B2B Social Media Strategy - Defining Keywords You Want to Own

  

  

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Search engine results are a key metric for any Social Media or content marketing effort.  You need to be on the top page of Google results for as many keyword combinations as possible related to your area of expertise....but what keywords should you be targeting and why?

Identifying Important Kewords For Your Business

After industry and content assessment and editorial planning, the first thing we do when helping clients take a look at the keyword marketplace is find out what Google is charging for keywords based on their areas of expertise.  Google Adwords has a nifty keyword analysis tool that provides insight into how many searches are done for particular keywords and how much they are charging per click to buy a listing for that keyword.

Since we are not interested in buying keywords, but instead developing content that is going to get us top of page organic results for a long time to come, what we're really interested in is how many times certain keyword combinations get hit every month.  This starts to give us a potential universe of people we can attract to our site.

Another great tool to use for assessment of keywords is Hubspot's Keyword Grader.  This provides insight into how difficult it will be to achieve first page Google results for a particular keyword combination.  This is where things start to come into focus.

Focus on Longtail Keywords

A mini case study.  We have a client that sells wireless life safety monitoring equipment - primarily electronic monitoring of fire extinguishers.  Looking at the keyword "Fire Extinguisher" there are tens of thousands of monthly hits.  "Fire Extinguisher" as a keyword, however, had an extremely high difficulty score in Hubspot and an expensive pay-per-click fee.

Instead, we helped our client focus on what they were really selling, the value they were providing and the questions prospects were asking them that led to sales.  We identified dozens keywords that were more easily attainable.  For example Fire Extinguisher Vandalism, Fire Extinguisher Violations, Fire Extinguisher Monitoring, etc.  We developed a content strategy around these keyword combinations ad quickly took these critical keywords (and dozens of others) over.  Focused longtail results are often much more valuable to a business and more successful in generating leads than the generic, high-traffic terms.

So when it comes to defining the keywords to own, start by:

• Understanding the keyword universe for your business
• Identify keywords that define the value you provide to prospects
• Start with accessible, longtail terms
• Build towards generic terms over time

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