As SEO professionals, copywriters and all around mad-crazy marketing gals, we get to think about fancy things like, “How are we going to use this keyword without totally bollixing the whole marketing aspect?” That’s always a fun consideration. Building Campaigns Around Key Words and Phrases: SEO, Marketing, Social Media, what’s it all about?
Others might be, “How many times can we use this keyword without it looking spammy in that social media campaign?” and “Should we make this one word or two? Which gets better clicks?”
It’s great when the work you do can be turned into helpful articles for readers… 😀
Any time a single word can be broken into two (i.e. keyword vs. key word), you have an opportunity for ranking. Any time you pay attention to the terms your clients/customers use to describe your product, there is an opportunity for ranking. In fact, there are a lot more ranking opportunities than you might think, rolling around in your site’s content.
Unfortunately, those ranking opportunities aren’t always good, grand and wonderful. Sometimes, they can be ranking pitfalls. If you need clarity, think of all the times you or someone else might have searched “company, scam”. Do you think those companies are happy they can be found under that search? Yeah – probably not.
While reading this article, keep the above in mind. You can accidentally rank for terms you don’t want associated with your company or product by introducing a few stray words into your content.
Bonus Tip: Quickly check the terms found in your content with Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools – Verify your site and become a Google Webmaster. Why? Because it gives you a quick overview of important data you can use for your SEO campaign. For the purposes of this article, it shows you the words Google thinks your site is about.
As you move forward with your campaigns – whether marketing, SEO, social media, or a mix -, make sure to check the results every once in awhile. This is especially important if you have a blog attached to your site, as we do.
Every once in awhile depends on what type of campaign you’re running. For example, if you only put out two or three new pieces of content a month, every once in a while is approximately 6 months. On the other hand, if you put out eight new pieces of content or more, you want to check monthly.
Whether monthly or semi-annually, it’s almost guaranteed you’ll find some words that’ll make you do a “how’d that get in there” double take. Like it’s, which is 9th in our top 10. Go figure.
Now, let’s get to the main part of the article.
Did You Know: Traditional marketing uses key terms and phrases
Yes, yes it does. Think about the latest commercials you’ve watched on television. How many times does a specific phrase get used? A commercial about making your own baby food, for instance, might use “fresh, organic, baby food” four or five times before the 3-minute commercial is over.
Raid is another example. In every commercial, their main term is repeated at least twice, verbally, and more in the images themselves.
Another example could be the HeadOn commercials.
In television commercials, radio ads, direct marketing flyers, guerrilla marketing and more, you’ll find instances of key words and phrases. Some are in bold, some are in italics, some are just repeated, but they’re all key to the campaign.
Translating Traditional Marketing Methods to Modern, Online Methods
What’s that saying… twice is a mention, three times is a keyword, more is branding? Taking a lesson from traditional marketing, key words and phrases are simply the words you want your market to use in identifying your product or service.
For example, let’s say you sell all things red. In fact, red has become your identifying phrase. You sell red widgets and red shoes, red shirts, socks and gadgets. Because this is a business and your business website, red would become one of your key terms (due to brand). Widgets would also become one of your key terms, and red widgets, your key phrase.
With this in mind, you might:
- Create a site page about red widgets.
- Twitter a helpful tip about how red is a great color to get people excited about something. Use the hashtags #red #widgets.
- Write a blog about how recent studies have proven that a spot of red on a website can up conversions by 3%, and offer your red widgets. Link this blog to the site page.
- Send a tweet out about your new blog using hashtags #red #widgets. Include a short, to-the-point line about the study.
- Share your blog on Facebook, with a 10% off red widget sale from your company.
- Tweet about your 10% off red widget sale for those using hashtags #red #widgets.
- Post a video on YouTube about the psychological affects of red and the recent studies. Use a keyword /marketing rich title and description:
- Title – Red Widgets Increase Site Conversions by 3%, Study Shows
- Description – New psychology study shows a red widget added to a site can draw attention and increase site conversions by 3%. Using eye-tracking studies on high-conversion pages…
- Add this video to Facebook.
- Post this video on your blog.
- Send a tweet out about the video using hashtags #red #widgets #video.
You might be thinking, “How can I possibly do all that and run my business?” Well, in reality, the steps are a little more condensed:
- Create site pages about your products
- Decide how many blogs you’re going to put out each month, write and schedule them.
- Decide how may videos you need and create them to compliment your blog. Either a) upload them all at once or b) upload them according to a schedule.
- Using HootSuite, TweetDeck or other program, schedule your tweets each morning (check in once in a while to see if someone is talking to you and respond back).
- Set your social media accounts to draw from your blog feed
You might also be thinking, “But I don’t sell widgets and red isn’t my color.” That’s fine, that’s fine. This strategy has two things going for it. One, it’s merely an example – a beginning outline of how one might go about using key terms in a marketing, SEO and social media campaign.
For example, if you sell real estate in Seattle, Seattle would replace red, and real estate would replace widgets.
Finally, you might be thinking, “How do I know if all of this effort is paying off?” Smart question, and it’s answered by monitoring. You have to monitor your important metrics – like, how many people have liked your posts on Facebook, shared them from your site, sent them on Twitter, watched your video, etc.
For each line of marketing you use, make a notation about where you were before the campaign started. “In April, I had 15 followers in Twitter. I have not bought followers or any such thing and I now have 125 in May.” Whatever metrics you’re looking at, you’re looking for growth. The biggest metric to remember is your bottom line. Is it paying off?
Conclusion
Other things are involved in creating and implementing campaigns based on key terms, but the main thing is to stay on course while being flexible at the same time.
Successful SEO professionals, copywriters, business owners, marketers and webmasters are the ones who remember the goal, but are willing to change tactics to reach the goal. The above is just an outline, to show you what’s possible. Take it and run with it!
Is there any particular step you’ve found to be useful in your campaigns? Share it with our readers!
25 Responses
Very useful article it’s give me lot of new ideas about SEO and SMM.
Well said, changing the tactics to reach the goal has become very much important when it comes to an online marketing as your rivals are watching you and they are ready to replicate you. Here adding something which your rivals can’t will be an added advantage. I will try to make case study of all successful business and will get inspired from those techniques to make most out of them.
Great Article. Doing Reasearch on the Google Keyword Tool is also a great way to find other keywords worth exploring that have little competition and may actually bring equal traffic. And, no doubt Social Networking is driving massive amounts of traffic. I read an article earlier that IF DONE RIGHT, social media can drive more traffic than being on Google Page 1, first position for your targeted keyword. You concur?
Finding the appropriate keyword to use and its density is barely important to one’s website most especially in blogs. They play central role on how a blog works and the question of does it reach your targeted clients? Thanks for sharing this informative blog, glad I found it an will certainly come back to get more updates. Moving forward to see more from you.
Thanks Dave, what a nice thing to say! 🙂 I’m sure based on our editorial calendar we’ll have a few new posts that may be of interest to you! (shameless plug) You’re welcome to add our RSS feed we publish twice a week.
Thanks for your positive response and I won’t hesitate to subscribe to your RSS feed for your new updates. I would love to visit the editorial calendar, I know this is silly but where I can find it? Thanks!
*Makes note on team To Do List* Live editorial calendar
lol We haven’t made our editorial calendar live to the public as of this date, although we’ve been considering it for quite some time now. Your question just pushed it up to the front of the que. Now to figure out where we’ll put it!
Well. I must say thanks for informing me. And so sorry about the silly question. But then, hope to see it quite sometime :). I always keep an update with you.
Hi there,
What a terrific article. You are completely right, it is a perfect outline for either a seasoned or newbie blogger to start their career. I had never thought about Google picking up negative keywords but it does make a lot of sense (actually that gave me one of those DUH moments)! I am going to hang on to this guide – it is a great find for anyone trying to earn a living on the internet. Thanks for sharing, ladies.
Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment, Ann. We’ve experienced a few DUH moments, and always come out wiser on the other side. Glad we could help you through one! If you have any suggestion on topics you’d like to read about, let us know. We’ll be happy to share!
Hi Guys, keywords are indeed very important in marketing specially if you are in the writing business. Having the right keyword and the density that it appears will really help you reach your target clients. And also it good to keep track of your activities online to having a good understanding of the trends and adjust your website or blog accordingly.
Thanks for commenting and sharing your thoughts, Grey. You have a good point about understanding the trends. For example, the number of searches for “search engine optimization specialist” have greatly dropped over the past two years or so, to be replaced by the quicker “SEO specialist”. We’re happy about it – it takes less typing to share!
Thanks again for reading and commenting – come back again!
SEO and SMO is become a neccessery activity to any commercial website or blog. Without seo or smo a website or blog can not service in the eye of search engine, so its a kind of must condition, now’days. Anyway you’ve shared a good piece of information here, i enjoyed reading this. thanks for sharing.
“It’s kind of a must condition, now’days…” Amen! You’re preaching to the choir, Suresh 😉 Thanks for taking the time to comment!
Of all the SEO blogs I have read today, this one by far was the most informative, and I linked from a SEOblog about back-linking. Most “how-to”, “SEO quick tip”, “5 SEO essentials” websites present an extremely vague view of web optimization, as if these dirty little secrets must be paid for in cold hard cash. I especially enjoyed your tie-in of using keyword density in its similarity to more traditional marketing techniques of constant use of keywords in commercials or ads. In reality we are adapting traditional marketing tools for optimized web browsing.
I’m working on my own site, doing a lot of SEO for it, so reading this really helped!
Recently, I’ve been working with this company called Dalai Group. SEO is one of the many specialties and they have helped me reach twice as many readers in less than a month. Here’s their site: Dalai Group Looking forward to reading more of your posts!
Eric what a nice way to end our day! Thanks for your kind words they are appreciated by us all!
Thank you for this article anyone looking to optimize their web site for local search this is a must read.
Thanks John – much appreciated!
The only other tactic I would add is to religiously submit blog posts to dofollow social content-sharing sites. Granted, it doesn’t have the impact it once did, but it is still not a technique to be overlooked.
Anyway, I thought the article was thorough and very well presented. Many thanks!
Before this was called search engine placement, or search engine optimization/SEO or the even broader SEM search engine marketing we called this type of marketing keyword marketing… ummm there was a good reason for that. When SEO got to the point of mapping KW phrases to content using referrer logs…SEO as we know it was born. Course… then Google came along and threw a spanner into it but… that’s what keeps it inetreesting 😉
Hey, Terry – always nice to see your smilin’ face on the Article Archive 🙂
Of course it’s keyword marketing… BUT.. it’s keyword marketing done right. A lot of people still treat keywords like the magic bullet – stuff as many of them into a page/post/tweet whatever and gold will fall out.
Then you have those who just don’t understand how SEO, content creation and social can tie together into a strong campaign. Of course, our hope is that THESE are the ones reading, not the spammers who go.. oooo… how many times can I say “red widget” in twitter? lol
Thanks for the comment!
This is without a doubt one of if not the best article I have read on how to tile in your social media and SEO. How to use Twitter and and Facebook to promote your business can be a challenging. This is a great foundation to build on.
Adore Realty
David I bet you say that to all the pretty blogs around 😉 lolol Thanks, we love reading your compliments.
This is by far the best explanation plus strategy post on using keywords and phrases in campaigns. I was on a tele-seminar last night where some really bad advice was given about using keywords in facebook posts (to be found in Google Social Search results). Aye…
Thanks for reminding us to use Google Webmaster Tools for understanding our site, the way Google see’s it, and to mine the data available.
There are endless opportunities to add engagement with social media channels, but being intentional with keywords and phrases – and having a site page with those intended keywords – is the most essential first step.
Thanks Tami, as a matter of fact we have plenty more information coming your way. We’re even looking at posting videos especially with some tools I love using on monitoring several social media accounts. Amazed at how many time I have heard the same complaints. Advice is being dished out all over the web, some are good, and well some… we move on. As SEO geeks we love using Google Webmaster, we will actually chat in the morning for about 1 hour drinking coffee while clicking through and discovering all sorts of golden nuggets. Again, thanks for your positive comment!