What are keywords good for?

What do keywords have to do with e-mail marketing? Actually, a lot.

First of all, it's been said a number of times that keeping archives of your e-mail messages on the Net, whether newsletter, e-zine or direct mail, is always a good idea. Why? Because these pages get spidered by the search engines and drive qualified buyers your way. But this is not the only reason to think carefully about keyword selection, when creating an e-mail marketing campaign. Keywords can be used as a measurement of popularity. For example, if keyword1 is used ten times more often than keyword2, then you should use keyword1. Otherwise, your recipients may not understand you. Here is an example - you sell software that tracks and reports time spent working on computer and provides billing/invoicing options. Actually there are a number of programs like this, and they are quite popular among tech writers, lawyers, paralegal, medical billing professionals, debt collectors, and other freelance! s. What do you think is the best key phrase to describe the program - "time-tracking software", "time-management software", "time-reporting software" or "billing software for freelances"?

Actually, you don't have to guess. There are several web-based services that can help you find keywords and keyphrases that fit your business best. Here are top three services:

WordTracker (http://wordtracker.com) - the most comprehensive independent keyword research solution provider on the Internet. Wordtracker lets you save research to continue at a later time. A nice feature is to query each keyword in a search engine to determine the level of competitiveness based on the number of results. So if a keyword is popular with searchers but not well represented in the search engines, you have a better chance of successful search engine optimization (SEO).

qSearch (http://www.comscore.com/metrix/search.asp) - qSearch is a complete search engine research service. Reports and custom research are based on data collected daily on surfing patterns on over 1.5 million Web users.

HitWise (http://www.hitwise.com) - Though Hitwise is not exclusively a keyword research service, keyword reports can be run that include interesting and potentially useful keyword data, particularly for CI (competitive intelligence). Want to know what keywords searchers use to find your top five competitors? It's in the report. For any Web site (by domain), Hitwise can run a keyword report that lists the top 20 ways searchers found the site and clicked.

These are all paid services, since there are virtually no free keyword research tools, other than Overture Keyword Suggestion tool, that provide relevant results.

Relevant links:

    • Extract e-mail addresses by keywords
    • Extract e-mail from specifi NNTP servers


Next week: Dissecting a successful direct marketing e-mail
Prev week: Words you should and should not use in e-mail advertising campaigns

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