You have definitely tried a lot of times to search many things on search engines. Have you ever wondered about the importance of being at the top results? Just people who run a website can fully understand its value.
These days more and more businesses and companies are trying to rank up on the Internet when it comes to the term “Search Engines”. You may wonder why it is a necessary factor for them to be on the first pages of search engines like Google and Bing. Before starting to explain the vital role of keywords for a site ranking, it is good to know a little bit about the keyword itself.
What Is A Keyword In Terms Of SEO?
They are simply just words and phrases that people type into search engines to find what they are looking for. For example, if you want to look for some shirts to shop, you might search for some keywords like “Men’s shirts” or a simple one like “shirts”.
Keywords are actually super-important in SEO because it sets the entire foundation for search engine optimization. The basic purpose of SEO is to rank up your pages for keywords that your target audience or customers are searching for. And if you are not ranking for keywords that actually get searched, then all of your efforts in this regard will be meaningless.
Conduct A Keyword Research
So, for having a good rank for a proper keyword, you should first do research for it. Keyword research is the process of finding keywords that people are using in search engines.
The question is that How do you want to choose keywords that are worthy of getting searched? By following this checklist, you will come up with the best keywords for your site pages.
- Check if your keyword has enough search demand. Search demand shows the volume of searches made for a keyword each month. This factor “search volume” is measurable by different tools that you can use online for your site’s keywords.
- Check the traffic potential of the topic. Traffic potential represents the total search traffic you could get if you were to rank at the top of Google for your keyword. Again, this factor can be measured by the tools online and by comparing these two factors, you can estimate the search volume for your keyword.
- Evaluate the business potential of the keyword or topic. Business potential simply represents the value a keyword has to your business. Value surely comes down to your niche as well as your business model.
- See if you can match searcher intent. Search intent indicates the reason behind a searcher query. The way you determine that is by looking at the top-ranking pages for the keywords you want to rank for. For instance, if you have a cooking blog and want to rank high for “toast oven”, this keyword will be useless as it just brings up links for shopping the “toast oven” itself because the intention of searchers for this keyword is just shopping.
- Determine whether you can rank for your keyword. This factor is also known as the “Ranking difficulty”.
All items of the above checklist mean absolutely nothing if you cannot rank for your keyword in the not-so-distant future. It takes a bit of time to determine the difficulty of your chosen keyword through analysis, but be sure that it does worth it.
Choose The Right Kind Of Keyword
Generally, there are 4 terms in choosing a keyword: Exact, Broad, Informational, and Commercial. Each will be explained briefly.
An exact keyword is a word or a small group of words that are used in a specific way so that the focus of it/them is on 1 primary target.
A broad keyword is usually a set of words consisting of related phrases to your business or target content. This kind of keyword is most popular because it can also cover more pages that are similar to the target words.
An Informational keyword is mainly used in blog content. This kind of keyword is mostly searched by people who want to get some information about a specific issue.
A commercial keyword is solely used for commercial purposes like shopping different items online.
In choosing the proper keyword, you should consider different kinds of them and see which one is fit for your site, which mostly depends on your purpose.
Process Of The Keyword Research
So, whether you are creating a new website or you want to revamp your current keyword targeting, the processes mentioned below will help.
The first step is to generate keyword ideas. You can start with some broad keywords. Then you should use keyword tools and put your broad ones there to see other relevant keywords that contain your own keyword. Finally, you should filter them down and group them by search intent (which was discussed earlier).
The second step is to analyze Google’s top 10 search results. The top 10 ranking pages are going to give you information on things like content format and it will help you understand how hard it is going to be to rank on Google for your target keyword. Then you may take a look at the title of them, which all are blog posts.
Keyword Misconceptions
In addition to the factors mentioned, there are some other things that site owners misunderstand. You might think that some terms or strategies are profitable, but it will turn out to be completely vice versa.
The following items are some common misconceptions about keywords.
- You are looking for the definitive list with your keyword research. You should be aware of this information that there is no final list of keywords for your site permanently. You need to constantly update your keywords like an evolving process.
- Tools and data are your biggest assets. Tools can give us data about the specific keywords that we are looking to target. But what they do not do is provide a common-sense approach to the phrases that your business should be ranking for. The main tool to decide on this approach is your brain.
- If you do not target a particular keyword, you will not rank for it. Having particular content for a keyword does not result in ranking for it since the algorithms of search engines have been changed a lot. You should work hard for a long time to achieve your goal.
To Sum Up
It is so important for companies and businesses to rank up in Google and other search engines. When a company site is at the top results in results of a search engine, it can result in more traffic for it. There are numerous ways of getting more traffic by different strategies in SEO that one of the most important ones is choosing the correct keyword. Companies can get help from many web design companies in this regard.
In this article, keyword meaning and different types of it were clarified. By following simple tips, you can select proper keywords for your pages so that you can increase your chance to be at the first results of search engines.
