Keyword research is considered as one of the building blocks of search engine optimization, but it is also the least talked about. Although it’s no longer used in Meta tags, it is still applicable when boosting website traffic. Without the right keywords, your SEO efforts will lose track and your content won’t be able to generate targeted and qualified traffic.
Keyword Research and its Importance
Keyword research is basically unveiling and choosing the appropriate keywords for your site. In turn, this will give you an idea of what terms your target audience is looking for and how often they look for it. Moreover, it indicates how many websites are using your chosen keywords.
It’s important to conduct a proper keyword research, so you’ll know how to optimize your site accordingly. Additionally, the visitors you want to target may have a different way of referring to your brand, products or services. It is also applicable if you want to know the type of content that could actually grab their attention.
Keyword is also used in link building as an anchor text. Whether it’s coming from your own website or from another domain, anchor text is a word used to link one page to another. Although the number of links could help your site’s page rank, search engine bots is unlikely to index it if the anchor text used is irrelevant to your content.
Conducting a Proper Keyword Research
Using keyword research tools make it easy to see what your target audience are really looking for. It allows you to enter one search term, and it will provide results of related keywords, including synonyms, variations, plurals and misspellings. It also shows how often a search term is used within a month or a year, and how many websites are using it.
In turn, you’ll have an idea on what keywords to incorporate on your content. However, choosing the appropriate keyword for your website must adhere on these three criteria:
Site Relevance: The keyword that you’ll use for your content must be relevant.
High Search Volume: Optimize and incorporate search terms that people use most of the time. Otherwise, your content will not appear on search engine result pages when target audience look for your website.
Low Competition: It should be used by a couple of websites only. When a keyword has a high competition, you’ll have a hard time getting past your possible competitors.
A keyword that is relevant, with high search volume but low competition can increase your content’s chances of ranking on SERPs. Hence, it’s important that you conduct proper keyword research first before getting full-speed ahead of your SEO campaign.
Jen Williams
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