Keywords: What Are They & Why Does Your Business Need Them?
If you run a business, then you should have a website. If you have a website, then you’ve probably heard about keywords. At least, you’ve heard people talk about them, you’ve seen endless articles about them, but do you actually know what they are? More specifically, do you know why they’re important?
If you don’t, then this article will open your eyes to their wonders. I’ll go over a brief definition before explaining how and why you use them.
If you have a website, then you’ve probably heard about them.
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What Are Keywords?
This is the easy question as keywords basically describe themselves. The simple definition is that they’re certain words that are deemed important. However, in a business and marketing sense, we can extend this to include many words grouped together – or phrases.
A keyword holds significance as it’s something people will use when searching for something online. For example, when you want to look for a hotel, you search for ‘hotel near me’ or ‘hotel in insert city name here’. Those are keywords for that specific search, as it’s what most people will type when searching for hotels.
Obviously, different businesses have different specific words. What’s essential to your company may have no significance to others. This is why you must use the correct ones.
Why Does Your Business Need To Use Keywords?
Primarily, you use keywords for marketing purposes. Specifically, you use keywords for SEO – or search engine optimization. By learning how to target the right specific words, you ensure that your website ranks better for the most relevant search queries that link to your company.
In essence, without them, you’d struggle to rank high in search engine results. Or, if you use the wrong words, you’ll end up ranking in irrelevant searches that don’t relate to your target market at all.
Let me give you an example of this. Go back to the hotel search above and imagine what type of companies will be interested in those keywords. Realistically, it’s travel companies that offer a service to help people find and book hotels. Or, it’s a hotel company themselves.
So, what happens if a marketing company starts targeting these keywords? It’s completely pointless as their website will be flooded with customers that were looking for hotels. As such, they visit the marketing company’s website and click off right away – or they ignore it altogether.
So, as a brief summary, keywords help improve your SEO, which helps improve your search ranking. In turn, this can generate more web traffic and help you gain more leads. Not only that, but keywords allow you to reach your target market.
How Do You Find The Correct Keywords?
This brings us to a big question – how do you find the right subject-specific words for your business? Well, it all comes down to keyword research. You must think about the words or phrases that your customers use before they find your website.
The easiest way to do this is to put yourself in their shoes. Think about your business, and think about the services you offer. Then, consider what you’d type into Google if you were looking for a business like yours.
This should help you come up with a list of relevant words that you need to target. There are also keyword tools out there to help you with your research. Or, you could hire the help of a search engine optimization company to do some more in-depth and technical analysis for your company.
Either way, there are some key things to remember as you compile your keyword list.
Firstly, you don’t want to target too many keywords. This makes it too hard for you to rank well in searches as they will be far too saturated. You need a fair handful, but not too many. Similarly, you can’t target too few – it’s a delicate balance!
Secondly, consider all the different types of keywords, as well. There are nine keyword-types in total. It’s well worth looking them up as they help you understand what words or phrases you can maybe look into.
How Do You Use Keywords?
Finally, you use keywords in various areas of your website. Use them in your web content, put them in headlines, sneak them into your URL, meta description, and so on. The key is to never force your keywords! Ever.
They should occur naturally in your content and flow perfectly. If you force keywords or use too many on one page, then Google picks up on this and can punish your search ranking!
Now, you should know a thing or two about keywords. Hopefully, this article has shone a light on one of SEO’s most talked about topics.
Images courtesy of Pixabay, UnSplash and Pexels.
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