The goal of any successful website or blog should be to create awareness of a brand or company. No one will be able to find or experience what you have your business. While you may have other forms of advertising, showing up in web searches is important to your overall brand awareness, so optimizing your website copy is a good place to start. In order to do this, you must focus on keywords. Here are a few helpful tips to get you started in your keyword research.
Choose the right keywords
Start your research by determining your topic themes. What will be the main theme of your blog? Find out what your target audience actually wants to read about and what they’re likely to be searching for in search engines. For example, a popular topic that a marketing company could write about is, “How to use keywords to rank higher on Google”.
After you get a good idea of what your blog will focus on you’ll also want to find your top 20 keywords that can be included in the article. Start this phase by compiling a list of topics or phrases that your target audience might be searching for. You can use free tools like Google Keyword Planner, UberSuggest, or WordStream to see if your chosen topics or phrases qualify as good keywords, usually by determining if they have a high search volume and low SEO difficulty. It’s a good idea to find what your best keyword variations are and save them in an easily accessible space for tracking blog topics.
Focus on keyword placement
Just as the keyword itself is important, it’s useful to consider where the keyword is being placed. You can see on any search engine results page that certain keywords will show up in the metadata of a website, but you’ll also want to keep keywords in your website’s titles and headings, body paragraphs, URLs, and image file names in order to have as much exposure as possible.
Know How to Use Keywords
Did you know that search engines will penalize you for stuffing your website content with keywords where they don’t belong? They’re smart enough to know when you’re using them just to use them in hopes of ranking, rather than actually using them to provide quality content. Remember to be genuine in everything you write. If it doesn’t make sense to have your keyword in a certain place, even if it’s in a recommended location, err on the side of caution and don’t add it. It’s also helpful to use variations of your keywords, so instead of using your exact keyword phrase at every opportunity, you can mix up the wording slightly. This way you hit more variations of potential searches and you’re less likely to get penalized for keyword stuffy.
Ultimately your aim is to have the best listings in search engines in order to attract and engage your target audience. Keyword research is a great way to start including keywords and phrases that are relevant to your product or service. Doing this research may seem time consuming but it will help you find out what your target audience is actually searching for and what they want to read about, in turn driving organic traffic to your website.
Does all of this sound just a little too technical and not aligned with your skillset? CAST Design Team offers full SEO services including keyword research, blog writing, and other marketing services to aid in your efforts. Let’s chat!
