Company brand awareness works on getting the name of your company into the market. If you want to build credibility for Big Computers Unlimited as a whole, then you probably want a campaign focused on getting your company listed where other top producers of PCs are listed. PC, computer, or fast computer all might be good terms.

Product brand awareness focuses on building general market knowledge of one product or line of products that your company produces. If you work for Big Computers Unlimited and you want to sell more Intergalactic Gamer brand computers at retail stores throughout the country, then you probably want to build a campaign around keywords like Gaming PC or even high-end PC.

A 2004 survey by iProspect found that two out of three search engine users believed that the highest search results in Google were the top brands for their industry; there is little reason to believe this perception has changed. That means that just by being at the top of Google will gain you a certain level of trust among search engine users. If Big Computers Unlimited can rank in the top three for Gaming PCs, they'll develop a lot of creed among gamers.

A transaction is just what it sounds like. Someone puts in a credit card and buys your product. This is typical of most product-focused web sites but isn't limited to this narrow category. Your web site may sell registrations to online training, subscriptions to magazines, or even credit monitoring. The bottom line is that it can be purchased on the site. You need to focus your keyword research on terms that will bring buyers who are ready to purchase right now. Words like buy, price, merchant, store, and shop indicate a desire for immediate purchase.

Give them the transactional information they need like price, color choices, size, quantity discounts, return policy, and delivery options. With this information and a great checkout experience you'll have them buying from you in no time.

If you're in an industry with a long sales cycle like real estate, legal services, or medical, then you're probably interested in generating leads rather than online transactions. If you sell a service or product that requires direct contact with your customer, like consulting or personal training, then you probably want leads too.

Lead generation means that instead of buying from your web site, you're interested in someone expressing an interest in doing business with you so that you can follow up with them later. You let them express interest by filling out a contact form, emailing you, or even picking up the phone and calling you. You need to focus your keyword research on terms that will bring people who are perhaps a little earlier in the buying process. Words like review, compare, best, information, and generic names of your product indicate a user is researching but not quite ready to buy. You'll need to provide a lot of information on your web site to inform them and shape their thinking about your product.

Some web sites make money when visitors view an ad. To these sites, a conversion may simply be someone clicking on one or more pages so that they'll see one more ads. You need to focus your keyword research on terms that will bring people seeking information or news to your web site.