Ever wonder if you are targeting the right keywords?

How to determine the business value of a keyword

Someone PM'd me a keyword research question about using the Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool for selecting keywords for SEO. Here is part of my answer to his question that includes a simple formula for determining relative business value of a keyword.:

First, define your primary business objective, and set specific goals you want to achieve towards that primary objective. I'm not talking about SEO objectives, I'm talking about your primary business objective, be it online sales, lead generation,selling ad space, etc..Otherwise you may find yourself down the proverbial rabbit's hole, pursing objectives that have very little value.

Develop a simple strategy for achieving your business goals using SEO. Try to determine which type of keywords will help you the most to archive your specific goals, whether it be ranking for head terms, building up your long tail rankings, or both. Then devise and implement a plan to achieve your goals using your chosen strategy. Your plan should include adequate levels of activity, based on your strategy, that is likely to achieve your business goals.

While you may often hear suggestions on this forum, and other places, that you should target low competition keywords, simply because they are easier to rank, that is not always wise advice, in my opinion.

Keywords rated with high competition, and relatively high suggested bids, within the Keyword Planner have relatively high commercial intent. ranking well for those types of keywords will often help you achieve your business goals in a spectacular fashion. Granted they are likely to be much more difficult to rank, but you know there is a high payoff once you do achieve high rankings.

Keywords with low commercial intent, often have little to no redeemable value for achieving business goals. Again it depends on your goals, so that is why it is important to define your goals first.

It's important to note that competition levels in organic Search, are not the same thing as competition levels in the AdWords Keyword Planner. The AKP tool shows you the "advertiser" competition level, not "organic" search competition levels. It's not unusual to find unequal levels of competition between Organic vs. Paid Search results. However, there tends to be a strong correlation between levels of competition for keywords that have high commercial intent.

• High advertiser competition + high suggested bids = High commercial intent.
• Low advertiser competition + low bids = Low commercial intent.

Some high commercial intent keyword terms will have relatively low search volume, while others may have high search volume. It's crucial to consider the search volume level, as well as the level of commercial intent, while selecting keywords to target.

• High commercial intent + high search volume = Very high business value.
• Low commercial intent + low search volume = Very low business value.

Keywords with low search volume ,often referred to as long tail keywords, may help you to achieve your primary business objective, however you will need to rank a relatively large number of those long tail terms to achieve success. For example you might need top rank for 300 long tail terms to equal the value of ranking for a single head term. Even more are required if those long tail keywords have relatively low commercial intent. You might need to rank well for as many as 10,000 low commercial intent long tail keywords to equal the same value as ranking for a single head term with high commercial intent.

It would be wise to consider the relative value of ranking a keyword while making your selections.