You might like the look of those search terms with 100,000 exacts each month, but chances are – they’re highly competitive. Many people think more is always better when picking the right keywords to target. The reality is, so many other people (with much larger budgets) are focussing on them, it can be a waste of time.

How to fine-tune your keyword pciking strategy

Narrowing the scope of your keywords can help in more ways than one. Here’s a great way of picking keywords that are not only easier to rank for, but more likely to send you traffic you want – lengthen them. It might fly in the face of popular internet marketing opinion that says you need as many visitors as possible (and therefore need to rank for terms with as many searches as possible) but this simply isn’t the case. Ranking for competitive terms is difficult.

One great tip to look at when lengthening keywords is to focus on those actionable terms that people are more likely to use when they’re about to make a purchase. Instead of simply targeting “<product>” which has loads of competition, look at “<product> review” or “<product> discount”.

Those are people who are ready to purchase, and you want to be there to catch them. Someone just searching for a particular product might be simply doing research or trying to find it for free. That’s why you also want to steer clear of searches looking for “free” or “download”.

How to capture the “right” kind of searches

People looking for a discount on a particular item are usually pretty close to buying something, they know it’s going to cost money, but they want it as cheap as they can find it. If you can grab them at the right moment AND offer them the discount they’re looking for – you’ll be onto a winner. Let everyone else focus on optimising for the product name alone, when that gets loads of visitors who simply aren’t in the mood to buy. Focussing on a long-tail keyword narrows the field of competition and gets you the targeted traffic you’re looking for – people who are ready to buy.

It doesn’t matter if you’re marketing a particular product or service, choosing the right suffix to add on can make it so much easier to rank in Google whilst getting rid of the type of traffic you don’t need. You might like the look of 200,000 searches, but ranking high in Google for such a term will be highly difficult. 2,000 people who are looking to purchase can be easier to rank for and better for your business.

Another great suffix to add on to search terms is “scam”. It might seem negative and counter-intuitive, but people actually use this when they like the look of a product or service but want to check if it’s legit at the last minute. If you can convince them that it is, you stand a good chance of making a sale. Give them the information they need in order to ease their concerns, and you can get traffic with a keyword many competitors will ignore.

Take a close look at your keyword strategy. Chances are that you might have been making a few small mistakes. The right keyword strategy can mean so much for your business, and in some cases can be the difference between failure and success.

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Matthew Higgins is an internet marketing expert with years of experience. He really knows how making money online works, and that’s why he recommends this website.

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