A lot of marketing teams within companies that are selling on line think that they know how potential customers will search for their goods or services. Unfortunately their thoughts are often clouded or influenced by the rest of their industry and the keywords they opt for may be way off the mark. So although they could well attain a page 1 Search Engine Placement listing for a particular keyword, the fact that no customer is searching in that way means that the page 1 listing is worthless as no traffic will flow from it to the company website. We say “no” traffic at this point, the chances of absolutely no one using a particular word or phrase is doubtful, what we mean here is that the vast majority of customers all use other phrases to find the products online and if the business is to make good money from internet sales this is what it needs to tap into.

Some firms have recognized this weakness in their Online Marketing and have tasked the relevant team to brainstorm the whole product line trying to come up with the layman’s phrases for all of the things they offer. This is a step closer to getting a much more useful list of keywords, although here there is still a propensity for the chosen words to come very much from within the industry.

Asking customers what they did to find you is a ideal way of seeing things from the other side of the fence. On the other hand it can be quite time consuming and sometimes a little annoying for the customer, who merely wants to make his purchase and leave the site, rather than filling in even the smallest of questionnaires. The other problem with this method of selection is that it will take a large amount of time to get the amount of data needed to make an informed choice.

Although there is a cost involved, a good Search Engine Optimization Company can add a lot at this stage in the game. They are used to working with many different industries and product lines and will make no presumptions at all about what words or phrases to opt for. By working through all your information and adding a high number themselves they will deliver the start of a complete list. This can then be pushed through one of their internet tools in order to enlarge the list massively and to include details of how many people are searching for each phrase or word on the list.

Making a choice from this expanded selection gives the company and the Search Engine Optimisation Company the best possible chance of choosing not only some of the most popular keywords but also some of the ones that have the least competition on the net.

This process of identifying keywords is the most vital of all in the online marketing process. If it is done poorly at this stage the rest of the work done, which can be quite costly, will simply be the the same as throwing money down the drain. So any business that can avoid the trap of thinking that they know how their customers act on line will get the most from their outlay.