Keywords are an essential part of a proper and successful SEO and marketing strategy. For website optimization purposes, you should focus mainly on targeted keywords and phrases. Simply by knowing how to choose the correct terms, you will boost traffic to your site.
Here are 5 tactics that will help you in prioritizing your keywords and finding those that will be profitable for your business.
1. Research
Do your research! Keywords that do not yield results are pretty worthless. Your first step should be to do some research to find out how many searches are made each month for your selected keywords or phrases.
Once you determine how many searches are made for your keywords, you can then foresee how much traffic your site will receive if your site lands on the first page of search engines.
2. Relevance
The keywords will be relative to the content on your website. You want your keywords to reflect what the customer/visitor is searching for when they do a search for the service you provide. Keep in mind that the more specific your keywords are, the better.
3. Prioritize
You can prioritize/determine which are most relevant keywords a few different ways by:
- Maximizing your brands keywords
- Maximizing general long tail keywords
4. Know the Competition
For each keyword and phrase you target, you must know the level of competition each has. It is not to your benefit to target words that are extremely competitive because you will not place for these words or get any traffic from them.
You can easily check how competitive words are by:
- Typing your keyword into Google and analyze the top 10 results. Be sure to check out the page rank, back links, authority of the site and how optimized the site is for that keyword.
- If the site is really competitive or authoritative, such as Amazon, choose a more focused keyword.
- If the site and its keywords seem feasible to outrank, go for it!
5. Tools to help
Tools can be used to help you better decide which keywords to target.
Web analytics: Google Analytics will allow you to identity which organic search terms are already driving traffic to your website. These words will curate a good starting point for keywords.
Google Adwords Keyword Tool: With this tool, you can insert just one, or multiple keywords and google will return a list of related keywords with metrics gauging the competition around them. You can look for keywords based on:
- A Word or Phrase – This allows you to put in a specific keyword into the tool and get various suggestions based upon the main keyword you used such as "drupal agencies" in the example below.
- A Website – Here you would give Google your own site's content and get keyword ideas based on that information. Alternatively, you could type in a competitors URL and do the same.
- A Category – Google has a number of pre-set categories that can be drilled down to get topical keyword suggestions.
We've given you the tools you need to implement a strong keyword strategy but be careful not to fall victim to over-optimization! Be sure to read our post on how to Avoid Over-optimization and Penalization!