When we analyze our potential Rewards to assess market size and profitability, we use broad matching criteria. This gives us the best possible view of the market that we will try to reach.
Broad match searching will match Internet Business to Web Business, which may seem obvious, but it also brings other benefits. Broad match search results include synonyms and related terms that add richness to the site. If nothing else, it saves us a few trips to the thesaurus.
At the Strategy stage, this gives us a problem. Do we create categories for web business, Internet business or both? If we revealed 4,000 topics in our potential Rewards assessment, do we categorize all of them and produce thousands of content and indexing pages?
No we don’t!
We reassess the market by choosing the best section of it, and we analyze the latest demand for those key search terms. Then we group similar topics into sections, and create our strategic website blueprint. I will explain the exact procedure in the Strategy section.
First, I need to finalize my review into the merits of [exact match] vs “phrase match” search. Exact match gives us a very accurate demand profile to help determine what is worth writing about. In a large project, this is a good starting point as it gives us the best numbers to start with. However, in smaller projects, it can leave us short on potential content topics.
I will assess the best cutoff points this week, and present a step-by-step procedure for creating your website blueprint. Never forget that this phase gets us started with some expected numbers, and there is no real right or wrong way. It is most important to get the site running as soon as possible, because later we will generate our own actual statistics to drive future development.
As long as you can prepare logical groups of associated topics, it does not matter too much which search type you base your categories on. In my experience, exact match searching will be fastest to get started on, as the number of topics is small. Broad match is best suited to small niches, but be prepared to ignore or delete many topics on the list. Phrase match seems best for most projects.
As I said, I will report back soon with clearer guidelines on how to build your blueprint. In the meantime, if you want to discuss any issues, or ask questions, please join the debate at Discuss Strategies For Web Business.