Search Engine Optimization
SEO Keyword: What Are SEO Keywords?
Your SEO keywords are the key words and Makemysales.com
phrases in your web content that make it possible for people to find your site
via search engines. A website that is well optimized for search engines
"speaks the same language" as its potential visitor base with
keywords for SEO
that help connect searchers to your site. Keywords are one of the main elements
of SEO.
In other words, you need to know how people are looking for the
products, services or information that you offer, in order to make it easy for
them to find you—otherwise, they'll land on one of the many other pages in the
Google results. Implementing keyword SEO
will help your site rank above your competitors.
This is why developing a list of keywords is one of the first
and most important steps in any search engine optimization initiative. Keywords and SEO are directly connected when
it comes to running a winning search marketing campaign. Because keywords are
foundational for all your other SEO
efforts, it's well worth the
time and investment to ensure your SEO keywords are highly relevant to your
audience and effectively organized for action.
Settling on the right SEO keywords is a delicate process involving both trial and error, but the
basics are easy to understand. Here we’ll walk you through researching what
your customers are looking for, discovering those keywords that will help you
rank on a search engine results page (SERP), and putting them to work in
your online content.
Finding Your Best Keywords for SEO
Most beginning search marketers make the same mistakes when it
comes to SEO keyword research:
·
Only doing SEO keyword
research once,
·
Not bothering to
update and expand their SEO keyword list, or
·
Targeting keywords
that are too popular, meaning they’re way too competitive.
Basically, SEO keyword research should be an ongoing and
ever-evolving part of your job as a marketer. Old keywords need to be
reevaluated periodically, and high-volume, competitive keywords (or “head”
keywords, as opposed to long-tailed keywords) can often be usefully
replaced or augmented with longer, more specific phrases designed not to bring
in just any visitor but exactly the right visitors. (Who visits
your site – particularly if they’re people who are actively looking for your
services – is at least as important as how many people visit.)
And you’ve got to diversify. Here’s a tongue-twister that’s
absolutely true: diversity is a key word in the keyword world. You’re not going
to stand out if you find yourself using all of the same keywords as your
competitors. Not only should you try new keyword search tools and
keep track of the results, but you should feel free to experiment based on your
own research – who else uses your keywords? And how do you make yourself stand
out? By providing great content that truly answers the
questions your prospective customers are asking with their keyword searches.
Using Our Free SEO Keyword Tools
WordStream's free SEO keyword research tools that help you find your best, most
relevant keywords—keywords that will drive ongoing web traffic and
conversions on your site.
Benefits of using WordStream’s keyword tools, including the Free
Keyword Tool, for better SEO include:
·
More
SEO Keywords– Get FREE access to
thousands of keywords plus keyword search volume data, mailed right to your inbox.
·
Targeted
SEO Keywords- Filter your keyword results
by industry or country so you can focus on the keywords that will really work
for your account.
·
Keyword
Data You Can Act On- Instead of just a
list of keywords, our tools give your structured, actionable data,
ready to use in search marketing campaigns. For example, you can drop a list of
keywords into the Keyword Grouper to get back an organized set
of relevant keyword niches.
WordStream’s keyword toolset is also hugely valuable for PPC
marketing – use the Keyword Niche Finder to identify new ad groups for your
AdWords campaigns, and use the free Negative Keyword Tool to find negative
keywords that will reduce wasteful clicks and save you money.
Making Your SEO Keywords Work for You
Now that you’ve found the best keywords, you need to put them to
work in order to get SEO results (search-driven traffic, conversions, and all
that good stuff).
So: how to proceed? On the one hand, SEO best
practices recommend that you include relevant keywords in a number of
high-attention areas on your site, everywhere from the titles and body text of
your pages to your URLs to your meta tags to your image file names. On the
other hand, successfully optimized websites tend to have thousands or
even millions of keywords. You can't very well craft a single, unique
page for every one of your keywords; at the same time, you can't try to cram
everything onto a handful of pages with keyword stuffing and expect to rank for
every individual keyword. It just doesn't work that way.
So how does it work? The answer is keyword
grouping and organization.
By dividing your keywords into small, manageable groups of related keywords,
you’ll cut down on your workload (significantly), while still creating
targeted, specific pages.
For example, let’s say you were running the website of an online
pet store. You might be wise to create one keyword grouping for all your
dog-related products, then one for all of your parakeet-related projects, etc.
The next step would be to segment each individual group into smaller subgroups
(parakeet cages, parakeet toys, parakeet snacks) and then even smaller groups
for each type of product (low-fat parakeet snacks, luxury parakeet snacks… you
get the idea). Now your pet store can create individual pages optimized for each
small keyword group.
A marketer attempting to optimize a web page for the
"gourmet parakeet snacks" keyword group should consider doing most if
not all of the following:
·
Using the keyword in
the titleof the page
·
Using the keyword in
the URL(e.g., online-petstore.com/parakeets/snacks/gourmet)
·
Using the keyword, and
variations (e.g., "gourmet parakeet snacks"), throughout the page
copy
·
Using the keyword in
the meta tags, especially the meta description
·
Using the keyword in
any image file pathsand in the images' alt text
·
Using the keyword as
the anchor textin links back to the page from elsewhere on the site
When optimizing your web pages, keep in mind that keyword
relevance is more important than keyword density in
SEO.
Manual keyword grouping can be very time-consuming, of course.
Some of our own tools, which may prove helpful in a pinch, include our Keyword Niche
Finder, which works just like a regular SEO keyword tool, but returns you
suggestions pre-grouped into relevant clusters. We also provide a Keyword
Grouper, which groups
preexisting lists automatically.
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