Keyword Research Tips – When Bounces Go Bad

Posted by admin on August 14, 2012 under Keyword Research, SEO, Web Design | Be the First to Comment

by Chris Horton

Some people simply can’t help themselves. Truly understanding a customers intent is paramount to your online success. You should start being realistic that the terms that will make you the most money will not be the ones that are searched for millions of times each month.

If only 100 people a month searched for a “long tail” term, would it be worth it to you to chase that phrase? What if that phrase was so specific, that it converted 50% of the time? If each sale netted you a couple hundred bucks, would 50 sales a month be okay with you? Sure it would.

That’s why it’s bizarre to witness people throwing all of their money into campaigns to chase that magic keyword phrase that gets over a million searches every month, but is so broad, that it never converts. When that happens, it causes a “bounce” (when people leave your site almost as quick as they came to it).  When bounces happen, Google makes note of it and then not only do you lose a sale, but your rankings begin to dip heavily because Google doesn’t think that your site is relevant for that term and begins to push you further down the page.

Think about your own business and learn to pay attention and think like a search engine. If you’re a Chinese restaurant, don’t focus on the keyword “chinese restaurants”. The very fact that the term is plural already puts you at a disadvantage. If a user is searching for Chinese restaurants, they are looking for ANY chinese restaurant. The winner of these search results are going to be the websites that list multiple Chinese restaurants like Yelp, Zagat, UrbanSpoon, etc. You are not multiple Chinese restaurants. You’re just one restaurant.

Focus on adding in the geographic location of your business onto the service you offer. Buford Chinese restaurant, Lawrenceville car wash, etc.  This will give you great advantages if Google utilizes location data (assuming your business has a physical location) since most searches are done via mobile devices nowadays. We’ll be talking about that in the next day or so.

Next, find out what people are actually searching for. If you see terms trending such as “dry cleaning coupons”, “cheap car wash”, then you should set up pages on your site to help support those searched terms. Car wash coupons being searched for heavily? Set up a page that lists specials, offers and printable coupons and be sure to reflect the search phrase in the title tag,  in the text and at the top of the page in a header tag. Many businesses fight against the word “cheap” because it gives off the connotation of low quality, but that’s simply not the case. That’s just the term that people use in place of “inexpensive” or “doesn’t cost a lot of money” and you should embrace keywords in this arena.

Remember, someone searching for “cars” is just browsing. Someone searching for “1978 Chevy Impala in Atlanta” is looking to buy. For whatever reason that is. Maybe they’re shooting a rap video.

Remember, you need to pay attention to what people are actually searching for and stop running from good converting sales simply because only 1000 people are searching for it every month. That’s 1000 potential sales that you probably wish you had. The longer the tail, the bigger the animal. Kill it!