I am currently in my Fall 2025 semester of college at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. I have this class every Friday from noon till 2:45pm (yes, I know a really long class). With such a long class period I am gaining a plethora of knowledge during this time.
One of the first topics we covered in this course was the practice of keyword research. Keyword research depends on what type of business, and their goal from running a keyword campaign. A retail business will have a different campaign in comparison to a service business.
To apply our skills we used a real life business to build a mock keyword research strategy. I used Google Ads and Google Spreadsheets to complete this mock strategy for Tesla.com. Our first step in planning our keyword strategy was to look at Tesla’s current website state. We looked at both positives to expand on, and negatives that opened up new areas of expansion. From the way Tesla website was set up we could tell they were focusing on expanding their brand to more of the technology side with selling solar home equipment, and starting to produce their first AI robots.
After giving a scan over Tesla website, we then picked out some keywords that first sparked in our heads. My first list of keywords that I rattled off were pretty weak. Picking the right keywords is very important because a business does not want to waste any of their money paying for irrelevant keywords. Along with making sure you pick the right keywords you need to make sure you pick the right type of keyword match. You can have a correct keyword, but if you are the irrelevant keyword match type it can hurt a business more than helping it.
A visual representation of the type of keyword matches available is given down below (this is my favorite thing to look back on)
These keyword match types are very important when using the Google Ads application. The match type essentially changes the “meaning” of what your keyword is exactly looking for. When doing our Google Spreadsheet search I did not focus too much on what type of match type I would use, I was focusing on if the words I choose even related to Tesla enough to boost their sales.
Some of my top word choices were relating to what I already thought Tesla.com was ranking for. Words such as “Best EV”, “EV Cars”, and “EV SUV”. At first I was thinking about things a little differently, and I did not pick the best words to drive up relevant traffic. I was thinking about how to boost up new traffic in relation to their technology. I ended up picking words that were too broad, and just did not have enough monthly searches to spend actual money on my first round for keywords. Most of the keyword types used for tesla were exact matches because broad matches have too much content that relates to my best ranking keywords. Same thing with keywords like “solar panels” phrase match, and broad match were not the best type of keyword matches for tesla.
We also did a mock keyword research strategy with our breakout groups in class to get a better understanding of everything we learned. My group was given the mountain Trex bike, so instead of a whole website it was one item on a website. With only trying keyword research for a certain item it was a little harder to think of relevant keywords. This in person activity helped me a lot with my understanding of how exactly to build a keyword strategy. My team member Tessa had a lot of valuable input to put together from her current marketing job.
I am excited to continue working on my keyword research strategy skills. I know a lot more about the topics included in this practice than I did before starting the course!
Leave a Reply