UND-Pilsa Blog

Keywords aren’t just some words that allow search engines,
like Google, to find your web site. They are also key
elements for creating attractive language to use in your
marketing or advertising material. For instance places such
as: brochures, business cards, flyers, and ads. Keywords
can also fit well into speaking engagements scripts or
audiotapes scripts as well as audience handouts.

It is important to create a keyword list for each product or
service you have. The keyword list might even change
slightly if there are various groups or audiences for that
product or service.

For simplicity, I have omitted the word service and for the
word product to reflect both.

Creating your keyword list can begin after you have clearly
identified the buyer or audience for a particular product or
service. You will need to know as much about the buyer’s
demographic and charactertics as possible. I also recommend
including their descriptive qualities and personalities.
Here is a list to kick start your brainstorming process:

Communicative
Competent
Dedicated
Enthusiastic
Expert
Hardworking
Improved
Positive
Negative
Professional
Relationship-driven
Self-confident
Successful
Tranquil
Spiritual
Understanding
Socially conscious
Early adaptor
Later buyer
Has to see it to believe it
Guarantee a must.

The list of keywords will describe the product and target
the specific quality you have isolated as most important to
those buyers. No grabbing out of midair. Take the time and
research, this will help you save money and reduce costly
marketing experiences.

You can complete your research with any combination of
methods. Here are eight methods to help you build from:

Brainstorming
Yellow Pages or other indexes for services or products.
Reviewing your company literature already created
Checking out the competitor’s literature
Surveying key customers
Searching through trade publications (articles and ads),
and contacting them or visiting their web site looking for
their buyer statistics/demographics.
Use a general dictionary and thesaurus
Use a specialized dictionary like the, Flip Dictionary.

You can use resources like the yellow pages or other
catalogue-type indexes listing grouping to discover keywords
your product or service would be listed under.

Let’s move through an example. If you were selling a
professional development product - you could be in any one
of the following professions: professional speaker, life,
business, or executive coach, consultant or trainer. Your
buyer or audience is somewhat successful you’re your product
will help them add additional success. Here is a list of
keywords that could describe their characteristics or
qualities:

Able to motivate others
Clearheaded
Clear-sighted
Committed to achieving excellence
Demands excellence
Full of character
Has good judgment
Has a wonderful stress-free life already
Highly perceptive
Lives up to her or her potential
Life-long learner
Sts high standards for themselves
Stays on track
Strives for perfection
Strives to excel
Takes the initiative
Motivated to achieve

Okay, good start. Now, let’s begin to put all this
together. Let’s zoom in on one of these: strives to excel.
Let’s narrow down further to one word: excel.

Look up the word excel in a synonym finder, thesaurus or my
preference, the Flip Dictionary and you find the following
keywords that you can add to your keyword list: best,
better, exceed, outclass, outdo, out rival, outstrip, shine,
star, superior, surpass, take the cake, transcend, dominate,
tower above, be head and shoulders above, stand out in the
crowd, hold sway, lead, take the lead, lead the pack.

The list can go on, however, will stop here because the
point is made.

After this, you could let your fingers travel through the
thesaurus and then add those words.

Alternatively, you could continue your list by visiting a
few of your competitor’s web sites and see what keywords
they use. You do this by visiting their home page, right
clicking the mouse on the page, and select “view source.”
In the HTML code look for “keywords.” These are the
keywords they use for the search engines to find them.

You will want to specifically focus on the competitor web
sites that appear in first ten spots on one or two major
search engines, like Google.

Next, select another method from your list of resources and
continue until you feel you have enough right words.

After completing your list, you will want to review and
place the keywords in priority order as best possible and
eliminate any words that might be misleading. If you market
globally, make sure none of the keywords mean something
offensive in their language.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catherine Franz, a Business Coach, specialized in writing,
marketing and product development. Newsletters and
additional articles: http://www.abundancecenter.com
blog: http://abundance.blogs.com

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Want to be totally puzzled? Do a search engine search for “online comic strips.” What you’ll find is that the first and biggest online comic strip site, comics.com does not even show up, at least not within the first 3 pages. This leads me to wonder just how search engines rank their sites and how stupid can they be? But that’s for another topic.

Comics.com quite simply is the black tie of online comics sites. You will find just about every comic strip currently in print in national and local newspapers.

The site is broken down into many sections and you can quite easily get lost there.

My favorite section is “Newest Comics.” In this section the site highlights the absolute newest comics online. As of this article the new guys on the block are “Lola,” written by Steve Dickenson and Todd Clark. Lola is a woman in her 70’s who’s not concerned with her diet or being politically correct. Then there’s “Captain Murphy” written by Mark Seydewitz. Murphy is more or less a one man army against intergalactic space villains. He’s kind of like a Rambo in space. Then there is “F-Minus” written by Tony Carrillo. Quite honestly, I don’t get this comic at all. It seems to be kind of like a Far Side deal where every issue is about some strange thing like monkeys playing volleyball or a chipmunk carving a naked lady out of a tree. Very, very weird stuff here. Then there’s “Unfit” written by Mike Belkin. The main characters are Mike and Stacey. Mike is a councillor, therapist and baby sitter but would rather be a trainer. He works on his patients muscles more than he does their brains. Stacey is his wife who is honest to a fault and has hair and eyebrows to die for.

After getting past the new comics section, which is usually about 3 or 4 per day, then you have the section where they list comics by category such as family, off beat and web exclusive.

Then you have the recommended section. I have noticed that a lot of times the recommended section contains many of the new comics. This is probably a way to give these a jump start. Right next to this section is “Don’t Miss These” which I guess is another way of saying recommended.

To round out the main page they show their featured comic for the day in a big frame layout. This is a great way to get new fans for the comic.

But we’re not done. Because above all of this is the navigation menu which includes the following: What’s New, Home, Comics, Editorial, Columns, Puzzles, Store and E-Cards. Yes, they sell stuff at this site and I’m sure they make a bundle.

If you head over to the comics link you will find an alphabetical listing of every comic at their site by category, which includes the following: Offbeat, Men, Women, Family, Serials, Ages 18-30, Ages 30-50, Pets, Business, Web Exclusives, Slice Of Life and Editorial Comics. Yes, there is some crossover but even with that there are at least 150 different comics you can read at this site. When I think of the meager 20 or 30 comics I get in my Sunday newspaper it just makes me sick when I realize all the great humor I’m missing each week.

Fortunately because of comics.com, I don’t have to. Now if only I could find this site in the search engine listings.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Comic Books

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