For a site owner, SEO keywords serve as critical components in order to ensure that their site is displayed among the top results on the SERP. However, ever since search engine algorithms are updated regularly, you need to have considerable tact and certain skills when dealing with keywords for SEO purpose. To get an in-depth understanding on how keywords are searcheD for and used in the optimization process, keep reading this article.
Keywords: How to Search
Keyword research is inherent to SEO. After all, it is the foundation on which your web content is built and only keywords that are search engine optimized have the ability to further your Google or Bing ranking. Thus, an effective keyword research is the starting point of your SEO strategy for keywords.
In order to understand how to carry out keyword research, we have laid down some tips that will help you out.
IDENTIFY TOPICS RELEVANT TO YOUR BUSINESS
To kickstart your keyword research, you need to first identify topics that are related to your business and products. You need to do this by thinking on behalf of the searcher and potential customers, like, what type of the content will interest them.
DEVELOP KEYWORDS BASED ON THE TOPICS
After identifying the topics, your next step should be to develop keywords based on those topics. These keywords DO not only focus on the topics but also are the most important phrases that are targeted by the searchers, which in turn ensures higher ranking.
RESEARCH AND EXPAND THE LIST
It is always preferable to have at least five to ten keywords related to your topic. To do this, you might want to search the topic yourself on the search engine. The result to your query will help you determine a range of related keywords that are popularly used by the searcher. For instance, when you scroll to the very end of Google’s SERP, you’ll see a couple of related searches which can help you expand the list.
ENSURE THAT YOU HAVE A GOOD MIX OF HEAD TERMS AND LONG-TAIL KEYWORDS
Head terms are basically shorter keywords, no more than 2 to 3 words while long-tail keywords are longer than the generic three words keyword phrase and provide a greater search volume. To ensure that your keyword strategy is balanced, you need to have a good mix of both types of keywords.
ANALYZE AND ASSESS YOUR COMPETITOR’S STRATEGY
As per all your marketing and business strategies, you need to have a thorough insight of your competitor’s keyword strategy as well. By analyzing your competitor’s keywords and seeing how they are ranked for those, you can come up with a list of keywords that have a better shot at high ranking.
CUT DOWN AND PRIORITIZE YOUR LIST
Now that you have a good mix of keywords based on your intuition, research and competitor insight, it is time that you cut down and prioritize your list. There are various keywords app that can help you out when selecting the keywords with the highest ranking. Google AdWords Keyword Planner, Google Trends and Microsoft Bing Ads Intelligence are a few tools that are commonly used by businesses for keyword research.
Keywords: How to Use
Keywords play a major factor in how search engines rank websites on its SERP. However, this doesn’t mean that you flood the content with keywords. Search engine algorithms are getting smarter and more sophisticated, which means that you need to be smarter and incorporate keywords naturally in the content in order to beat the search engine algorithm in its game. While, having searched for influential keywords and integrating them effectively in your content is certainly very important, it is not even close enough for good rankings on the SERP.
Thus, in order to ascertain the top most ranking for your website, it is important to be aware of how keywords should be used in your content. Here are some tips that might help you out in your endeavor to achieve high ranking.
Where Should They Be Used?
Following are some of the most important places where keywords should be placed in order to ensure that your site is well-optimized.
TITLE
During the SEO process, perhaps the first and the most obvious place to include keywords is in the title itself. Although the page title isn’t displayed on the page itself, it does appear in the search results and the browser tabs. Further it affects the search rankings as well.
META DESCRIPTIONS
These are snippets of text, giving a brief description of the content and are shown on the SERP. While they are no longer part of the search engine algorithm, they do play a key role to grab a searcher’s attention. Since the keyword text is highlighted, it is easy for the searchers to see if the content is relevant to their query thereby increasing clickthrough rates (CTRs) and indirectly improving the ranking.
HEADING AND BODY
Using Keywords in the headings is ideally to capture the reader’s attention as it is the first thing they are likely to see after clicking on the page. Just make sure that you use it in a way that entices the reader. As far as keywords in the body of your content is concerned, it is immensely important as it is one of the ranking factors of search engines. However, while you are at it, make sure that you integrate keywords naturally and organically, at the same time seeing that they are not overused.
IMAGE FILE NAMES AND ANCHOR TEXTS
Including keywords to the image title when adding it to the page improves search engine ranking. Additionally, linking your keyword phrases with anchor texts also furthers your chance at high ranking on the SERP as it earns your website trust and authority.
URLs
Finally, you should include keywords to the web address i.e. the URL of your page. As long as they are not keyword stuffed and include your business’s name, you are safe from the search engine’s wrath.
How Can They Be Varied?
Targeting multiple keywords that originate from or are variations of the original keyword is highly recommended. This allows you to include keywords naturally across the site and also eliminates potential risks of being penalized by search engines because of over optimization. You don’t need to worry about differences in ranking because of different keywords that you use because those keywords are essentially only extensions or slight moderations of the original keyword, which are treated similarly by search engines, thereby, displaying the same results on the SERP regardless of the variations.
How Frequently Should They Be Used?
Although keyword variation allows you to use keywords frequently across all the places mentioned above, it is still important that you don’t submerge your content with keywords just for the sake of SEO. If you do so, search engines will most likely see through your scheming and will penalize you by demoting your website ranking on the SERP. Further, even if you manage to achieve high ranking on the SERP, too many keyword stuffing will compromise the quality of your content which will lead your site to suffer higher bounce rates.
For your SEO campaign to be effective, it is immensely important that you understand SEO keywords – how they are searched for and used in the content. However, in order to ensure high ranking based on keyword phrases, you should continue to review and refine your keywords list after every few months. This will keep you on top of the search engine ranking game.
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