Your search engine optimization campaign hinges on your keyword selection. If you want great SEO, you need to use great keywords. Since picking them is so crucial, it can be quite a challenge.
Keyword selection requires careful research and consideration. If you aren’t sure where to begin, here are some places you can look to find the best keywords for your website.
Brainstorming Sessions
This is the simplest way to come up with some good keywords: Brainstorm them! With some careful thought, come up with as many potential keywords as you can. Enlist the help of your marketing team or business partners, if applicable.
The keywords you brainstorm won’t always be the ones you end up using, but they’re an excellent place to start the process. Consider what your products and/or services are and what problems you solve for your customers when thinking about keywords.
Keyword Research Tools
There are a variety of keyword research tools that will be a great help to you in your search for keyword gold. The most popular is the Google’s Keyword Tool. This keyword search engine will help you analyze the keywords you’ve come up with, and most importantly, it will help you discover other keywords that might be even better.
When you search for any specific keyword, you will receive data on its popularity, how many times it’s searched for, what other related search terms are, and much more. There are many different ways to use this tool, and it can seem intimidating at first, but overall it will help you choose keywords that will give you the most traffic and traffic conversion (clicks becoming sales). There are other keyword research tools, too, such as WordTracker and SEMRush.
Your Competitors
SEO is a competition for the top spot in the search rankings, but who are you competing with? What businesses are similar to yours? What websites do you consider to be your competition? Visit those websites for some insight into what keywords you should potentially target.
Once you’re on a competitor’s site, pay close attention to things like the titles of their pages, the headlines used on their pages, and the words they use when writing their copy.
Also view their meta tags by right-clicking and selecting “View Page Source.” You probably won’t use all of the exact same keywords as your competitors, but taking a look at their targets will help you choose your own.
Your Customers
Your customers can also give you invaluable insight into potential keywords. You could very simply ask a few customers to give you their suggestions. You should also pour through your social media pages to see which keyword terms they use the most when communicating with you. If your website has a search box, check the log for popular search terms.
If you have a PPC campaign with Google Adwords, you can use it to find out what keywords lead people to click on your site most often. When looking for the best keywords for your website, it’s important to remember that it’s not such a subjective process. The best keywords are the keywords that will bring you the highest number of clicks and conversions, so concentrate on finding them.