In the content marketing world, keywords hold a lot of power. However, it can be difficult for some companies to correctly determine what keywords they should be using in their content. As experts in all things SEO, the content strategy team at Rank Fuse has a little advice for determining which keywords are valuable for your business.
What Are Keywords and Why Are They Important?
Keywords are essentially words or phrases that not only describe the topics you are writing about but are also searched for by Internet users. You want to find keywords that not only make sense for your content but are also being used by your audience to find content in search engines.
Keywords are critical in helping your content get viewed in search engines. When you include keywords and phrases in your content, you are signaling to Google that you are talking about that particular subject. As users search for these subjects or similar ones, your content may be displayed on the search results pages, which allows users to see your content and open it.
The better you are at matching the keywords you are using to the keywords that users are typing into Google, the more likely your content is to show up in search results. Additionally, there are numerous other factors that can affect rankings, but we are focused solely on keywords in this article.
How to Find the Most Valuable Keywords for Your Business
To find the best keywords for your website, you need to do keyword research. This tricky little tactic can help you determine what keywords people are searching for and show you where you are currently ranking for these search terms. Keyword research is an invaluable way to get into the head of your target audience so that you can optimize your website to get your content in front of the people you want to serve.
By finding the keywords that you should be using, you can deliver content that your readers want to see, which is truly invaluable. While keywords are helpful for creating quality content for your website, they can also be used to help you with all of your marketing and other promotional advertising like email marketing and PPC campaigns.
While conducting keyword research, you can also see what keywords your competitors are using to help you determine other potential terms you might want to use in your own strategy.
The first thing you should do when conducting keyword research is to brainstorm potential keyword ideas. From here, there are numerous tools that you can use to find the keywords you should be targeting.
At Rank Fuse, one of our favorite tools to use for keyword research is SEMrush. SEMrush can help you determine what keywords you should use based on keyword data. You can find keyword terms that are related to your main search terms. With SEMrush, you can also see content ideas based on the keywords that you should be targeting, which is extremely helpful for those who are unfamiliar with content creation.
A couple of other common keyword research tools are Ahrefs, which offers not only keyword research, but also content and SEO tools, and Google AdWords Keyword Planner, which includes a tool that will help you find new keywords.
Tips for Conducting Keyword Research
At Rank Fuse, we have a few tips that we always recommend our clients try when conducting keyword research. Here they are!
- Get Off of Page 2: When we are looking at potential growth for our clients, we like to focus on keywords where clients are currently sitting on the second page of search results. It is no surprise that your visibility increases dramatically when you are on the first page of Google results. This means that you should look to start including keywords on your website that you have been on page two for in the hopes that you can do enough to get on the first page.
- No Keyword Stuffing: It can seem like a great idea to use all of the keywords that you discover during your keyword research on one page of your website. Unfortunately, this strategy will not yield the results that you want. Instead, Google might determine that your website is spammy and penalize you.
- Use Long-tail Keywords: Keywords are obviously very important to SEO. However, there is a little trick to getting the most out of your keywords. Using long-tail, or keyword phrases, can help you better target your content and website to your audience. You will also likely have less competition for long-tail keywords.
- Avoid Broad Keyword Phrases: While you may think that broad keywords are a great way to reach more people, but this thinking is just going to end up wasting your time. You will be competing with many other companies and websites that are also targeting these broad terms, and you likely won’t be able to get a ranking on page one or two. Also, you might not even get eyes on your website that want to buy your goods or services.
To learn more about keywords and keyword research, contact Rank Fuse today at 913-703-7265. Our team of SEO experts is dedicated to helping our clients determine the best keywords to focus on for their websites. We’d love to speak to you today.
