It’s quite common that contractors from all specialties consider quality work and customer service as the only marketing tools they need in order to have success.
Yes, it’s important to keep high quality and satisfaction standards, but you must always keep up with those if you want to run a business properly.
Now, quality reputation needs continuous marketing strategies such as Search Engine Marketing which is best known as SEM. Follow these 8 tips to establish a logical and succesful keyword research strategy that can benefit your business.
Tips to Perform Keyword Research for Painter Contractors
1) Google Auto Suggestions
Use Google´s predictable keywords. It´s as simple as starting to type “commercial painti..” in the keyword and voila, you can find a couple of valuable keywords. You can try all type of variations to find new valuable keywords and negative keywords at the same time.
2) Competitor Websites Can Be Inspirational
Visit your competitors´ and related websites for keyword ideas. If you look at websites, click on your view tab and then on page source, you will get keywords for any type of site.
You can type your competitor´s website´s URL in the keyword tools I have mentioned below.
3) The Broader and Shorter Your Keyword Is, The Higher Will Competition Be
There are common keywords such as “painters” and “painting contractor”, but be aware that the broader the keyword is, the more competition you will have and the harder it will be for you to rank well in Google.
So including broad keywords such as “painters” will be tough if you´re just starting off and if you are not prepared for a rough competition. The broader the keyword is, the higher competition and traffic you will get, and the more specific the keyword is, the less competition and traffic you will receive.
You can always limit the traffic of irrelevant searches by using exact and phrase match types as well as negative keywords to have more control over your search queries and budget spend.
4) Use Word Stream Free Keyword Tool To Include Long Tail Keywords, Negative Keywords and Niche Keyword Ideas
Think about more specific searches. Word Stream free keyword tool gives you long tail and niche keyword ideas. Just enter the keyword and you´ll see results as the example below.
http://www.wordstream.com/keywords
This tool is also very helpful in finding negative keywords for your business.
Just click on the suggested niche if you want to see more keyword ideas as shown below:
5) Google AdWords Free Keyword Tool and Keyword Planner
Keyword Tool
Use the Google Keyword tool. Enter “painting contractor” and “painter” as an example and you’ll find lots of ideas. “Interior painting” and “exterior painting” are less competitive since they are more specific but you can always get an idea of their monthly searches and average cost per click. You can also type your competitors´ website´s URL to get more ideas.
The disadvantage with this tool is that you´ll only get to see a good search volume for keywords with up to 3 words, so it might exclude long tail keywords that could be more profitable for your business.
There are other paid tools like Wordtracker and Spy-Fu that will get deep into your competition market giving you hundreds of keywords.
Keyword Planner
On May 20th, Google announced the Keyword Planner, which is a combination of the Keyword Tool and the Traffic Estimator.
Local Business Owners can benefit a great deal because they will see search volume results by cities and areas within a country which will make their results more relevant.
You can access the Keyword Planner under the Tools and Analysis tab in your AdWords account.
6) Think Like a Consumer Not Like the Expert You Are
As a business owner, you are an expert in your industry and you might assume everyone else is also an expert in your industry.
If you were searching for a painter’s service online, what would you type into the search engine? Test the keywords you come up with in the different keyword tools you know. Look for synonyms and test them as well.
Some business owners also assume that a certain keyword is relevant to their business when the keyword is totally irrelevant and crazy. Bu in their own and unique business perspective it is relevant, and they end up wasting thousands of dollars in keywords that are too broad and totally irrelevant.
There is a funny example from a person who owns a beauty salon, and who included keywords with the names of famous singers…because he assumed that women would think of going to a beauty salon before going to a concert by one of these singers…..crazy but true.
Lesson: Don´t assume everyone is an expert in your industry and don’t assume your logic is always relevant.
7) Set up Google Analytics
It’s free and great for tracking your website’s activity. You can find new keyword ideas from organic searches. http://www.google.com/analytics/.
8) Use Google Trends
Google Trends is a free tool showing how often specific keywords have been searched for over a specific period of time in specific locations.
This could be helpful if you analyze the trends for the main keywords you want to use in your PPC campaign. It´ll let you add up to five keywords per search as you can see in the example below.
Keyword research is the heart of any campaign creation process, so remember to follow logical steps.
Everything begins with Brainstorming but don´t limit yourself, test, research and refine, test, research and refine some more using the keyword tools mentioned in this blog, until you have “THE” keywords for your campaign.
Once you have activated your PPC campaign, keyword research and refining will continue as part of the maintenance and optimization process.
