How to pick keywords that convert well?

Hi there

This might have been listed somewhere in this forum but I did a quick search and didn't really find it anyplace obvious. So I thought I will share this.

It is about choosing keywords that will bring you money rather than useless view counts or just people browsing your website without buying.

The tool is called Microsoft Online Commercial Intention or OCI. It gives out data related to customer patterns after they search for a keyword. It tracks if the customer pattern to determine if the customer has a intention to buy as opposed to just looking for free information.

Example - Take the keyword "Weight Loss" - millions of searches - sounds like a big juicy keyword right - not really - the OCI factor for this keyword = .84 Non Commercial Intention. In other words, 84% of the people searching for this keyword will probably not even look at the product you are trying to sell even if you show it to them on a golden plate.

On the other hand - take the keyword "blackberry skins" - low number of searches but a .96 commercial intention which means that people searching for this keyword are looking to get the product NOW.

These numbers obviously do not translate literally in terms of conversions. It would be crazy to expect 96% of the people visiting your site for blackberry skins to buy but it definitely gives you an heads up to avoid keywords that seem big and juicy like "weight loss".

The tool can be found at
ahem...hit thanks if you found this useful - not sure if I am allowed to say that.

I tried the tool but I feel we can not solely rely on its results...

u see, u might be marketing about your product in a market where more people prefer to buy it. u see, if more people from that area visit ur site, chances are a higher probability of people will buy the product

It is just one of many aids to help you in your IM. Common sense is one of the biggest weapons out there.

Nice find... the OCI is integrated into Marketing Samurai as well. It is just one more metric to help you decide on targeting a term or not.

I don't know how much stock to put into OCI yet. Sometimes it make sense, while other times I have trouble seeing the commercial value. Then again, it's Microsoft, the grand daddy of marketing. They certainly have plenty of data on how to spot buy signals