Optimizing your content with the proper keywords will help your website to rank higher, faster and gain more search engine traffic…
How many times have you heard something along these lines?
My guess is that this probably isn’t your first time hearing something of the sort. And that’s because keywords play a major role in SEO. In fact, utilizing the right keywords can make or break your SEO strategy.
The term ‘keyword’ sounds pretty self-explanatory when it stands alone. But without a solid understanding of the term and all of its capabilities, you won’t ever fully grasp onto all of the importance that this small little word holds in the SEO world.
Keywords are what drives traffic to specific URLs.
In SEO terms, keywords are the words that businesses will specifically “target.” That’s why you may have also heard the term “target keywords.” The ranking of which keywords are sorted in Google Search will determine which words and phrases are most often searched. This will help when it comes time to optimize your content.
So now that we’ve covered the basis of keywords, let’s cover their importance to search engine optimization.
Search engine algorithms are pretty smart. They can now auto-detect keywords and rank pages automatically based on their keyword optimization. The more keywords that you sprinkle throughout your web content and blogs, the more likely it is that people will find your site via search engines.
Basically, what this means is that when a website is optimized, it “speaks the same language” as its potential visitor base.
Learn more about the shift in Google Analytics: GA4 vs Universal Analytics.
Keywords are the bridge between SEO and consumers that help connect these searchers directly to your site.
Developing a thorough list of keywords should be the very first (and most important) step in your SEO initiative. Though oftentimes tedious, it’s well worth the time and effort to ensure that your keywords are as relevant as possible.
And now it’s time for you to put these keywords to use.
One strategy for utilizing these keywords is to include the top keywords in your most visited pages/areas on your site. This could range anywhere from body test, titles, tags or blog content. Keywords are important, but they’ll only make a difference if you’re actually putting them to work.
When you’re optimizing your content, keep in mind that the relevance of the keywords are far more important than the density of the keywords.
Quality over quantity, people.
A common mistake is for people to get a little keyword happy, but the key is to be strategic about it.