Impactful SEO tactics are a critical component within the industry of Internet marketing and advertising. The strategy of keyword research is one of the most important ploys for bringing meaningful traffic for your website.
Keyword research relates to discovering search phrases that are popularly used and relevant to your products and/or services.
Based on your keyword research data, your business can carve out a competitive edge. By tailoring your website content to high-volume search phrases, you can substantially improve your search engine visibility and boost your online presence.
Guiding high-quality content generation
Web pages need high quality content if they are to outperform others that address similar topics. Spending a great deal of effort and time creating quality web pages that target search phrases that people seldom use is not likely to be a very productive strategy. If your intention is to attract customers online, it is important that your efforts to generate high-quality content are guided by effective keyword research.
Marketing needs of the business
In choosing appropriate keywords to target, the strategy needs to involve learning the specific internet marketing needs of the owners of the business, who are the ultimate authority in relation to their commercial operations. It is not useful to target search phrases that relate to things the business doesn’t actually sell.
The Google Adwords Keyword Planner, can provide a list of potentially relevant keywords. The relevancy of the top keywords (or most popularly used search terms) need confirming in consultation with the business owners.
Proper utilisation of the keywords most suited for the business, result in qualified site traffic, higher positions in the SERPs (search engine results pages), lead generation and high traffic to sale conversion for clients.
Signals of Intent
The keyword terms people use in the online search process can give important information about their intent. A person with the intention of purchasing a product or service will often use different search phrases to a person who is looking purely for information.
For example, suppose you own a law firm in Wollongong. If someone uses lawyers Wollongong as their search phrase, there is a high chance that they are intending to engage a legal business much like yours that is based in Wollongong, however, if the search term is law Australia it is not at all clear they are searching for a law firm in your locality. While these particular words are entirely relevant to a legal practice operating in Wollongong, it is highly probable a person using those words is searching for information rather than a business like yours.
Deciphering searcher intent is an important strategy in determining the relative importance of keywords. If the search phrase accurately pinpoints the geographical location your business serves, it is more likely to result in a sale than one that doesn’t. Also, phrases that definitely describe your business or the products or services you sell, have a greater chance of being generated by potential customers than phrases that are less specific, or are vague or ambiguous.
Useful Information
The previous discussion doesn’t mean keywords signaling the searcher’s intent of merely finding information online is of low value. Having a web page that provides useful information can be an extremely effective strategy, capable of boosting the overall success of your website. Online marketing efforts relating to purely informational content calls attention to your reputation by providing customers with useful information and positively enhancing the user experience.
Web pages that carry useful information have greater likelihood of attracting links compared to those with run-of-the-mill sales copy.
Popular pages have a spin-off benefit
In the long-term, having a website that contains useful information that is retrievable on the search engines via popularly used keywords will tend to increase traffic to your website. Boosting the number of visitors in this way may not necessarily translate directly into more clients but there is an important spin-off benefit. Linking from these popular pages to other pages on your site provides you with an important SEO advantage:
Search engines value pages more highly when they are linked to from pages that are popular.
Verify
After you have identified your important keywords, it is important to verify that they mean the same thing to others as they mean to you. To verify your keywords, conduct a search on Google and inspect the results you receive. Hopefully the results will relate to businesses similar to yours. If not, you may well need to reconsider the logic of targeting the particular search phrase.
Sound keyword research can generate result-driven strategic solutions through multi-pronged online marketing plans for your business. Contact us today on (02) 4227 6630 to discuss your SEO and keyword optimisation needs.