker or Overture to determine
alternatives.
Analyzing potential keywords will give you an understanding of
which ones are highly competitive. This will help you to
identify possible keywords that have been ignored by competitors
and will offer a niche opportunity for you. Your ideal keywords
will have low levels of competition. Your keywords should also
have existing levels of searches. The higher the better. Low
competition for keywords and high levels of searches will offer
you the greatest opportunities. You should plan to avoid the
highly competitive, generic, one word keywords that have many
searches. You should also avoid keywords that have no or very
few searches done on them. Plan to use only 2 to 4 keywords per
page. Make sure you integrate these keywords intelligently into
your written text.
Before you finalize your initial keyword selection you should
find out where your competitors rank on the major search engines
for the proposed keywords. The competitiveness of a specific
keyword can be estimated using Google. Search for the keyword
and look at: the total number of results returned, the number of
incoming links to the top sites, and the Google page rank of the
top sites. This will give you an understanding of how you stand
against your competition.
Your goal should be to be ranked on the first page of results
for your keywords. This is because most search engine users do
not go past the first couple of pages of results during their
searches.
There is so much research and analysis you can do relating to
keywords and your target markets. And it is worth while as it is
a way to stay ahead of your competition. It is not a one-off
task but rather a work-in-progress. Keywords should be analyzed,
maintained, and matched against your target market and
competitors on a regular basis.
You should aim to have a comprehensive understanding of your
market and of your competitors. By understanding the needs and
challenges of your market, and what your competitors offer, you
will then be able to identify niches that you can target. Use
this to position your company as one of the few with in-depth
expertise in those niche target markets. Build your website
around that expertise to distinguish your company from your
competitors. Aim to give the impression that you are the market
leader for the niche.
By developing a customer focused web site, together with an
effective web visibility program utilizing identified target
markets and researched keywords which show up well in relevant
search categories you will attract traffic to your site. And
best of all this traffic will be made up of truly qualified
prospects which will offer you the opportunity to develop the
full potential of your online business.