Keyword Research for Digital Marketers

Digital marketing is the promotion of a website or brand using digital media to reach consumers.  This can include using social media, SEO, blogs, viral marketing, video marketing and market research.  The first step to any good digital marketing campaign is keyword research.Keyword research is the process of analyzing the exact phrases that are typed into search engines and how often they are searched for.  Keyword research is done using keyword tools that quickly and easily present data about keywords.  The Google Adwords Keyword Tool is the most commonly used tool.  It allows search marketers to easily select the location and language in the search results.  It also suggests up to 800 related keywords as long as you have a Google Account.  The data is easy to sort through and is accurate.The Google Adwords Keyword Tool allows for three types of searches.  They are referred to as Broad, Exact and Phrase.  The Broad category is best for determining the size of a market, whereas the Exact searches will provide the most accurate data for specific keywords.The results from a search marketers keyword research can be applied to both on-site optimization and off-site optimization.  A marketer can use the keyword tool to determine which keywords are best and then use them in title, description and image tags for the best on-site optimization results.  For off-site optimization, a search marketer can use the desired keywords with the process of link building.As a search marketer, you should keep in mind that long tail keywords provide more relevant traffic than short tail keywords.  A long tail keyword has more than one word and shows that the searcher is further along the buying process.  For example, someone searching for the keyword "buy snowboards online" is more likely to purchase a snowboard than someone searching for the broad term "snowboards".With all of this in mind, a digital marketer can determine which keywords are best to target and get an approximation for the relative size of the market.  A search marketing strategy should focus mainly on long tail keywords that are relevant to the product or service that is being offered.