When Homographs Attack

Homographs are words that have the same spelling but different meanings. For example, invalid means both “not valid” and “a person who can't get out of bed.” Search engines have struggled with homographs since their inception. As mothers to young children,we have a strong interest in making sure our homes are lead free. So naturally,we use the search engines to learn how. Unfortunately, the word “lead,” meaning “a soft, heavy, toxic, malleable metallic element,” happens to have a homograph:“lead,” meaning “travel in front of.”The environmental-lead-testing search results are crowded out by pages with information on leadership! In order to get the information we need,we have to lengthen our search phrases:“lead abatement,”“lead contamination,” and “lead poisoning.”

Acronyms are particularly susceptible to this problem. One site we know (we've changed the name and identifying details to prevent embarrassment),Massive Media, Inc., has spent years targeting the term “AMC,” which is an acronym for one of its products. But just in the top 10 Google results, this term is represented by the following entities:

- AMC Theatres

- The AMC network movie channel

- The Appalachian Mountain Club

- Albany Medical Center

- Australian Maritime College

- American Mathematics Competitions

- Applied Microsystems Corporation

None of these has anything to do with what Massive Media was trying to promote! Clearly, in targeting this acronym, it was navigating the wrong waters. It doesn't make sense to spend your energy competing with such a broad field. If you are unfortunate enough to be promoting a company or product with a name that shares spelling with a common word or acronym, you will need to brainstorm on what secondary terms your target audience is likely to add and combine words to find a more appropriate term to target. Possibilities are the geographical location of your company, the generic term for the product, names of well-known executives, or the term “company” or “inc.” And as a general rule, don't target acronyms shorter than four letters long.

Resources to Expand and Enhance the List

On your Keywords Worksheet, you already have a nice long list of possible target phrases. But are there any you missed? Today, you'll troll on- and offline for additional keyword ideas. We've listed some of the places that additional keyword phrase ideas could pop up. There are more ideas here than you can use in just one hour, so pick and choose based on what's available to you and what feels most appropriate to your situation: Your Coworkers If you didn't get your team involved in keyword brainstorming yesterday, be sure that they jump on board today. It will help your campaign in two ways: First, they'll provide valuable new perspectives and ideas for keywords, and second, they'll feel involved and empowered as participants in the plan.

Your Website Have you looked through your website to find all variations of your possible keyword phrases? Terms that are already used on your site are great choices for target keywords because they will be easier to incorporate into your content. Industry Media If there are any magazines or websites devoted to your trade, take a look and see what terminology they are using to describe your product or service. Remember, now is not the time to edit your terms! So if the words are in use out there, be sure to include them on this list.

Your Website Statistics If you have access to a program that shows traffic statistics on your website that is, a web analytics tool review it to see what search terms are currently sending traffic and conversions your way. Terms that are already working well for you can be great choices for target keywords. We'll walk you through choosing and reviewing analytics tools in Week 4 later in this article.

Your Customers If you (or anyone on your SEO team) have the ability to check in with customers about what phrases they use to describe your products or services, now is the time to get in touch with them and find out! Your salespeople might also take this opportunity to confess: “Oh yeah, it's called Closure Management Technology on the website, but when we talk with customers, we always just call it zippers.” Your Internal Search Engine If your website has a search box on it, it's time to get sneaky! You can use its usage information for your SEO campaign. Talk to your webmaster about collecting the following information about site visitors who use your internal search engine:

- What terms do they search for?

- What results are they shown?

- What pages do they choose to click on (if any)?

Keep a running list of top terms your site visitors are searching for; these are likely to be good target keywords for your SEO campaign.

There's plenty more that an internal search engine can do for you. Visit article 10, “Extra Credit and Guilt-Free Slacking,” for more information.

“Related” Terms on Search Engines Many search engines offer suggestions for related terms after you perform a search. For example, Ask has “Narrow Your Search” and “Expand Your Search” columns along the left-hand side of the search results that show a variety of terms related to your search (see Figure 6.1). These related terms can be good additional keyword choices.

Friends, Neighbors, and the Unexpected One major problem we have observed with keyword choice is that businesses tend to become too caught up in the insider terminology they use to describe themselves. If your target audience goes beyond industry insiders, be sure to seek out input from unexpected sources. Your friends and neighbors or even the neighbor's kid can provide surprisingly helpful ideas.