Why Keywords Are Important to Your Website

Why do keyword research? How to do keyword research?

When it comes to marketing your website, you have a lot of options. You can use social media to market your products, either through posting captivating photos or employing some social media influencers. You can also pay for promoted posts on social media or buy ad space on these social platforms. If you use a marketplace like Etsy, you can also pay to have some of your products sponsored in searches, meaning when someone inputs keywords relevant to what you’re selling, your product will show first in the results.

But if you sell off your own website, you’ll want to focus on search engine optimization (SEO). SEO not only helps promote your website online but also improves user experience (which, along with great product offerings, encourages customers to tell others about your store). Sami from UppercutSEO, a leading SEO Company, states that one of the key elements of optimizing for the search engine is by using the right keywords. 

One of the key elements of optimizing for the search engine is by using the right keywords. With some self-education and time, you can conduct keyword research and incorporate them into your website. But if you don’t have time, an SEO services company can complete this process for you, and they can also manage your SEO efforts. Let’s dive in.

Why Are Keywords Necessary?

A search engine’s bots will crawl your website’s pages to find information that matches a user’s query through what words are on the page. By using particular keywords, you can make your pages appear for particular queries that a buyer might use. So, if you sell custom car decals, you’ll want to appear in the search results when someone searches “custom car decals.” Keywords can help match your website to customers by telling them you offer exactly what they are looking for.

Why is Keyword Research Important?

When it comes to implementing keywords into your product descriptions and other areas of your website, you don’t want to start randomly plugging in what you think might work. You’ll just end up wasting your time. Instead, you can either reach out to some agency or conduct some research yourself. When researching, you’ll need to judge keywords on two criteria:

1. It’s level of competition and
2. How often it is searched

Online Tools for Keyword Research

There are a lot of free and paid keyword research tools on the web. Take a look at each to determine what works best for your needs and your budget.

Google Keyword Planner

A free research tool that requires a Google account to access. With the help of this tool, you can use it to spy and swipe your competitor’s keywords, find local keywords, create AdWords campaigns easily. This is a wonderful tool for people looking for niche markets and other topics to blog about. Use it also as a guide to creating a silo structure for your site.

SEMrush

Semrush is a keyword research tool with over 35 million keywords and phrases that can be used to drive traffic to your websites. It’s paid tool, but you can register with the site for 10 free requests. Stands to be one of the most accurate keyword research tools available which can provide information on a keyword’s organic and paid value as well as alternate search queries and related keywords.

So with all of this data, what are the benefits Semrush can offer?

• See your competitor’s organic positions
• Keyword ranking
• Position tracking
• Long-tail Keywords
• Compare various SEO metrics
• Crawl audit tool
• Backlinks

Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer

A paid tool that offers a 7-day trial for $7. Includes insights such as “clicks” metrics (how often people click on searches related to keywords) and over 3 billion keyword suggestions. Keyword Explorer generates keywords ideas in 4 different ways:

• Phrase match
• Having same terms
• Also, rank for
• Search suggestions (autosuggest)

Longtail PRO

There are plenty of tools out there for maximizing your use of long-tail keywords, one of which is Long Tail Pro, which offers a 7-day free trial. Features include identifying keyword competitiveness and keyword profitability calculation — and both help you get the most bang for your buck. According to a number of SEO experts, the program is one of the best long-tail keyword research tools you can buy.

Types of Keywords

One thing to remember is that there are a few different types of keywords. The hardest type of keyword to rank for is single words like “car.” It’s highly competitive and not too descriptive, and attempting to rank for it would waste both time and money. Instead, you’ll want to aim for long-tail keywords. These keywords are more descriptive and target customers who are further into the purchasing process, because they know exactly what they are looking for. Examples of long-tail keywords include “used Ford Focus 2008” or “blue Nike athletic shoes size 6.”

There are also latent semantic keywords. These keywords are not word-for-word but instead are related to the keywords you’re using. Search engines will look at the context of your website’s content and figure out synonyms, so you’ll want to include keywords (or keyword phrases) associated with the specific keyword for which you are trying to rank.

Start Your Keyword Search

Now that you have an understanding of keywords and keyword research, it is time to find the ones suitable for your business. By targeting the right keywords (reflective of services, varied, and low to medium ranking competition), you can help more people find your site.

First of all make a list of important, relevant topics based on what you know about your business. Now that you have a few topic buckets you want to focus on, choose keyword phrases you think are important to rank for in the SERPs (search engine results pages). The next step will be, understanding whether your competitors are ranking for these keywords. When you get the right mix of keywords, it is necessary to narrow down your lists with some more quantitative data. But if you need help with anything — such as fine-tuning keyword selection, creating PPC campaigns, or conducting PPC competitor analysis— you can always turn to an experienced SEO services company for help.

To sum it all up, yes keywords are important to your website, keyword density is not the same hot commodity that it once was. Keywords could be crammed in every corner of a website and it would drive up the ranking. Need to know which keyword to target, it’s essential to not only understand the demand for a given term or phrase, but also the work required to achieve high rankings. Important to ask yourself is the keyword relevant to your content, will searchers find what they are looking for on your site when they search using these keywords? Will this traffic result in financial rewards or other organizational goals? And when the answer to all these questions is yes, then you can proceed… Focus on creating content that is unique, high quality, and relevant. The content should be optimized for the users, not just for the keywords. Otherwise, the content will feel forced and disingenuous.

This is a guest post by Chris Hickman, Founder, and CEO at Adficient.