Today we will talk about keywords and their role in the SEO optimization process of a website. Keyword research is one of the most important parts of making a website more search engine friendly. By understanding what or how people are looking for specific products or services, you will be able to choose the right keywords that will attract more traffic and significantly increase the conversion rate.
Keywords are words or groups of words that individuals use when searching on Google or another search engine. The search engine will highlight optimized pages on that keyword, which correspond to the search.
Types of Keywords:
- Short-tail keywords– short words, consisting of a maximum of 3 words;
- Long-tail keywords– long words, consisting of more than 3 words;
- Short-term keywords– short-term words, viral spikes;
- Long-term keywords– relevant long-term words;
- Product defining keywords– words that explain and describe the product or service;
- Customer expressing keywords– addresses directly and clearly to the targeted audience;
- Geo-targeting keywords – local words for targeting a specific area – county, sector, city, or country;
- LSI – latent semantic indexing, terms close to the main keyword;
- Intent Targeting keywords– informational, commercial, transactional words;
Informational keywords
These are keywords used by people who want more information about a product or service and are the most used in searches. They are used by people who inform themselves and do not necessarily buy, suitable to attract potential customers.
For example, to understand how it works, there are minimal chances that someone looking for how to become a professional photographer will end up buying a camera. Instead, he is interested in articles or tutorials that teach him how to become a photographer. He will understand that he will have to buy a camera for beginners to take the first steps towards becoming a photographer.
Transactional keywords
They are used when we are very close to buying something, and often, these keywords are precise and include the product's name.
How do you do keyword research to choose the right keywords?
First of all, think about the keywords or phrases for which you want your business positions to increase in search engines.
You have to consider some fundamental aspects: the number of monthly searches, the competition, and the user's intention. First, find out what words people use when searching for answers, and for this, you can use your intuition, Google Suggest, and Keyword Planner from Google Ads. With these tools, you can find out how many monthly searches are on that keyword you are interested in and find out more other keyword suggestions.
If you've made a list of keywords representative of your business, it's time to see if there's a competition or not.
Analyze how many links your competition has.
We know very well that a powerful site has a lot of links behind it, so by default, it will be a site complex to overcome in searches. To check the number of links a site has, you can use one of the free tools that do that. Enter your competitor's address and review.
Once the keyword analysis has been completed, you will need to optimize the page or site for those terms.
Here's where we use the keywords in optimizing a page:
– In the title;
– Meta description;
– Content;
– Headings (subtitles);
– Name and description of the pictures (ALT label – ALT Tag);
– URL (page address);
– The anchor text of the links, i.e., the text in the links when you do the link-building campaign.
A keyword analysis is an essential element in the on-page SEO optimization process, and off-page SEO is a critical strategy to increase the visibility of your website.