Having a  keyword strategy for your business is no longer optional if you are considering  promoting your business online. Search Engine Optimization (SEO),  Content Marketing,  Pay Per Click, Google Adwords,  and Social Media, no matter how you choose to market online, understanding keywords is the first step.

1. What are Keywords?

Keywords are the requests people type into Google. They are the words Google uses to match their request with the online resources they are looking for. If your website or social media posts use these words, Google will deliver your URL to your customers.

2. Be Real & Be Relevant

Don’t forget that terms you use must be relevant to your business and your website needs to have good quality coding and structure. What terms do you want to be found for? Think about your real customers – What are they looking for online? How can your online resources be of service to them?

3. Research With Real Time Data

When you have a general idea of the type of terms you want to be found for, do your research. You will want to find real-time Google Data about each keyword. This is where our researchers come in. Our team will let you know the number of searches that have been made for that term in the past month (in Alberta) and make suggestions of similar keywords that might perform better. The higher the search volume, the more people are searching for this word, the higher the competition is likely to be. It is important to consider what you are offering and how niche your keywords are – highly relevant keywords with a lower search volume are more likely to bring success than general keywords with a very high search volume.

4. Attract The Right Customers

Choosing high ranking keywords means that there is more competition to rank on the top of the search engines and it will ultimately be much more difficult to place. Our team can help you decide if it is more beneficial to rank for the lower level of search volume and get the right customers into their store, rather than trying to compete for generic terms that might not even attract the kind of customer they need.

5. Always Think Like A Buyer, Not A Seller

When choosing your keywords, it makes sense to sit back and think about what your customer is looking for. If you sell something quite specialized, it might be useful to optimize your website also for synonyms of your product, or similar items that the customers might also be interested in. This is usually for less important keywords though; your top three should be to do with your product, as the customer is likely to search for it.*

YOU HAVE YOUR KEYWORDS, NOW WHAT?

Once you have set your keywords, creating quality content is the next vital element of good SEO. Watch for our next article on Creating Quality Content.

*RankingCoach.com