If looking to make money from an online business, the chances are that one of the most important business skills to learn is keyword research. Whether you’re looking to write web content, run an ebay store or sell stock photographs, all of these online business models will benefit from the ability to conduct good quality keyword research.
How to Make Money Online: What Are Keywords?
While a person may be searching the internet for images, photographs, music or text based information, the fact remains that the only way to start a search is with a text based search with a set of words and phrases. As such, keywords are words and phrases that describe what a person is looking for.
For example, if looking to buy a stock photograph of a person smiling, the person looking to buy the photograph may go to a relevant site such as Fotolia and type “person smiling.” These two words are the keywords, as they describe the image for which the buyer is looking for. As such, keywords may be seen as descriptions of what a reader or buyer is looking for, regardless of whether this is a product in an online auction or a piece of text based information on an independent website.
Online Business Skills: What is Keyword Research?
Keyword research relates to any form of activity in which a researcher attempts to find out more about the keywords being made use of, by those using the internet and search engines. Important aspects of keyword research include, ascertaining what keywords people are searching for and the level of competition in terms of results generated for any one keyword or phrase.
While the best way to ascertain the level of competition is by conducting a search in the target search facility, such as Google, ebay or other platform where you intend to list a product or service. When it comes to finding out what internet users a searching for, Google AdWords is a key resource, the tool allows a wide range of information to be ascertained including, the monthly number of searches both globally and locally for any given term.
In addition to the volume of monthly searches, Google AdWords also gives a researcher access to relative values of keywords for the purposes of taking part in the Google AdSense program. This may be a further relevant step in conducting keyword research, if you are intending to monetize a website or blog through the Google AdSense program.
How to Make Money Online: Selecting the Best Keywords
The following are suggestions as to how to select the best keywords:
- Additional Keywords – Can you add more keywords to describe an offering? There are often several keywords and phrases to describe the same thing, each one will increase the probability of generating additional traffic.
- Full Descriptions – Use full descriptions where relevant, this can be especially relevant when selling products online. The inclusion of a full product title may be the difference between a buyer finding your product or not.
- Volume – Ensure that enough people are searching for the relevant keywords before using a term, a website or product can only be found if people are searching for the terms used to describe it.
- Competition – Choose keywords for which the offering has a reasonable chance of being found. Results for highly competitive keywords can often run into the millions on large search engines such as Google.
- Keyword Value – If looking to take part in the Google AdSense program, consider the keyword value which is expressed as a cost per click (CPC). Higher value keywords will result in higher revenues on a CPC basis.
So, no matter what your online business model, it is likely that spending a little time learning to do good keyword research will lead to increases in profitability. Whether it’s increasing traffic or attracting higher paying ad blocks, good keyword research is bound to improve the bottom line of your web business and help you to earn extra money.
Frank Smith - Frank Smith currently works as an full time industry analyst for a well known construction company in Lincolnshire. In his spare time, ...
