Secret Keyword Resource - Dumb People

Posted by stuart as , ,

Well, not dumb people as such, just people who don’t know as much as the experts.

If, like me, you spend a fair bit of time researching keywords, you might be missing out on a golden resource sitting right in front of your nose. I’m not talking about researching thousands of keywords for PPC campaigns, or (ahem..) “Mass content aggregation sites”, I’m talking about single keywords for single pages in niche sites.

In my real job, I do web development work for graphic designers. This means I do pretty much everything other than design the template look and feel of the site. Part of this work involves helping clients decide what they want to achieve from their websites, who they are targeting, and helping them write the content for their sites.

Many of these sites are for small businesses who are “going online” for the first time, who have a small array of products that they’d like to get the word out about.

One of my main jobs is to talk to clients about the pages they’d like to incorporate into their site, and site structure (do we have a page for each product etc?).

Once we’ve determined what our pages will be, I ask the client what keywords they think people might use to find their products in a search engine. After the initial blank stare, I usually get a list of industry specific terms, or terms so broad that they have not a hope in hell of ranking for.

The problem is that these people are too close to the product or service that they are trying to sell.

Enter the golden resource - other people. Mrs. PimpMyPageRank is getting heartily sick of me asking her questions such as:

• What would you type in to Google if you were looking to buy Revlon makeup in Adelaide?
• What would you type in to Google if you were looking for a dog boarding kennel in Tea Tree Gully?

etc. etc.

But while she keeps providing me with good keywords, I’ll keep asking her.

So what about you, do you ask actual, real, living people for keyword suggestion? Do you think it’s worth the time?