Keywords are the essential part of every search on the internet. They are specific terms people use when they want to find information about something, whether it’s when buying a particular product or reading about various topics. For a website owner, knowing how to find the best keywords for optimizing your website is vital in many ways. Basically, keywords can help you rank your content higher in search result pages. If chosen carefully, they will help you match your business with searchers’ intentions. As a result, your business will improve online visibility, get more traffic, and increase conversion rates.
How to find the best keywords for your website
To improve your online visibility, you have to optimize the content for both searchers and search engines. The primary goal here is to get ranked on the first page because it drives the most traffic. But, optimization can be an extremely time-consuming task and often requires you to call SEO experts for help. Before you do it, however, make some effort to understand how it’s working so you can properly plan your potential strategies.
To help you better understand keyword research, here is a brief explanation about how it works, and what steps it includes:
- Understand what keywords are
- Discern the three main factors
- Be ready to use keywords effectively
- Explore your niche and know your audience
- Define your goals and potential keywords ideas
- Make a list of focus keywords
- Use keyword research tools to help you
- Analyze your existing content
- Check your competitors’ keywords
1. Understand what keywords are
The first step is to understand what keywords are. As mentioned above, keywords are terms people type in search engines. You can basically utilize these terms in your content to better connect your pages with potential visitors. Since search engines will crawl everything on your website, keywords, along with other optimization techniques, will play an important role. That’s why the crucial part of every SEO strategy is to discover keyword opportunities and build your content around them.
2. Discern the three main factors
To be able to properly choose the right keywords, it’s fundamental to discern the three main factors:
- Relevance – your content will rank higher only if it’s relevant for search queries. Everything you place on your website has to contain proper keywords, relevant to the search intents. On the other side, mixing and matching unsuitable terms within your content won’t give you any results.
- Volume – there is no point in having a unique keyword spread throughout your content if no one is looking for such a term. This is why you need to consider the volume before you decide which keywords you want to compete for.
- Authority – authoritative content can help you win a high ranking on Google and other search engines. This is also reflecting on the choice of keywords. If you want to compete for specific keywords, you have to be the authority in the field. Otherwise, you won’t be able to compete with large, established, and resourceful websites.
3. Be ready to use keywords effectively
Before you make your list of keywords, make sure you first understand how you will use them later on. And in what amount they will be implemented in your content. While placing keywords with high volume inside the content will help you, don’t overdo it because it may get your website penalized. Once, you could achieve high keyword density by stuffing your content with countless keywords. And many websites were exploiting it. However, today, it’s crucial to avoid such behavior because search engines are condemning it.
Another factor to consider is the natural placement of keywords inside the content. They should add value to your content, so they should not be forcefully injected only for the sake of placement, mostly because it’s looking unnatural and doesn’t really contribute to user experience.
Finally, avoid using any black hat SEO techniques.
4. Explore your niche and know your audience
The next step in the process is exploring your niche and getting to know your audience. In general, you will have a list of topics you want to cover and use them as a “seeding place” for your keywords. Remember, there is no such a thing as the best keywords, only those that your audience is usually looking for. With this in mind, researching and focusing on specific audiences and their interests can help you collect more reliable keywords. Make sure you know what their needs, interests, and problems are, so you can provide appropriate content for their intent.
Explore your audience needs and search intents for the best SEO results.
5. Define your goals and potential keywords ideas
The previous step will help you figure out in what direction to point your SEO strategy. But, without clearly defining your goals, you won’t get too far. For effective marketing, you need to define and then align your goals with the search terms you will use. Think from the users’ perspective and create content that matches their interests.
If, for example, your audience are pet owners, set goals to help them in more means than simply offering them to buy pet food. Address their problems and offer solutions and guidance through relevant subjects on your blog. This, eventually, gives you additional space for implementing various relevant keywords.
6. Make a list of focus keywords
Now, you are ready to create a list of potential keywords you will use. This includes the list of focus keywords and topics related to your brand. But also the long-tail keywords, that the team behind azcitationservices.com argues are more descriptive and easier to rank for. While creating the list, think about everything your audience might be looking for.
It’s better to create an extensive keyword list you can trim later on.
7. Use keyword research tools to help you
Once you have your list, it’s time to expand it further and filter unnecessary terms out. For this, you will need proper SEO tools to help you. Without them, it will be impossible to analyze the potential of each keyword. Some of the most popular keyword research and SEO tools are:
- Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer
- SEMrush
- Google Keyword Planner
- Google Trends
- Ubersuggest
- Google Search Console
- and other
Each of the tools can help you determine which keywords to use. You can analyze their volume and other characteristics but also use them to find variations and additional suggestions.
8. Analyze your existing content
Finding the new keywords for optimizing your content is fundamental for further development. But, what about your existing content? To make the best out of your SEO efforts, you also need to analyze what you already have. Once you perform quality analysis, you will be able to correct the eventual errors. And, you will be able to better interconnect your existing content with new. Also, this step may give you additional keywords ideas, or help you realize which parts you want to emphasize more in the future.
Always audit your website and analyze what you have when making plans.
9. Check your competitors’ keywords
Finally, you want to be aware of your competitors’ strategies. The more you understand what’s going on in your niche, the better plans you will make. This will help you filter out the keywords that are too hard to compete. And will help you find potential gaps to fill in with your content.
By following these steps, you will be able to find the best keywords for optimizing your website content. It will eventually help you reach the right audience; Improve your overall online visibility; Increase the traffic of your website; And help you increase conversions. But, don’t forget that optimization is an ongoing process. For the best results, you will have to constantly work on your SEO.
Meta: Learn how to find the best keywords for optimizing your website content so you can rank higher in Google and other search engines.
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