As a website owner, we’re sure you’re aware of how important it is that your site is optimised to help its position within Google. But the question is “how to choose the best keywords for your website?” Keywords will essentially help to push your website to a better position but you have to understand what keywords are going to attract your audience and pick the keywords your prospects are actually searching for.
Picking the correct keyword or keyphrases is one of the most vital steps. It is also important to know that you will have to include other SEO tactics to push your position. Moz has a helpful guide to SEO.
Look at your competition
Not only do you want to monitor your competition to see how they are marketing themselves, but you should be checking to see what keywords or keyphrases they are optimising to help their search engine optimisation. Look at their copy and pick out any repeating words that are relevant to your industry. Have a look into their metatags to pinpoint which words they are targeting – not only will this help to broaden your search but you may find keywords that you hadn’t thought of that have good search volumes.
Look for keyword tools
There are many tools on the market where you can put a word that relates to your industry and it will give you alternative keywords. Moz has a great tool where you see how busy a certain keyword is and how many people actually search for the keyword.
As you can see from the example, with a simple search for “web design” it shows me how difficult it is to compete in the industry whilst also providing alternative keyword suggestions relating to “web design.” This is an excellent tool if you are new to SEO and need extra help in choosing keywords.
There are many other tools, and if you are using Google Ads then you might know about the built-in keyword research section which can help you optimise your ads and your website. Google Trends is another free, yet useful tool to populate how popular a certain keyword is.
Check to see what your customers are searching
It is important to put yourself in your customer’s shoes when creating your keywords. You will need to identify who your target audience is and what they are going to be searching to get to your service or product. Always use Google as your best resource, think about what your ideal customer is going to search and use Google’s auto-fill to find different variations that maybe you hadn’t thought of.
It might also be helpful to ask for other people’s opinions on what they would put in to find your service or product. It can be extremely useful to consider asking your current customers how they found you. Not only are you going to find on-topic keywords but the keywords will be legit and correct for your industry.
Look into long-tail keywords and localise them
It might be hard to compete with high search volume keywords, especially if you are just starting out or your business is relatively small. Going for long-tail keywords (a combination of three or more words/phrases) will help you to target lower search volumes, these usually attract more relevant traffic which is essentially less competitive and can be easier to rank for.
It is also relevant to localise your keywords when you are new to SEO, then gradually go onto more generic, non-localised keywords. For example, if you are a bakery based in Stafford, a keyword could be “bakery in Staffordshire” by adding the location, you are making it slightly easier to rank rather than just putting “bakery.” This means Google will see your website as being more relevant and you will gradually get higher spots with generic searches.
Know the difference between a keyword and keyphrase
An important practice to keep in mind when choosing your keywords is that you need to make sure you can fit that specific keyword or keyphrase into a sentence. A lot of businesses will put their keywords into their copy but it will read strangely because the word hasn’t been considered for writing purposes.
This is also where knowing the difference between a keyword a keyphrase will be vital; a keyword is a word that will describe the content of your product or service best. This will be the most generic word that people will search for to find your business, like “fruit store.”
A keyphrase is a search term in which people will search with multiple words to get to your product or service. These are usually what you will want to rank high in, an example would be “fruit store in Staffordshire.”
Get in touch
I hope you enjoyed this month’s blog post and learnt more about the importance of keyword research. If you have any questions then please get in touch – we would love to help.