I once had a business owner tell me that he didn’t want to optimize his website for a product they sell because they don’t sell very much of it. The irony was not lost on me. They weren’t selling that product simply because they were not optimized for it.
The Hidden Gem
The site sold travel bags of all shapes and sizes, and the product they didn’t sell much of were laptop bags. He failed to realize that he wasn’t selling laptop bags because he wasn’t drawing in traffic from searchers looking for them. In fact, the only laptop bag orders they received were from shoppers who happened to stumble across them while looking at their other products.
What they saw as a low-selling product, I saw as a high-value opportunity.
Imagine for a second being a competitor of this business. You also sell a variety of travel bags but don’t offer any laptop bags. Then one day someone on your marketing team digs into a bit of keyword research and sees that laptop bags are a highly searched item. What do you do with this information?
You start selling laptop bags and open up a whole new stream of income!
Discover New Areas of Business
One of the most important uses of keyword research is to find all the different words and phrases searchers use to find the products or services you provide. But what is often a golden, missed opportunity, is to use the same research to find new areas of business.
Let’s say you sell widgets. You’ve done your research to find all the different ways people search for a widget.
- big widgets
- red widgets
- how to make a widget
- widget repair
- etc.
You may also find that people call widgets by a different name: gadgets. So you perform additional research on that phrase.
- waterproof gadget
- micro-gadget
- gadgets for kids
- gadget gifts
- etc.
If you stopped there, you could be just fine. Using that information you can bring in all sorts of new traffic based on these search patterns.
But you’re greedy, so you keep digging. And the next thing you know, there is a whole line of products that people are interested in that is right up your alley:
- thingamajigs
- doohickeys
- whatchamacallits
- contraptions
- gismos
- doodads
- apparatuses
Suddenly, you just opened up a world of new opportunities to grow your business.
Improve Your Product Base
Product research is more than just looking for ways to improve your product. That’s essential, too, don’t get me wrong. But ongoing keyword research can help you improve your product base.
Keyword research is about finding things that your existing customers are also likely to be interested in and then figuring out how to offer it or how to make customers more aware of it if you already do. If it’s been a while since you’ve performed keyword research, maybe it’s time to dig around a bit more. Who knows, maybe you’ll find something new you could be selling or something you are already selling that you should promote.