Develop a keyword marketing strategy: learn the language of your customers

 Keyword marketing is nothing new, however the importance of keyword marketing on the web is much more important than it ever was in offline marketing. The right keywords are critical to a search engine optimization campaign, targeted banner advertisements, and content buys.

The goal of keyword marketing is to understand who the target audience is, what nees the site will supply the answers to, and how those needs or desires will be expressed in keyword searches.

Begin developing your keyword marketing strategy by brainstorming and write down answers to the following questions:

• Why does the site exist?
• What does the site offer?
• Why would someone want to find the site?
• What would someone want to do on the site?
• Why would they want to do it?
• What problems do products, information, or services available on the site solve?
• What does the site, or that which it offers compliment?
• Who would use the site?
• Is the site, its contents or offerings appropriate for particular occasions such as birthdays, Christmas summer or ski season?
• Will the site or elements of it be geared towards specific geographic locations?

Once you have some general ideas, plug your keywords into either the Overture keyword tool or get a subscription to Word Tracker both of which will provide rough estimations of the relative popularity of various search terms.

Once you have settled on the search terms to target, it's time to start laying out the architecture or structure of your site.