Best Practices for Creating Keyword Sets

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Initial Keyword Research

Before creating your keyword sets, it’s important to research and ensure you’re seeing the intent signals that are most relevant for your products or services. We also recommend you research your competitors to create competitive keyword sets.

Websites

Product or service landing pages are a good place to start researching keywords. 

To start, make a list of the common nouns used to describe the product or services of interest. Next, look for prominent nouns in sub-menus or section headers.

For example, some possible keywords from the Demandbase products page include go-to-market platform, account analytics, buying intent, web experiences, and account data.

  • Consider dropping broad industry terms such as Digital Banking or Ad Tech. The goal is to include terms that describe specific products or services. 
  • To avoid confusing the intent engine, use full terms instead of acronyms. For example, use go-to-market instead of GTM.

Demandbase Products.png

SEO Keyword Analyzers

Don’t use SEO terms from keyword analyzers in bulk, generic search terms, or broad phrases such as best system integrators. These types of keywords can result in too many generic hits. 

If you’re looking for keyword ideas, you can use SEO keyword analyzers such as the Moz Keyword Explorer. Moz allows you to perform ten free queries per month if you register for an account. Other tools include RankActive or Ubersuggest

AI (ChatGPT)

Using AI, you can enter queries that provide commonly repeated phrases on a specific website. For example, you can enter “Provide a list of the most common phrases on the company.com website” to get a list of the website’s most frequently occurring phrases. With a good framework and clear queries, you can use AI to discover a good list of keywords. 

If you plan to use tools such as ChatGPT, keep in mind that ChatGPT doesn’t have access to current data on long tail keywords (phrases with three to five words). It also doesn’t have access to specific website search data.

Tip: When using SEO keyword analyzers or generative AI tools, select two to four word keyword phrases that are not generic or broadly used. For example, application development, artificial intelligence, CRM solutions, and IT consulting are fairly generic and can appear in content and articles very broadly. Instead, consider using custom application development or custom application development services

Non-English Intent

Demandbase intent works in 133 non-English languages (the top languages around the world). Create  non-English keyword sets for your international marketing and sales teams.

See Best Practices for Creating Non-English Keyword Sets.

Competitors

Researching your competitors can provide a better understanding of their business. Some options for performing competitor research include:

  • Google search: Perform a Google Search for alternatives to company name or company name competitors for a list of competitors.
  • Company Online Databases: If you have access to Demandbase Sales Intelligence, you can look at the Similar Companies tab. Note that similar companies are not always considered competitors. You can also use other products such as Owler, Crunchbase, or G2 to find competitors.
  • Generative AI (ChatGPT): Use generative AI tools such as ChatGPT to find competitors. For example, enter “Who are the competitors for my company name” to get a list of competitors.

Tips: 

  • Since different sources can have different definitions of a company’s competitor, it’s important to cross-reference and to use multiple sources for your final list of competitors. 
  • Competitor keyword sets can have less than 25 keywords.

Keyword Selection Tips

Demandbase recommends the following tips to find keywords.

Use Exact Matches

Demandbase Intent relies on exact keyword matching to identify relevant research activity. This means that the specific keywords you add to your keyword sets must appear precisely as they are written on the B2B content being consumed. 

This precision is crucial because it:

  • Reduces irrelevant noise and false positives by focusing on the complete keyword phrase.
  • Increases the specificity of intent signals, indicating a stronger interest in the exact topic.
  • Aligns with typical B2B research behavior, where specific multi-word phrases are often used.

Using poorly formed, overly specific keywords with low online presence as exact matches can lead to limited or no intent data. Leverage Demandbase's Suggest from URL tool using relevant B2B pages to help identify effective, contextually relevant exact match keywords. 

Example

Consider a company that offers "cloud-based data analytics platforms."

  • Poor Exact Match Keyword: "Acme Corp innovative data solutions" - This highly specific phrase, combining the company name with broad terms, is unlikely to appear exactly on a significant amount of B2B content. A quick reverse exact match search on Google (enclosing the phrase in quotation marks) would likely yield very few or no results.
  • Better Exact Match Keyword: "cloud-based data analytics platforms" - This phrase accurately reflects the offering and is more likely to appear verbatim on relevant industry websites, articles, and reports.

Other Recommendations

Use the following recommendations when creating keyword sets: 

Recommended Reason Examples
Create keyword sets very early on.  Keyword sets are fundamental to your ABM strategy and success.  NA
Update your keyword sets on a regular basis.  Keyword set creation is an iterative process. Refine by adding or removing keywords.  We recommend revisiting your keywords every 6 months. 
Add 40-100 keywords per keyword set.  Too little or too many keywords are not effective for measuring intent. NA
Terms and phrases that align with your offerings or initiatives. The keyword sets should include topics of interest that indicate accounts are in-market or showing intent for one of your products or services. NA
Standardized naming convention for your keyword sets. Allows for easy reference. Especially important if you create a non-English version of your English keyword sets.  Product A - English, Product A - French

Two or three word keyword phrases tend to be the most effective. 

Only use one word keywords if they are unique to your offering or initiative. 

Generic keywords can result in irrelevant content.  Custom application development, custom application development service
Add additional words to one word keywords that pertain to your offerings or initiatives. Generic one word keywords can result in irrelevant content.  Add Inc to keywords like Apple or Alphabet to make them more specific.
Use the singular version of a keyword.  Singular is the most common in articles.  Salary tracker, integration tool, UX designer
Keyword phrases that are specific enough to cover most of the articles.  To optimize search, keywords should not be too specific or too broad.  Traffic data to represent metro traffic data, traffic data, traffic data set, real-time traffic data

Keywords that generate a significant number of exact matches in Google search results (e.g., 5,000 or more).

Tip: In your Google search, put the keywords in quotes to get an exact match count.

Indicates keywords are commonly used in online content, increasing the likelihood that Demandbase Intent will find sufficient content consumption activity for those terms. "CRM software for sales"

Not Recommended

Avoid the following when creating keyword sets:

Not Recommended Reason Examples
Terms from paid searches as keywords Search terms are uncommon in published articles.  Top 10 laptops, the best data centers in the world, office spaces in London
Capitalized and lowercase versions of the same keyword  Keyword matching is not case sensitive.  Keyword, keyword, KeyWord 

Plural and singular versions of the same keyword  Benefit of duplicating the keyword is minor. Articles often include both the plural and singular versions of a keyword. Keyword, keywords
Keyword phrases that are close duplicates Benefit of using similar keyword phrases is minor.  employee salary tracking system, employee salary tracking, salary tracking
Misspelled keywords Demandbase is likely to assign a status of Ineligible to misspelled keywords. CRM integrattions, invoiice trackin
Special characters such as ampersand (&) unless it is part of a branded name Special characters such as & are usually spelled out in articles.  !, &, /

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