Those who understand ranking on search engines, know that it’s important to get on the 1st or 2nd page of search engine results for a search term that they want to target, whether they spend money on PPC, or attempt to rank organically. What some do not understand is that attempting to rank for vague terms may do more harm than good.

Some distributors spend all of their time trying to rank for these supposed “high search terms” (ie: “promotional products”) without thinking about ROI. What good are these supposed “high search terms” when they create worthless traffic, and make your phone ring off the hook with worthless calls? In reality, they are not “high search terms” – but “highly wasteful” terms.  According to google, you will get 75-94 clicks a day if you are going for a term like “promotional products”, and have real deep pockets (Up to $580 / day)

Look at the important data here …75-94 clicks per DAY.. and key phrase “promotional products”. Why would anyone spend time and money ($4-$6 per click) dumping 94 people who searched for “promotional products” onto their site? I hope the page they land on promises them the world, or you just spent $5+ to get them there, only  to watch them leave 3 seconds later to find what they were really looking for on your competitors site.

Real buyers aren’t using terms like “promotional products”! Google alone processes something like 300 million online searches per day. Obviously “promotional products” is not a big focus . Not because our industry sucks, but because that is NOT how real people search!

I’ve done a lot of research on our own sites, and have learned a lot about people and how they search. Lets take “stadium cups” for example. In the spring we spend a good bit promoting them. We’ve found that people are not out there looking for “stadium cups” because they don’t use these kind of terms!!! Potential customers are looking for things like “school mascot cup”,  ”family reunion cup”, “company picnic cup with logo”. That’s right… these are real people, using real search terms, and we have to remember that!

So to my competition, who are too smart to read my stupid blog, please keep paying for those vague search terms. Your budget will just dry up that much faster, allowing me to land the real business.

We might be marketing online, but that does not remove the human element. Not sure about you, but if I get sick I am searching online for the symptoms, not the diagnosis. If knew the diagnosis, I would not be searching. Your customers are no different. They are the patient out there looking for terms related to their symptom, and you are supposed to the doctor providing the diagnosis. (See! Online marketing isn’t much different, is it? ;) ) Understand the problem, and provide a solution.

We’ll talk more about ranking for search terms in a later post. I hope this post did something for someone, and I look forward to your thoughts and opinions.