Once your initial list of keywords has been selected, each word should be tested for viability and potential effectiveness. You must make sure enough people are actually searching on the words and phrases you are considering using and determine if you can afford to pursue words that are competitively bid on. Once tested and validated, your key words will need to be repeated within the text on relevant pages of your organization’s website and in parts of the HTML code of those pages (Meta tags, alt tags and page titles). In practice this means editing the text on specific web pages to include certain keywords. Typically a keyword needs to be used a minimum of three times in the content of a page, depending on its length. Once you have optimized your web pages, they can be submitted to the search engines and directories.

Here’s a practical example that illustrates how an event marketer might choose keywords and phrases to optimize a website for improved search engine results: An organization that holds an annual conference on marketing to the “baby boomer” generation wants to increase traffic to its conference website. The organization’s event marketers begin by choosing and testing keywords like “baby boomer trends” and “marketing to boomers”. If research indicates these to be viable terms to pursue (it often happens that words and phrases that seem obvious turn out to be the least effective ones), the event marketer then embeds the keywords into the copy and code of relevant pages on the website.

These keywords, once optimized on the website and used in conjunction with other techniques like pay-per-click advertising, will begin to improve the placement of the organization’s website in search engine results. The improved search results will drive more targeted traffic to the organization’s site. Event marketers must decide what ranking in search results they want their site to receive. Highly competitive consumer goods often require that their sites rank # 1, 2 or 3 in search results. For other types of businesses, ranking in the top 10 is acceptable. Research indicates that search engine users rarely look beyond the third page of results.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Search engine users are likely familiar with the pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements that appear in the right-hand margin of the search results page (for example, AdWords on Google). PPC ads can be a helpful shortcut that gets searchers to the information they are looking for more quickly and directly. This type of advertising is also available on Overture and many of the second-tier search engines. Overture can display ads across their network, which includes sites like Yahoo!, MSN and AltaVista. The simple premise of this type of advertising is that you compete with other organizations by bidding for ad position. The marketer declares what they are willing to spend per click. A marketer can set bids for each keyword, or a single bid can be set for all keywords.

Imagine that the “baby boomer” conference event marketer mentioned previously began a Google AdWord campaign with the following keywords:
1. Baby Boomers
2. Baby Boomers trends
3. Marketing to Baby Boomers
4. Marketing to seniors
5. Baby boomers age range
6. Baby boomers generation
7. Baby boomer marketing
8. Baby boomers statistics
9. Characteristics of Baby Boomers
10. Who are Baby Boomers

When someone enters one of these keyword phrases, for example, “baby boomer marketing,” the following ad is triggered on the Google search results page:

The ad for the Baby Boomer Marketing Conference
places second on the first page of organic search
results when the search term “baby boomer
marketing” is entered on Google.

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