Jonathan Leger – SEO And Internet Marketing Blog Internet Marketing Blog

Will your keywords result in sales?

When discussing search engine optimization, I very often talk about the importance of selecting keywords that offer a reasonable amount of traffic without being too difficult to rank for. That is a very important factor, to be sure, but there is another factor that is equally important. I should have discussed it long before now.

But hey, better late than never, right?

The second factor that you need to analyze when selecting your keywords is whether or not the keywords have a high probability of commercial intent. That is, are people who are searching for these keywords looking to buy something, or are they just searching for information?

For example, someone searching for "lung cancer" is likely looking for information, not products. On the other hand, somebody searching for "canon powershot digital camera" is very likely looking to buy. If only it was always that easy to judge the commercial intent of all keywords! Unfortunately, it's not.

For example, someone could search for "old time radio" with the intention of getting information about old radio shows, but there are many people who sell compilations of old time radio shows as well, and it's possible the searcher is looking to buy. Wouldn't it be nice if you had a tool that would tell you how likely it is that a person searching for a set of keywords is looking to buy?

Guess what? There is such a tool, and it's free. MSN actually has a Commercial Intent Tool that you can feed a set of keywords and find out how commercially viable any given set of keywords is.

Click here to go to the Commercial Intent Tool.

I've run a number of keywords that I have personal experience with through this tool, and so far it's proven to be very accurate. It's very easy to use: just enter your keywords, select the "Query" option, and click "GO". The tool will then return either a "Commercial Intention" value or a "Non-Commercial Intention" value (from 0 to 1). Just multiply that value times 100 to get the probability that the keywords are (or aren't) good for selling a product.

For example, if a set of keywords comes back with a .65 Commercial Intention value, then there's a 65% chance that somebody searching for those keywords is looking to buy. On the other hand, if it comes back with a .7 Non-Commercial Intention value, then there's a 70% chance the searcher isn't looking to buy.

To answer my previous question regarding the commercial intent of the keywords "old time radio", the tool tells me that there's a 56% chance that a person searching for those keywords isn't looking to buy. So that may not be the best set of keywords to target if I'm looking to sell something. On the other hand, the phrase "old time radio cd" has a 96% chance of being searched for with commercial intent -- so that may be a better set of keywords to target.

This information is incredibly valuable, because it's not always easy to judge whether or not a set of keywords is worth the time, effort and expense to rank for (or bid on if you use Pay-Per-Click ads). A set of keywords may get a million searches a month, but if it has no commercial intent, you would be much better off ranking for (or bidding on) a set of keywords that gets a lot less traffic if the commercial intent is a lot higher.

So next time you sit down to do your keyword analysis, don't forget to check the commercial intent of the keywords before making your plans for ranking or bidding on those keywords.

(P.S. Even if you're just putting up sites and pages to earn AdSense revenue, it's been my experience that Google rewards a site with a higher EPC -- earnings per click -- if that site converts well for the advertisers displayed on the page. So you want to target keywords with a high commercial intent in order to earn as much as possible, even if you're not actually offering any affiliate products, just AdSense.)

Please leave your thoughts and questions in a comment below.