SEO is essential for your business website to succeed. It’s what brings us traffic that converts organically, unlike Adwords SEM or Google Shopping campaigns, which are paid. Organic search positioning also gets us onto the first page of Google, and above all into the top positions, for full visibility when potential customers are searching.
To get started with SEO, at Trilogi we carry out a detailed study of the client’s business through market research and analysis of the products and services they offer. Then comes the most important part: an in-depth analysis of the keywords that best define the client and will help us earn quality rankings in search engines.
What are keywords?
Keywords are the terms that help us describe our business and product. Choosing which words to use is very important, as they are what bring quality traffic to our website.
Since every user searches differently, we need a good list and the ability to adapt so we show up in their searches. That’s why it’s worth adding Long Tail keywords to our research: groups of 4 or 5 related words with medium-high search volume, less competition than the main keyword and easier to rank in Google’s SERPs.
To build our keyword strategy properly, we need to:
- Determine your business’s target audience.
- Clearly define the topic of each part of the website you’ll be working on.
- Find keywords that perfectly describe the business and/or product, or are directly related to it; otherwise Google may penalize us.
- Choose relevant, high-volume keywords to attract users who are genuinely interested in our products and/or services.
Factors to consider when working with keywords
There are a couple of things to watch out for when working with keywords. The first is that you mustn’t use bad practices with them, as Google may penalize you. Follow its guidelines so the website delivers quality and ranks properly.
Possible Google penalties:
- Unrelated keywords. When we use words that don’t match the website content, Google may penalize us, believing the content isn’t relevant and that users are being misled. E.g.: trying to rank a sneaker eCommerce with a high-performing main keyword like Collagen.
- Keyword spamming and keyword stuffing. This means excessively repeating the same word and its variants across the website to improve SEO. Over-optimizing is not the same as quality, and Google may penalize the site.
- Hidden text. Putting over-optimized text in the same color as the background doesn’t mean Google won’t see it.
Second, and very important, is how and where to use keywords. Google’s recommendations for working with keywords are clear and apply to an online store, a corporate website or a blog alike.
Where and how should you place keywords?
Follow its guidelines to rank well:
- URL. Place the main keyword in the URLs of all the pages, products and/or services you want to rank.
- Title tag. Titles are how products are presented. It’s important to include the keyword within the 69 characters available to improve SEO.
- H1. The H1 is the title of the visible content. Adding the keyword helps attract users searching for it, and it’s the title that will most encourage them to keep reading.
- H2, H3…H5 These are secondary headings. Here it pays to use less important keywords to gradually gain rankings.
- SEO copy. As mentioned under penalties, keywords should be added to the copy, but in an orderly way and without over-optimizing. It’s important to include synonyms and long tails, as recommendations suggest a maximum keyword density of 5%.
SEO tools for working with keywords
To choose the best keywords for your website, you need quality SEO tools to achieve tangible results.
Notable ones include:
- SEMRush. Essential for SEO and content marketing. It’s very powerful for rankings, and its keyword research section is extremely useful.
- Google Ads Keyword Planner. It lets us work with keywords using data provided by Google itself. It gives us ideas for new keywords, average searches, competition and the bids paid for each keyword in SEM.
- UberSuggest. With this tool we can work with long tails and synonyms, which is useful for getting more natural terms for SEO copy and website content.
In short, keywords are the most important factor in any SEO strategy.
Now the question is simple: do you know the keywords for your online business?
