Starting and marketing a new business online (Part 2)

This is the second of a two-part article. The first part can be found here.

Once you've chosen your business and made the commitment you need to research how you're going to promote your new business online. As I've already suggested - to be successful you need to know what people are specifically searching for. You need to complete a thorough keyword analysis that includes current search volumes for recent months, competitor data, search phrases from organic search queries and search phrases from pay-per-click engines. Specifically you need to know the exact words that your potential customers are using to find your products or services. Learn about the popular phrases, jargon and terms that users search for most often. Research the keywords that your competition is currently targeting and try to figure out why your competitor websites rank at the top of the search results. Once you have this information in hand you'll have highly valuable data. You'll be armed to the teeth with ammunition compared to most small business websites on the web and you can feel confident that you're using the keywords that your customers use most often. Use them everywhere that you do business online and off.

Getting Started:

So how do you start and get the data that you need? One of the first places you can set out to explore is the free Overture keyword tool. Simply type in some keywords or a key phrase that relates to your business and they'll return the estimated times that keyword was searched for in the last month. As an added bonus - and without even asking - they'll provide you with all the other related key phrases that relate to your business. This tool is sometimes slow to respond but you can use it as many times as you want for free. Now, that's service!

The next place you can look is on the Google site within the Adwords tools. They provide a free keyword suggestion tool that allows you to type in a couple words and the powerful tool will return all the related terms that are relevant to your seed words. But that's not all. Google actually goes beyond what Overture provides. The Google keyword tool will return information on current advertiser competition in that category, last months search volume, average search volume, trends and the month that the highest search volume occurred in the last 12 months. You can easily add keywords to a list and export them for safe storage and review later. A valuable service indeed and it's also free to use as much as your heart desires.

There are many other sources for keyword data but the tools mentioned here are a good place to start. (Did I mention they're free?) You'll be amazed at the data that you can uncover and how that data can bring your idea or your current business into focus.

Summary:

Getting to know what your target audience is looking for is very important. If you spend the time up front to utilize the many tools and free resources available to you online you'll justify your decision to start your business, you'll make better decisions and when you write the content for your website you won't be stabbing in the dark guessing. You'll be running a precision campaign that's specifically based on real world numbers and words and phrases that real people have used to find what you're providing or selling.