how to choose keywords for seo
Choosing the right keywords for your site is one of the most crucial and important tasks that you can do to optimize and rank well in seo. The best way to know which keywords to target is by carrying out keyword research.
Keywords are words or phrases that people type into search engines when they’re looking for a specific topic online. It’s like if someone was standing at a giant wall filled with index cards all labeled with different topics, such as “history,” “sports,” “cooking,” etc., and they were trying to find a specific card (such as “card games”). If someone was searching online for card games, they would input this phrase into Google and start searching through this wall of cards until they found what they were looking for.
The most important thing is to know which keywords are the best ones to target because they will attract your target audience and bring in more traffic, leads and sales. Good research ensures that you’re optimizing your site around relevant search phrases that people use when typing in queries into Google or other search engines, especially long-tail keywords.
Long-tail keywords are highly specific, niche words or phrases that searchers input into Google. They consist of three or more words in the query phrase, such as “home remedy for dry cracked heels” or “how to build a bonsai tree.” It’s called long tail because these kind of search queries barely show up on any top lists (such as Google’s first page result). So the further down you go (long tail), the fewer people there are searching for that term, and more often than not, it’s highly targeted traffic.
It also means that by optimizing around these long-tail keywords, you’re getting really specific traffic that is much more likely to convert into leads and sales (compared with mass search phrases such as “fitness,” which has a lot of competition). You can find out if your website already ranks high in Google using free ranking checkers such as:
www.checkpagerank.net/
www.ilovegoogle.com/tools/#seo-keyword-tools
You should aim to give yourself a good chance appearing on page 1 of Google for your chosen keywords by having a high domain authority (domain rank) and backlinks.
The higher the domain’s page rank, the more traffic it will receive from Google because Google sees that site as an expert or “authority” in that particular topic area. The best way to do this is by building links from other sites to yours; basically having other people pointing their links at your website which boost your domain’s authority and chances of ranking well.
Search engines such as Google use complex algorithms to determine where you should appear within its search results pages (SERPs). It all comes down to what are known as signalsâclues that tell search engines whether they should place you closer towards the top of its search results, or nearer the bottom.
Search engines look at many factors to determine what search results should appear at the top of its SERPs, such as:
⢠The authority and quality of your site (determined by factors such as Page Rank and number and quality of backlinks)
⢠How much content is on your page (the more words you have, the better)
⢠How often and recently was this page updated?
⢠Where does this domain rank for keywords we think would be similar?
So basically it’s a lot like dating; Google wants to see that you’re an expert in your field just like you want Google to show other sites linking to yours that you’re an expert in your niche too. If other people are linking to you, Google sees you as an authority in your industry or topic area.
It’s all about giving the search engines what they want, and it starts with having a strong keyword strategy. The more often people type your chosen phrase into Google, the higher the likelihood is that your target market will be searching for it also. You can use tools such as keywordtool.io to help develop a great list of long-tailed keywords which you can optimize around:
keywordtool.io/
You should start by choosing 5-10 core keywords that best describe your product, service or website. Once you’ve done that you need to research each one carefully and figure out if they’re highly searched for on a monthly basis (minimum). If so, make a note. You can use free keyword tools (again, like the Google Keyword Planner tool for this purpose) to help you decide which keywords are most likely to be searched for monthly on average.
Doing this helps you select highly searched terms that have lower competition but decent volumes of traffic, because if your goal is simply to get more visitors to your website then it doesn’t really matter if they’re searching for something that isn’t popular or has low levels of competition. If you do want to try and rank well in search engines though, I hope these tips have given you some insight into how it’s done.
Now go out there and put them into action!