Have you ever wondered what SEO keywords are, how you choose keywords, where you use keywords, and why keywords are so important to SEO? I bet you have because I get asked questions about keywords all the time. Keywords are critical to your SEO program, and choosing the right ones can feel overwhelming. Am I right? There's a lot of pressure to choose the right one. You may have even heard that you won't get results if you choose the wrong keyword and do everything right. Talk about pressure.
Rather than stress over keywords, I figured I'd teach you what you need to know about SEO keywords.
SEO keywords are the keywords we choose to optimize on a website page or post. What the heck does this mean? When we do SEO on our website or blog, our goal is for our pages and posts to show up higher in Google's search results so that more people can find us and come to our site.
We choose keywords that we believe our Ideal Customer is using when searching for information related to our business.
When you choose a keyword for your page, you're telling Google, this page is about X keyword.
You'll want to use a keyword research tool to find the right keyword for your website or blog. You'll need to think about your Ideal Customers, what they are looking for, what they need, and, most importantly, what terms they are using when searching.
Start by brainstorming a list of terms related to your Ideal Customer, your products, and your services. Then, you'll take those terms to a keyword research tool and decide which word you'll use for the page or post.
Sometimes, you'll see a huge difference in search demand; other times, it's minimal. For example, I had a client years ago who sold clothing for men, women, and children. The designer who started the brand hated the word kids and insisted we use the term children's instead. However, consumers don't use the word children when searching online; they use kids.
We have to convince the client to use the word kids instead of children for SEO benefit. When they finally agreed to use kids instead of children, they saw an increase in Google rankings, leading to an increase in website traffic and making more money.
Keyword research is probably the most critical part of the optimization process because you will use your keyword in so many elements.
You'll want to choose a single unique keyword for each page or post and use that most important term in ALL of your search engine optimization elements:
Keywords are important to SEO because you use them in many places on your website or blog. Google uses all of the elements you optimize to understand what the page is about.
Google wants to ensure that they're providing the best results to their customers when they search for something. Having your keyword in so many places helps your chances of ranking higher.
It's our job to make it easy for Google to understand what our pages are about so that they can show them to more people.
If you're ready to get started with your SEO, request your copy of my SEO Quick Start Guide today and learn what to do on every page of your website or blog.