Getting keyword research right

Keywords are the word phrases used to help customers find your relevant business pages on google. Choosing the right keywords lets you stand out from your competitors, attract more online traffic to your site and helps to secure a higher ranking in Google search results.

Choosing the right keywords

First things first. How do you choose the right keywords for your business? There are many keyword research tools online, some of them like Google Ad words keyword tool which allow insights into which keyword phrases are being searched for in your local area each month and even tell you how competitive it would be to optimise for that particular phrase. Conduct a little keyword research. The keywords with more searches per month and lower competition are the diamonds in the rough but make sure they are relevant to your business or Google could penalise you for wasting it's customers time. Compiling a list of about 10 keywords is a good start for a small business.

You want to choose long tail keywords as they are more specific and Google loves specific. If for example you own a paintball establishment and you wanted to optimise for the word 'ball' it's not considered relevant and is too broad a term because there are far too many different kinds of balls out there, there are tennis balls, soccer balls, footballs, ping pong balls, the list just doesn't end and each one is completely different from the other. A far better long tail keyword for a paintball establishment would be 'paintball samford' because it is relevant to the business and specifies the area the business is located in, minimising your competition. Another benefit of choosing specific long tailed keywords is it attracts customers searching for a business just like yours. These customers are more likely to purchase as you have just what they searched Google for.

Keyword optimisation

Once you have your chosen keywords the next step is to optimise your web pages and content. By including your long tailed keywords in your meta data, meta tags and page content this helps indicate to Google that their customers want you! Do not mention your keyword more than once or dump all your keywords in together. Google does not like this and it will punish your site for doing so. You can mention your keyword more than once in your content but don't go over board. Keep it natural.

Updating your keywords

Finally keeping your keywords updated and expanding your list every so often are the most important tasks of all. This is not a once off task. Once you have put together your list and optimised your website and it's content its important to stay up to date with the current searching trends. Go back to Google Ad words and recheck those keywords. Make sure they are still being searched for in your area each month and that the competition has not increased. I would recommend doing this monthly or bi monthly. Any keywords you find that are no longer being searched for I would recommend dumping and finding another keyword to optimise for instead. Then update your pages with this new keyword phrase.

If all this sounds a bit out of your depth or you feel it may be too time consuming, Caboodle offers this service as part of our SEO Business packages. Contact us today to find out more.

 

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