Link Building 101: Market-Defining Keywords vs. SEO Keywords

When compiling a keyword list to combine with, say, a link building query generator, it's easy to miss the distinction between Market Defining Keywords and your standard SEO keywords, especially for SEOs who have trained themselves to think in terms of long tails, big heads, and everything in between.

4 Characteristics of Market Defining Keywords

Probably not converting keywords

Words the market or participants use to describe itself/themselves

Single or two-word phrases that are very crowded and competitive in the SERPs

Keywords you would NOT target with a PPC campaign

So, let's say you're a camping goods retailer and have a camping tips blog. When developing out your queries it could be tempting to use product-related keywords that convert well for you. Instead of profitable keywords, think of 5-10 market defining keywords that have the 4 characteristics mention above.

For a camping goods retailer these market-defining keywords could look like:

Camping

Hiking

Outdoors

Hunting

Fishing

Those keywords, combined with advanced operators and other link prospecting keyword clusters, will turn up far more prospects than keywords like "camping equipment."

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