Where Do Your Keywords Fit in the Buying Cycle?
I have talked quite a bit about choosing keywords and why I think it is so important to make sure you’ve chosen “good” keywords. I’ve mostly focused on making sure you have high search volume and low competition. However, there is one element I haven’t talked much about. The buying cycle. The very nature of the Christmas Cash blueprint helps you overcome this problem, but I recognize people may venture away from product specific lenses/sites. So where your keywords fit in the buying cycle will be crucial to your success.
Keywords and Buying Cycle
When people come online they are generally coming in search of information. They have an interest in something and want to know more about it. This is the interest phase. They will not be purchasing during this phase.
The second step of the buying cycle is the research phase. This part of the phase they are looking for more detailed information and are really interested in this topic and want to know more.They will not be buying in this phase either.
The last phase is the purchasing phase. This is where they have made a decision and are looking to purchase what they were only interested in and researching previously.
Let’s take a look at an example. Seeing as Thanksgiving was yesterday and I have a great personal example of choosing the “wrong” keywords ~ we’ll use the example of deep frying a turkey.
Someone in the interest phase may google “frying a turkey”. They are looking to find out if this is something they even want to do.
Second stage research ~ they may have decided they’d like to try to fry a turkey and want to know how. They may google something like “deep fry turkey instructions”.
Third phase ~ they may google “deep fry turkey cooker” (or something similar).
A year or two ago I did a lens on how to fry a turkey/deep fry turkey instructions.
Here’s my stats for the last week.
That’s a lot of traffic. A LOT of traffic. I’m getting traffic from a lot of different keywords too.
I must be making a killing … right?
Wow ~ pretty cool huh? Well guess how many sales I’ve made from all this traffic?
0 ~ yep. 0. Not one sale.
In fact, of all this traffic I have only received 74 click throughs in the last 7 days, and only 34 of them were actually to amazon. (the rest were email, favorited, and facebook postings).
So … I hope this is hitting home. It’s NOT all about traffic, it’s all about targeted traffic. It’s all about hooking up with your reader when they are ready to BUY, not when they are ready to get information.
Do you think if I had researched and built a lens on a keyword like this I might have done better?
Do you think the people searching for the bayou classic fryer are looking for information or are they looking to buy a cooker so they can fry the turkey?
I think they’re looking to buy.
While it was exhilirating to see those kind of numbers on my lens, it was quite disappointing when I saw such a low clickthrough rate ~ but I know what the mistake was. I hope you see the mistake as well, and avoid it yourself in the future. 
I obviously did a good enough job choosing the keyword ~ it had tons of search volume, and had low enough competition I was able to get it to the top of Google search listings. What I MISSED was the keywords were NOT in the buying stage.
How can I fix this?
I can’t change the lens as it is ~ it is what it is. But I can add some lenses to the campaign, some lenses that target more buying keywords. I can then link the new lenses to this one via the featured lens module and lensrolling. At the bottom I might ask a question (in the featured lens module) asking them if they are ready to get started and link to the lens where they can buy the stuff.
Between that and optimizing the new lens for more targeted buying keywords I could get enough traffic to make some money from this campaign ~ next year. well… Christmas is coming. I could probably get that working by then.
Here are a couple good posts I’ve found that talk more about the buying cycle. This is crucial, (as you can see from my mistake) so take a little time and read them.
Understanding the Buying Cycle
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Great article. I made this mistake on an entire blog – the blog gets tons of traffic, but the traffic is people looking for free information, not people ready to buy a product/service. It was a painful mistake as I spent a LOT of time creating this blog, but you can bet I’ll never make that mistake again…
Good advice – I was just reading another article about the same thing.
So – if I were to make a niche blog, I might want one page that could attract people earlier in the buying cycle, and let them know I was here, but then have other pages that were more specific for them to come to when they got to step 3?
I would target all buying keywords.
Although I suppose it really depends on what you’re doing. If you could have your site coming up for all three phases that would really build brand recognition and trust.
I would still probably just target buying keywords for a niche site. If you were building an authority blog on the topic I may optimize for all three phases, but for a niche blog ~ I’d go with buying words.
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Well, that’s an eye opener. Now I see the importance of checking the OCI on Micro Niche finder to see if these people looking will buy.
Thanks Jackie, Great post as always
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This is something I am only really coming to realise now after a few months. I think it makes a HUGE difference. That said, I do think places like Squidoo are a great way to test the waters before you shell out and spend time on a whole website. It’s a great way to learn which keywords do well, and once you find them you can simply produce more content to capitalize on them.
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Excellent points both Bernita and Ruth.
The oci will definitely give you an indication on whether they are buying or not. Unfortunately my MNF was still collecting dust on my computer when I did this keyword research lol. And yes, Squidoo is a great place to test quick and easy with no monetary risk.
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Hello Jackie,
This is by far the best explanation of late buying cycle keywords I have come accross. In fact, I find all your postings clear and very helpful to my cause of creating income online.
I want to thank you for taking the time and effort to help make IM more understandable for those, like me, who are still on the lower rungs of the learning ladder.
Great post. I think that is what we are doing with the Squidoo Christmas Cash, right?
Boy I have learned something really valuable today. Now I know why most of my lenses are not selling!
When you target a specific product, like we do with the Christmas cash lenses yes, you are coming in at the end of the buying cycle when people have already done the research and are looking to buy something specific.
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(embarrassed chuckle) I guess I’m not going to get rich on the neti pot instructions lens I just built then!!
Really valuable advise, Jackie, and very easy to forget in the search for good keywords.
That makes a lot of sense. I realize now that some of my products are not specific enough. This is definitely a learning process! All I can do is keep building more lenses, using all this awesome information! Thanks Jackie!
You know what I love about your site? Posts like these. Real examples, documenting real mistakes, proving that you are a real person; not simply an internet marketer trying to make a few bucks from us. This site is quickly becoming one of my favorites….
If you were to build a niche site (not Squidoo) around ‘deep fryers’ would you 1) set up more of an adsense sniper site 2) set up an Amazon site targeting one product 3) target an amazon site with 2 or 3 products in a review type format or 4) a combination of these types?
The reason I ask is because, while using product names are OK on squidoo, you can face potential trademark issues if you tried to use the brand name in your own domain name.
Hi Jackie – I downloaded Christmas Cash a while ago & I have been reading your emails & getting heaps out of the information. So thanks for what you are doing, it really is worthwhile & helpful information. Keywords are making sense to me at last. My lenses so far have been all over the place like the dog’s breakfast (I have been trying out modules & fooling around with content) but I can see myself getting more focused with my lenses in the near future thanks to your teaching. Checked out your link to “Understanding the buying cycle” & found another heap of great info. I totally agree with what Phillip said in the post above. Thanks again for your great posts.
@Dusty If I was to do a niche site for these I’d probably look for a generic turkey frying cooker type keyword and feature different cookers. That way to avoid the trademark issue, but still targeting buying keywords.
I personally do not like review sites ~ I don’t think they give you or the reader enough time to build trust. But maybe that’s just me, and being a marketer I know that review sites are just someone else trying to sell me something lol. So no, I wouldn’t do a review site.
I could also do a micro niche site ~ 1 or 2 page site targeting a cooker specific keyword, linking people to one cooker or the category page of cookers on Amazon.
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Hi Jackie,
Those traffic numbers were incredible and a very serious lesson for us all. Thanks for sharing a clear and detailed lesson from your personal experience regarding the extreme importance of getting keyword research right up front.
In this business it really is all about properly synchronizing keywords and consumer buying cycle.
Great post as always!!
Could you do a post about how to continue being motivated when seemingly nothing is happening on any of the lenses we’ve built so far? I know that part of my problem is the backlinks issue and I need to go and build some more for each of my lenses….. but how do you stay motivated?
Also, if you only had 2 hours a day to work on this entire system, what would you concentrate on first? I’m having trouble with prioritizing as my time is very limited (like everybody else).
Jane (MoneyMom)
Thanks Jackie, this post has really made me think. Its inspiring to see the amount of visitors you can pull in – even though you didn’t make a sale it still gives me hope!
I hear what you’re saying, but what’s even more inspiring to me is only getting 125 hits a week and making 2 sales.
Which happens as well.
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If I remember correctly, one of the points you teach in Christmas Cash or a later post is to use the specific product name in the title.
That’s true Rene ~ and not everyone that comes here is doing christmas cash lenses.
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Hi, Thanks for this wonderful post, I will certainly be watching for more.
Cheers
Perfect post but those buying keywords still cause me so much grief, even after doing this for over 7 months.
I truly do find keyword research somewhat difficult, well, I find that discovering buying keywords to be very difficult. I am great a finding keywords that have low competition and a half decent search volume, just not good buying phrases
I am not making enough money yet to subscribe to any services either which mean it is up to the good old gray matter in my head!
Just remember the more specific the closer to buying they are.
printer –> hp printer –> hp laserjet 1100 (that’s a buying phrase!)
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Thanks Jackie for this post. That’s a mistake I was making also. Now I understand why I get a lot of clicks but no sales.
Maya
Another great post! Valuable lesson and the answer to some of my Squidoo lens issues.
My question is how did you get to that number of visitors in the first place. I have several Squidoo lenses that are indexed with Google and thanks to your Squidoo Christmas Cash Blueprint, have actually generated some money. But I don’t seem to have more than 10-20 visitors a month on my best lenses. How can I improve my visitor count? Specifically, what do YOU do?
Thanks.
Rosalyn
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I do exactly what I’ve shown you to do in the blueprint.
I’m not keeping secrets here. lol.
That one lens has been up a couple years so it has had time to age and rank for a few good keywords ~ obviously the keyword I targeted gets a LOT of search volume. However ~ as you can see I didn’t make any money from all that traffic.
I have many many lenses that I actually make money from that get MUCH less traffic. It’s about the keywords you’ve targeted ~ how close a match your product is to what they are looking for and then building links so you can get good placement in the search engine.
My question to you is the lenses you are getting traffic for … where do you rank for your targeted keyword? If it’s not 5 or above on page 1 you can build more links which will improve your ranking and that will increase your traffic.
I also have aLOT (I mean a LOT) of lenses that don’t get any frickin traffic at all. Not one damn visit all month.
It’s just the nature of the beast.
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lways pick keywords that are research keywords How do you find the keywords of people ready to buy.
Hi Jackie,
I am out of breath now after taking my coffee early in the morning. I am more confident now that i will be able to make money soon…hooray.. By following what you are teaching here is so much easier to understand and I can see light at the end of the tunnel than from what I have learned from all the other gurus who have made themselves richer.
Thanks again