Identifying and developing your keywords
Because keywords play such an important foundational role in the development of your search strategy, you will obviously want to spend a good deal of thought and effort developing solid keywords.
Developing your keyword list has several phases:
Collection: In the collection phase, you will simply collect large numbers of keywords and dump them onto a list.
Analysis: In the analysis phase, you will attach relative weight to terms and cull undesirable terms.
Expansion: The expansion phase will take place after your campaigns have been running for a while—this phase is a reaction to what you learn from the performance of your campaign and from competitors in the marketplace.
At the start of your keyword research, you will want to develop a keyword matrix. A keyword matrix is a simple data set based upon all the keywords you think might have value.
Note
Spreadsheet software is particularly well suited to developing a keyword matrix.
Your keyword matrix should...
