How to Pick the Best Keywords for Your Website
Keywords are what we type in when we are using search engines to look for products, services or answers. By assigning keywords to specific pages, companies can drive traffic to their website. Keyword selection is not only vital to the success of executing a paid search or PPC campaign but also important when it comes to a website’s natural or organic ranking on search engines.
Keywords are essentially the heart of a company’s marketing campaign at the most basic level. If you are unable to immediately identify the most important keywords for your business, it is highly unlikely that you are effectively marketing your products and services to your target audience.
Put the Focus on Phrases
The use of the word “keyword” might be slightly misleading, as it will probably be almost impossible for a business to find one word that will skyrocket their website to the top of a search. It is more likely that you will need to use a phrase that helps to narrow down what your business offers.
Don’t over think it. Start with the most basic question: “What services or products does my business sell?” If you sell dog food, most likely the use of the root keywords “dog” and “food” will not be enough to drive traffic to your website.
Location-based Keywords
A major factor to consider is the use of location-based keyword searches. If a customer is looking for a service in a specific area, search engine users will generally put their location in the search.
Avoid All-Encompassing Keywords
A root keyword might do a fantastic job of describing what you are selling, but it might be too broad of a term that would not generate many leads. If the business was an online jewelry store that sells all types of jewelry, the goal would be to be at the top of the search results for the keyword “jewelry.” Although, this is probably not going to be the most profitable keyword unless the business was a huge and highly authoritative site.
Since the keyword “jewelry” alone will not drive the same amount of traffic to a smaller website whose organic reach is smaller, they might consider using keywords such as “gold jewelry”, “silver necklace” or “women’s watch”. Having more specific keywords is ultimately going to help give a significantly higher conversion rate.
By using more specific keywords that more closely match the services, products and brands that you sell or serve, you will be more successful and it will deliver a significantly better return on your investment.
Consider Using Tools to Help find Keywords
There are different types of tools you can consider using to aid in the process of finding the right keywords. The free keyword research tools include:
– Google Keyword Planner – A free AdWords tool created by Google, this is the perfect place to start, especially if you use AdWords for your campaigns. You can input one keyword, multiple keywords or even your website and Google will provide you a list of related keywords.
– Google Trends – Another free tool from Google, but this one allows you to enter multiple keywords and filter by search history, location and category. It will then give you the results to see how much web interest is around a particular keyword and where the traffic is coming from.
– Keyword Tool.io – This basic tool will give you a list of keyword suggestions related to the one you already had in mind and is completely free for the most basic version. This tool uses Google Autocomplete to generate the list and bases the suggestions on factors that include how often users searched for something in the past.
There are paid tools as well which include:
– Term Explorer – From a single keyword you can get over 10,000 keyword variations, the results are as relevant as possible as they are pulled through several metrics. If you only plan on using this tool a few times, there is a free version that will do up to five keyword analyses per day.
– Accuranker – This fast and precise tool can save you a ton of time if you are constantly monitoring the rank progression of keywords. It also allows for highly localized search engine rankings which can be extremely useful if you are an international company who wants to see how you rank in different countries.
The ability of your business to be successful at knowing which keywords to target is essential to boosting your organic reach. Knowing and understanding how to make a keyword phrase work for you can help you to drive more traffic to your website.
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