If you’re a novice in the world of SEO, or even if you consider yourself an expert in the field, you’ve probably been made aware of how extremely important keywords are. They are one of, if not the very first thing you should learn about when familiarizing yourself with SEO.
Using the proper keywords can help you generate more search engine traffic.
Optimizing your website by littering it with specific, industry-related keywords can help you rank faster.
Sound familiar? I’m sure it does. But what does it all mean?
Let’s start big picture.
Google processes over 2 trillion searches per year on average. That’s about 63,000 searches per second. With this in mind, your desire for an effective search query just got that much more important. Brands all over the world all have the same goals as you; to get noticed, to build revenue, and increase website analytics and site traffic. How do you compete with all of that? How are you going to stand a chance of your business being noticed? You guessed it! Keywords.
All searches come down to specific keywords. Through these words, we can develop campaigns, ad copy, landing pages and build effective content. Pretty much everything we manage as search marketers stems from keywords.
Every action made in search engines starts with a keyword or a key phrase. This right here may be the number one reason keywords hold such significance in the SEO and marketing world. By narrowing out specific keywords that will benefit your business, you can drive conversions and allow your search account to run at its most efficient ROI.
When done correctly, keywords can skyrocket your business to your desired future.
Now I know what you’re wondering. So how do I know what keywords to use?
First ask yourself what you think will be the most relevant words to your site’s content. A good place to start is to put yourself in the consumer’s shoes and think would I find what I was searching for if I were to search for this on my own?
Once you’ve answered ‘yes,’ the next step is to search whatever terms or phrases you’ve narrowed down into major search engines. Having a basic understanding of what websites are already ranking can help give you an idea of the competition and just how easy or hard it will be to rank based on given terms.
Not seeing your site rank in your chosen keywords? Now here’s where you may consider buying a sample campaign. A great place to find these is through Google AdWords. In this software, you can choose “exact match” and point traffic to the relevant page you’re pushing on your website. From there, you’re able to track impressions and conversion rate.
Now that you have a better understanding of the basics of keywords, let’s peel back another layer.
When we SEO optimize blog posts, web content and other copy, there’s really no other option than to target these keywords. This is what is known as meta keywords. Search engines have become more intelligent in auto-detecting keywords and ranking pages automatically. These meta tags are just brief little snippets of text that can be pulled from your content which basically summarizes what your post is about. While they won’t appear on the actual page, it’ll still appear on the page’s code. So, in turn, these little content descriptors play a rather significant role in helping search engines what a given web page is really about.
Keywords are not just important to SEO, but for off-site content and social media profiles as well. This way, people can discover your website through more than one avenue as opposed to just searching keywords found in your website. A presence on more than one channel can drive even more customers to your business.
Creating unique, one-of-a-kind, high-quality and relevant keyword-rich content is the key. Keep the user in mind, and let your content do the rest by keeping these helpful hints in mind.