How to Choose The Best Keywords for Your SEO Campaign
Selecting the right keywords is one of the most important steps to take when building a successful SEO campaign and strategy for your business, helping to optimize your website performance by increasing your online visibility within the organic search results.
In order to drive sales and boost the amount of relevant traffic being directed toward your business website, your SEO campaign should be optimized for the keywords that your potential customers are likely to be searching for. Without proper keyword targeting and clearly optimized page titles and meta descriptions, your business will fail to reach its intended target audience.
If you are unsure of where to begin, proper keyword research can feel like a daunting task – that’s why we’re here to help! In the article below, we list out top tips on how to choose the right SEO keywords for your campaign, helping you to get off on the right foot.
How Many Keywords Should You Target?
The number of keywords that you choose to target within your SEO campaign is often just as important as the actual search terms and phrases that you opt for. Spamming your business website with countless keywords can have negative impacts on your site readability, affecting the user experience and lowering your quality as a result. So, how many keywords should you target for your SEO campaign?
SEO does not take a ‘one size fits all’ approach, so the number of keywords that you will be targeting is dependent upon the size and goals of your campaign. However, the average SEO campaign should look to assign around 1-4 relevant keywords to each landing page; including any lower search volume keyword variations.
How Do You Choose The Right Keywords?
Understand Your Audience
When aiming to compile a list of the key search terms and phrases to begin your keyword research, the best way to begin is to first put yourself in your patron’s shoes. If you were a customer who was currently in the market for the product or service that your company provides, what would you search for in order to find what you were looking for? What questions or phrases would you query within the search engines to find your business?
By compiling a list of these exact search terms, you will be able to put yourself into the minds of your target audience, using these phrases to find the keywords that actual customers are searching for as you carry out your research.
Analyze The Competition
By analyzing the actions of your high-ranking competitors, and reading their landing page content as well as meta titles and descriptions to identify keywords that they are currently targeting; you will gain a better understanding of how your own business is performing in comparison. This is a great way to find areas in need of improvement within your SEO campaign, gain inspiration on the phrases that you could be targeting, and how to further optimize your efforts.
Make Use of Keyword Research Tools
There are a number of free and effective tools on the market that allow businesses to discover new potential keywords for their SEO campaigns, as well as access information on how the search terms and phrases in their lists typically perform.
Of the countless keyword research tools made readily available, Google’s keyword planner is commonly regarded to be one of the best, providing users with useful information, such as average search volumes, level of competition, and more.
The keyword planner also allows its users to build potential ad groups for advertising campaigns, making it a great free tool to utilize within your keyword research efforts.
Choose A Range of Different Keywords
Many business owners will make the mistake of only targeting the more generic, one to two-word keywords within the SEO campaign. While these phrases tend to have much higher search volumes, they are also highly competitive, lowering the chances of your site ranking highly in a timely manner, within the organic search results, and decreasing your online visibility as a result.
Longer tail keywords tend to have lower search volumes overall, but are usually less competitive and far more specific, often leading to higher value traffic being directed towards your business website as a result.
By targeting a mix of these short and long-tail keywords within your SEO campaign, you can cover all bases and ensure that your site reaches as many relevant customers as possible!
Overall, there are a number of steps that you can take in order to guarantee that you are selecting the best possible keywords for you and your SEO campaign, helping your business to thrive within the organic search results, as well as boost visibility, site traffic, and overall sales as a result.
If you still find yourself unsure of where to start, or simply don’t have the time in your busy schedule to dedicate to in-depth keyword research, employing the assistance of an agency that provides SEO services for small businesses could offer the perfect solution. These agencies are typically able to provide expert keyword research and analysis service which means you can focus more of your time on running your business!
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