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The NY Times ran an article yesterday on how small businesses can use Google AdWords to advertise their business. They had some great things to say about localizing the ad campaign, selecting the correct keywords, and closely monitoring the results.
One thing they failed to write about was using Google AdWords for research purposes. When I hear Search Engine Optimization professionals speak about the use of Google AdWords, it usually is not in the vein of using it for advertising. Google Adwords is just as strong of a platform for doing your Keyword research as it is for advertising your small business.
How do you do research using Google AdWords?
Start by using Google’s Keyword Tool to research keywords for your market. You can see here the average # of searches per month as well as the competition level for that keyword. After deciding on the best Keywords for your company, set a budget and place these Keywords into your Google AdWords campaign and look at the results of what attracts the most clicks to your site.
Now, do Search Engine Optimization within your website design. Optimize the best performing Keywords in your Meta Tags, on-page text, and with links pointing to your site using those words.
By optimizing your site for those Keywords, the goal is to attract free visitors to your site who will buy your good or service. This is opposed to Google AdWords where you pay if they click the link.
And hey, if you got business from AdWords while doing this research, and there is a return on investment, keep the ads going. But the goal is to produce natural search results based upon the information gleaned from your Google AdWords research.
