Building a Keyword List

A keyword list is a broad and extensive list of words that people would use when searching for a specific product or service. This list of keywords will be later refined and reduced to the 10 or 20 most relevant words, to be used on the PPC campaign or to optimize landing pages for SEO. Since this keywords list is the basis on which the campaign will be built, it's extremely important to get it right and include as many potential keywords that would bring qualified traffic as possible.

Keyword lists can be generated manually, by brainstorming for words related to the website theme. The main problem with this approach is that generally the people who is generating the list doesn't have the same profile as the audience the website is targeting. In many cases, employers of a company use keywords that are too technical compared with what the public is actually using, or even ignore some less known ways of referring to their own products used by people in different geographical areas or educational background. To remedy this, you may want to include customers on the brainstorming process, but this is only a small improvement. The keyword lists generated need to be as global as possible, and target potential customers instead of those who already know the right words that identify the website.

The most common and effective strategy to generate a keyword list is using a keyword tool like iSpionage. Using the iSpionage keyword research tool, you can built a keyword list based on the actual search patterns of users on search engines, and suggest alternative words that are related to your original keywords, along with permutations of your original keywords. The keyword tool will also provide you with an estimated volume of searches, which can help eliminate those keywords that aren't frequently used by your audience.

Besides the basic functionality of a keyword list builder, iSpionage keyword research tool also offer extra features and the most interesting one is probably business intelligence on  what other keywords are being targeted by competing websites. By using this feature you can benefit from the research already done by competing websites, and add to your keyword list other keyword families they are also targeting. Other features available include language logic that find related terms that are synonyms for the ones already on your list and suggestions for long tail keywords (keywords with more than one word) that can be creating by combining some of your original ones.

Building a comprehensive keyword list will make your campaign or SEO strategy more successful on the long term. By using a keyword list builder along with your knowledge of the website industry and audience you will increase your chances of selecting the right keywords. Those will bring new potential customers from a global audience, making the most of your online marketing strategy.