When describing the keywords associated with a campaign here at Vertical Leap we use two different terms - “benchmark keywords” and “attracted keywords”. 

When optimising a site for a particular set of keywords, it would be virtually impossible to determine ALL of the possible keywords that may be used when searching for our client’s products or services.  You would also need an incredibly large volume of content to ensure that each of these keywords is fully utilised throughout the site. 

Like many of our peers, our approach is to focus our efforts when considering keywords for optimisation on the dominant, major theme-based keywords that depict a client’s needs (aka “the head” of search).  We know that if we get these words right and ensure that the site architecture is sufficiently “search engine friendly”, that we will get rankings for the multitude of “long tail” keywords without doubt.

The primary keywords that we focus on are called “benchmark” keywords.  These are the keywords that we use to benchmark the performance of a campaign as we know that if we achieve success for these, the other keywords will follow.  The other keywords that arrive at the site due to our efforts elsewhere are referred to as “attracted” keywords – they are the keywords that attract visitors of the “long-tail” variety.

It is something that many client’s have difficulty getting their head around – if we are not actively optimising for each and every keyword, then they will never get a decent ranking in a search engine.  This, as you can imagine, is simply not true – good content, organised and optimised with solid core keywords and a solid site architecture will deliver the goods each time.

Let’s look at these examples from just last month (February 2007):

1.    A small letting agent (property management company) based in the UK Midlands, has 25 keywords that we are monitoring as our “benchmark” for performance – but has been found in the search engines by more than  1,650 different keyword combinations? in just that one month alone (more than 3,500 if you add January!)

2.    A travel company with only 20 “benchmark” keywords but had almost 12,000 different “attracted” keyword combinations in one month!

3.    A supplier of flooring with 20 “benchmark” keywords and 11,000 different and unique “attracted” keyword combinations in one month – I don’t think anyone could have sat down and come up with this list on their own (they have received visits using 19,441different keyword combinations since January 2007 – that’s in less than three months!)