Proper keyword research is the foundation of a successful search marketing campaign. Work with the wrong keywords and you can run your campaign into the ground resulting in negative campaign ROI (Return on Investment) – or worse yet LOI (Loss on Investment).

For marketers conducting keyword research, some of the following questions arise:

• Should you rely on free tools?
• Should you subscribe to a paid keyword research tool?
• Should you hire an SEO / SEM firm to conduct the research for you?
• And, in the end, what tools and sources can you trust most? Which tools and methods are most reliable?

All of these are relevant and important questions which tend to hinge on the size of your company, your experience with search marketing, your budget and your marketing / business plan phase. Professional tools and methods for keyword research abound. Many industry professionals develop proprietary tools or look to well-known sources including Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker and relative newcomer Wordze. Others rely on these tools in conjunction with Overture and Google. A useful, concise post by Lisa Barone at Search Engine Guide walks you through the keyword research process and Shari Thurow also walks interested parties through the intricacies of mining keyword data to find the “big picture”.

But what if you are not a professional and are intimidated by the vast array of tools online? You’re not sure where to start your research. One of the most reliable, trustworthy, affordable and accurate tools available is the process of conducting keyword research by interviewing the people closest to you and your company. This process can be one of the most accurate and reliable keyword research tools available to you. It is a great starting point for any campaign and is often be overlooked in the whir of buzz and tools available.

Particularly for small businesses, the interview process can be one of the most successful forms of keyword research going. It is an affordable way (the only cost is time) to start to focus your keyword research and really get to know and discover the core terms on which to optimize and bid. It can be a solid foundation on which to build out and guide your keyword research with more advanced tools as well.

So who should you begin to interview for this research and why? Who knows your business, process, brand, locale, niche products and services the best? And what is the best way to extract valuable keyword information from these groups who know your business so well? Once you extract keywords from them, how do you make sense of it all and rate the value and relevance of the various words?

The following are the most important groups that I focus on and here are a couple of starter notes to be aware of:

Interview these groups in person, over the phone or via email, whatever is easiest. Just make sure that if you are meeting them in person, to catch them when they can actually focus and think clearly on the points for which you’re requesting feedback. You might ask them some of the following as baseline or standard questions:

• What Ten terms or keywords do you associate most with my business as a whole, and my specific products and services.
• What terms come to mind when you think of my business as a whole
• Why did you choose to work with or buy from my company over my competitors?

Hint – if you can and have their approval / consent – record the conversation – you’ll get great snippets that you’d never imagine getting from any keyword research tool and you will have them saved!

Interview these Groups and give them the following suggested “Trust” Levels – 1 being the most trusted group:

Current Clients, Trust Level – 1: Clients (or customers) are the people that you are searching for and they are searching for you, so they have the best, most accurate keywords. They’ve found you before, so if you extract how they found you or thought of you originally, and apply that to search, chances are, this will be successful again. You can glean keywords from that you never would have found elsewhere. Don’t forget former customers and clients because they have been through your store, site and processes and will give you feedback on the “experience” of your company as well.. Customer keywords are the most valuable because they may have found you with them and they spread word of mouth business to you with specific terminology that others will use to find you.

Employees, Trust Level – 2: Long time employees, especially Sales People are the best to interview because they know the business best and chances are they have interfaced with clients before. Sales people speak with customers all day long. Sales people know industry buzz terms because their lives depend on it. They also know the competition – they know your business and make a living with it, so they will describe it with great accuracy and truthfulness. Long time employees are usually passionate about the business and will give you really accurate focus.

Family and Friends, Trust Level 3: Family and Friends have heard you complain of your growing pains and rave about your successes over the years, so their collective memory will prove to add great insight for your keyword research. They’ve seen you work your butt off to grow your business over the years. They’ve heard you bitch and moan about your business and describe in all too much agonizing and heroic detail. They’ve listened to you preach about your products and services day after day and so they will help restore the collective memory keyword bank for you – almost immediately.

Competitors, Trust Level 4: You may not be able to interview competitors directly. And, they may have slightly different products, services, capabilities locations. As well, you may not want to compete directly head to head with them. Put a slightly lower weight on them. Look at the copy that they are using on their site and collateral, their page titles etc. Don’t copy them, but try to gain an understanding if these words have been successful for the competitor or not. Go to your competitor’s place of business, or send someone there and pick up some of their brochures, business cards and see what they are talking about in their reception room and lobby – there may be keywords lurking in BOLD print.

Suppliers, Trust Level 5: Review some of the terms that your suppliers work with on their own campaigns – if they will let you do this. (some situations may not be applicable, but others will be quite relevant).

Further, Varied Trust Level: Labels and SKU’s- if you are a retailer, read your suppliers product labels and see what ingredients and raw materials are in them. Look at the boxes that you receive shipments and send shipments in – there are keywords on them that relate to your business. Review your SKUs – people search SKUs like crazy in comparison shopping and generally in broader search. There may be some hidden gems.

You can change the Keyword Trust Level to fit your business, the above are merely suggestions.

Finally, once you have all of your keyword interviews complete, you might take things one step further and begin to rank and rate the quality of the keywords in a spreadsheet. In Each Trust Level Group, you can assign a relevance number to each individual keyword. Relevance is subjective, but basically is how accurately you think that the word or phrase reflects your business, products and services. At the end, you can come up with a sort of weighted value for each term. (Trust + Relevance = Keyword Strength) This is not an exact process, but it will give you a good measure of what value to place on specific terms.

With the keywords that come out of the “Interview Keyword Research”, you can then go to more advanced keyword research tools – some of the above listed tools – knowing that your are starting from the source of your business, with a true understanding and confidence that you are working with the terms that reflect your company the best and most accurately for searchers. You can then derive more empirical data and use terms on both the Organic Optimization Campaign as well as on the Paid Search Campaign.

By interviewing those people closest to your business – your clients, suppliers, employees, and even family & friends you’ll find a ton of great new keywords. You’ll likely find that your keywords are really specific and you will not only save money on your research, but you’ll end up with a truly targeted foundation on which to either optimize your site, begin your PPC campaign or on which to build out more intense, tool-based keyword research. The keywords and concepts that you’ll derive from this process will drive conversions over the long run and allow you to be successful in finding the keyword hidden gems.

Oh yeah – one other point: once your campaign is up and running, your site statistics (web analytics) package can be one of the best, most important (and most fun) sources to back-check and revamp your keywords and how successful they are on an ongoing basis!

Happy mining!

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