A Dear Child has Many Names

Apparently Online Strategies are called something different, depending on your view. I was wandering why this blog wasn't found by anyone searching for "online strategy" or something similar to that, and found a very simple solution. It is so simple, I should have noticed it before.

Online Strategy Games

If you search Google for "online strategy" you only get hits concerning online games! I'm a bit perplexed as to why I haven't looked at this before, since this is one of the first things to do, if you consider starting to use AdWords for your site. You need to know what your users will be searching for, and display your ad there. I would think that seeing a long list of online gaming sites, my potential users would try and search for something else, and would therefor think it unnecessary to place AdWord banners there. Apparently The Milk has put up an AdWord banner for "Online Strategy" which got me thinking. Even though the Google results are all about online strategy games, the search would still be my first choice, if I was looking for information about formulating a strategy for my online presence, and thus the perfect place to put up AdWord banners. The Milk is the only ones there, which means it must be quite cheap, and the click rate could be quite high if more people search like i do, since they would be looking for something about strategies and not something about gaming.

Alternative names

Since I'm not interested in paying for AdWords yet, I started looking at different searches with more related results, which I might want to target instead of "Online Strategies". "e-commerce strategy" looks like a much better fit, but somehow that's not the full image. Focusing just on e-commerce is a bit too narrow for my taste, and the way I see it there is no real need to distinguish between strategies concerning e-commerce or "online information" sites. "web strategy" fits a bit better, though I find 'web' to be slightly out dated. "internet strategy" looks like a nice fit as well, and might actually be a better fit than online strategies.

A Difference in Words

Looking at 'online' and 'internet', I find 'online' to define the playing field a bit more narrow than 'internet'. Though 'internet' is also a bit dated, it's still better than 'web', and somehow I find that 'internet' also covers events and ideas that happen within closed areas of the internet. With 'online', I find it to focus more on public access sites which kind of rule out B2B sites and intra-/extranets.

Conclusion

What does all this have to do with internet strategies? it shows you how important it is to choose your playing field, and how to define what you are doing. If no one finds me by searching for "online strategies" I need somewhere else where I can be found, without having to redefine my whole site and rewrite everything I've written so far. Be simply substituting 'online' with 'internet' my chances could be a lot better. We'll know about that in a month or two, when I've gathered enough data to draw a conclusion.