What are Keywords?
Keyword research is vital to your website’s SEO setup. You need to know what they are so that you can use them for your SEO and PPC campaigns, and so that your site can be found through organic searches. Keywords can be best described as the summation of your website’s content- headlines, links, videos, images, and copy. However, there is much more to the process of finding the best keywords to use.
Keywords can be words or phrases. It may be harder to get a smaller site to rank for a single word since huge sites will most likely rank the highest for broad terms such as “clothing.” Therefore, “long tail keywords,” or phrases, are valuable and may have less competition. Instead of clothing, you may target the phrase “waterproof hiking pants.”
To determine your keywords, you’ll need to start by brainstorming and make a list of the first words and topics that come to you when you think of your business. Try to imagine what your customers would be searching for.
Keyword Volume and Competition
For the next steps, you will need to use keyword research tools such as Authority Labs, SpyFu, Google Keyword Planner, MOZ, or SEMRush. We use all of them on every project to get the most accurate data possible.
Once you have your initial list of keywords, you can determine your keyword’s search volume. This is the amount of searches that a keyword actually gets in a set amount of time. You must target keywords that people actually search for- this is one of the most important factors of keyword research.
However, the higher the search volume, the more you’ll have to compete with larger sites who are also targeting the same keyword. The more competitive a keyword is, the harder it will be to get the keyword to rank. You must know how competitive a keyword is before you target it. Competition sets the price in PPC advertising, as well as dictating organic search results.
After compiling your long list of keywords, it’s time to narrow them back down to the ones that have the highest search volume and least competition. This blend will give you a shorter and more relevant list of the best keywords for your site.
Putting your Keyword Research to Use
Not only will you have a list of your best keywords now, but you’ll be ready to use those to do a competitor analysis.
Google the list of keywords and see which of your competitors come up. You can also use keyword research tools to see what keywords they are targeting. You’ll now know who your competition is and what their keywords are.
Now that you have a list of your most relevant keywords, it’s time to put them to use and optimize your SEO with them. This is a crucial step to your SEO setup. Keywords should be used in your meta descriptions, H1 tags, page titles, alt text, backlinks, PPC campaign, blog posts, and in your URL.
If this all sounds overwhelming and complicated, we can help. Keyword research is the foundation of all SEO and PPC so it needs to be done right. We have paid subscriptions to all the major keyword research tools already and the experience to get your keyword research done accurately and show you how to use the information to improve your rankings and get more conversions. Reach out to us at info@webtyde.com. Consultations and proposals are always free.
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