The Key to Choosing KeyWords

There’s that term again: Keywords. Everybody throws it around like it’s OBVIOUS what they are, or should be. Delve into online websites, marketing your VO services, and you’ll see that keywords pop up in many of the SEO and SEM strategies that used to be so important. I dunno. Are they still? I choose keywords (tags) for every blog I write. Some keywords are visible, others are written into the site’s code. Keywords show up in backlinks, inbound links, and inlinks.

Keywords are at the heart of most analyses of web traffic. If you want metrics, chances are the person you’re hiring, or the program you’re using is going to ask for keywords.

Google “keywords” and you’ll invariably get a lot of links to a site called Moz.com. They hope to sign you up for their service, but the site is chock-full of some basic keywords philosophy. Check out their page: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/keyword-research, where you’ll find this wisdom: “….through the detective work of puzzling ouour market’s keyword demand, you not only learn which terms and phrases to target with SEO, but also learn more about your customers as a whole. It’s not always about getting visitors to your site, but about getting the right kind of visitors. The usefulness of this intelligence cannot be overstated – with keyword research you can predict shifts in demand, respond to changing market conditions, and produce the products, services, and content that web searchers are already actively seeking…”

Great. Got it. The concept of keywords is not hard…just choosing the keywords…THAT’s hard. Why?

My friend Brett Bumeter — web developer and WordPress expert explained it to me this way:

Customers typically need solutions to problems. A voice over actor might be the solution to that problem, but they might approach it like ‘How do I make my own commercial?’ or ‘Where do I hire a firm to narrate a commerical?’ or something like that which never mentions the actual keywords voice over, or voice over artist or voice over actor. They have questions to ask, but they do not have the answer to the question and therefore can’t seek out the person that embodies that answer.

So that means that as you are trying to drive more business and sales, you need to make certain pages or posts on your site visible in search ranking much further upstream int the clients ‘self-education process.

With that being the case, generic keywords like the ones above could be the absolute last keywords to chase and maybe also the most competitive and more expensive keywords to spend money and time on!

BTW, Brett is a genius at this stuff, and although he says he doesn’t do much SEO anymore, he’s plenty savvy about it. He’s also great at ANYTHING WordPress. I give him my unabashed recommendation: http://www.softduit.com.

So where does that leave us, as voice-actors? Where you’ve always been: finding your own marketing path to success. Surely it may make sense to choose the standard keywords: voiceover, voice-over, voice over, voice actor, etc. But then again, maybe you need to choose more creative VO-related keywords that could reel in a different kind of fish.

The more you read about this stuff, the more complicated (and fascinating) it can be. Of course, Google is big in this realm, so you may want to start there: GOOGLE KEYWORD PLANNER.

Then there’s this too: Google Keyword Tool Box.

BING offers a keyword search page that’s pretty helpful too: http://www.bing.com/toolbox/keywords.

Finally, following up on the line of thought that I shared from Brett Bumeter above, there’s this dynamite article from January of this year on Social Media Today concerning alternatives to Google keyword search tools: http://socialmediatoday.com/pamdyer/2039406/10-great-alternatives-google-keyword-research-tool.

Let us know what you decide on… or not.

CourVO

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1 Comment

Brett Bumeter on April 2, 2014 at 5:08 am

Thanks for the kind words Dave!

As I read your article two thoughts come to mind….

First, I’ve been saying for years, if someone is looking for a good topic for a blog article, go look in your email Sent box, and look at the answers you wrote up for questions that your own clients asked. It’s a great way to get topical blog articles, that answer questions, provide solutions to your other and future clients and more.

… But After reading this article, I had the further epiphany that it doesn’t hurt one bit, if your clients quote you from time to time in their blog articles!

Second, as a follow on tip, for those that are power bloggers (personally I see Dave as one) I would suggest that as you finish your own client projects, de-emphasize what you specifically did for the client…

de-emphasize this part —
fictional voice over actor 1

‘I recorded a 30 second voice spot and provided 4 different mixes of the spot including background music to accompany a tv commercial’

Instead, emphasize — fictional voice over actor

‘Look at this great thing my client did. Their new commercial is playing on 4 different networks. They use the same video elements slightly edited for each of the networks, but they mixed in my voice spot differently for each network. On CBS they used the full 1 minute spot, but on the Oprah network they used an alternative recording, and on the USA network they split the ads into two 30 second spots with yet another version of the recording, teasing one into the next later on in a show. I spoke with them a month later and as they measured their results, they found that the split version on the USA network performed the best of all of the spots. They then tried a split version on the Oprah network, but the results there for the split version were worse than the original for that network. They wanted to understand the real driver, so they ran the original spot that aired on CBS on the USA network and it too performed flat. This month we’re trying a new series of ads and again splitting one version for USA Network to see if that model of advertising works best for that network and the audiences there….’

There is a soft sell going on here, as the provider of the voice over spot, is still providing that service and lightly discussing their work, but they are talking up how their portion of the product was used and possibly by whom and where.

At the end of the day the article will still be about voice over work, and Google under the Hummingbird changes will still pick that up. Overall your site, your blog will still be on that core topic. This article will be on a deeper topic on a more specific area, solution and ultimately keyword.

Articles that provide solutions, discuss solutions or show people how to get them will often times perform much better in Search Engine Rankings. The people that show up and read them, spend more time on that page and your site, google notices and sends more people your way looking for more of the same.

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Brett Bumeter on April 2, 2014 at 5:08 am
Thanks for the kind words Dave!
As I read your article two thoughts come to mind….
First, I’ve been saying for years, if someone is looking for a good topic for a blog article, go look in your email Sent box, and look at the answers you wrote up for questions that your own clients asked. It’s a great way to get topical blog articles, that answer questions, provide solutions to your other and future clients and more.
… But After reading this article, I had the further epiphany that it doesn’t hurt one bit, if your clients quote you from time to time in their blog articles!
Second, as a follow on tip, for those that are power bloggers (personally I see Dave as one) I would suggest that as you finish your own client projects, de-emphasize what you specifically did for the client…
de-emphasize this part —
fictional voice over actor 1
‘I recorded a 30 second voice spot and provided 4 different mixes of the spot including background music to accompany a tv commercial’
Instead, emphasize — fictional voice over actor
‘Look at this great thing my client did. Their new commercial is playing on 4 different networks. They use the same video elements slightly edited for each of the networks, but they mixed in my voice spot differently for each network. On CBS they used the full 1 minute spot, but on the Oprah network they used an alternative recording, and on the USA network they split the ads into two 30 second spots with yet another version of the recording, teasing one into the next later on in a show. I spoke with them a month later and as they measured their results, they found that the split version on the USA network performed the best of all of the spots. They then tried a split version on the Oprah network, but the results there for the split version were worse than the original for that network. They wanted to understand the real driver, so they ran the original spot that aired on CBS on the USA network and it too performed flat. This month we’re trying a new series of ads and again splitting one version for USA Network to see if that model of advertising works best for that network and the audiences there….’
There is a soft sell going on here, as the provider of the voice over spot, is still providing that service and lightly discussing their work, but they are talking up how their portion of the product was used and possibly by whom and where.
At the end of the day the article will still be about voice over work, and Google under the Hummingbird changes will still pick that up. Overall your site, your blog will still be on that core topic. This article will be on a deeper topic on a more specific area, solution and ultimately keyword.
Articles that provide solutions, discuss solutions or show people how to get them will often times perform much better in Search Engine Rankings. The people that show up and read them, spend more time on that page and your site, google notices and sends more people your way looking for more of the same.

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