Search Engine Marketing: Invigorate Your Paid Search Efforts With Keyword Expansion

As a cataloger actively engaged in search engine marketing (SEM), what can you do to ensure your program doesn’t get stagnant? Consider keyword expansion, suggests James Colborn, author of “Search Marketing Strategies: A Marketer’s Guide to Objective-Driven Success from Search Engines,” (Butterworth-Heinemann). Keyword expansion is the development and addition of new keywords to a portfolio for the general improvement of the campaign.

Colborn notes the best technique for expansion is to tie new keywords to other variables that might influence SEM performance. He gives the following examples:

1. Examine existing keyword performance. An existing keyword base is a great place to start expanding, writes Colborn. New keywords can be developed based on high-performing words using a process called keyword stemming in which you choose new keywords or phrases that include keywords you know are performing well already.

2. Pull from your promotional messages. If a new product or informational topic becomes key to your particular business, new keywords will become available to you, notes Colburn. Say you’ve got a new product offering that will feature heavily in your next catalog or e-mail campaign. What words do you use in your promotions that you’re not using as keywords? “From that point onward it makes sense to create synergies between these messaging efforts and the keyword selection process,” he writes.

3. Analyze your competitive space. What are your competitors doing in search? Which words lead you to their sites? Knowing what your competitors are doing provides a good grounding for selecting new keywords to test, writes Colborn. Remember to consider more than their search campaigns. For example, check their promotional messaging for keywords that might be of use to you.

For a copy of “Search Marketing Strategies” ($37.95), visit http://books.elsevier.com.