Before you launch an SEO strategy, it’s important to take a step back and analyze the keywords being targeted. The keywords you target are critical to the success, or failure, of your SEO strategy.
Assuming you have an existing website, the first step is to check the effectiveness of your keywords. The following are a few items to research when checking keyword effectiveness:
- What percentage of visitors used your keywords to find your website?
- What queries are people typing to find your website?
- Where do you currently rank for these keywords?
- Are your keywords attracting targeted ideal customer leads?
*These are just a few of the free tools that are available to help you evaluate keywords: Google Analytics, SpyFu, Google Keyword Tool.*
Casting a wide net – this might work very well for fishing but not an effective strategy when it comes to choosing keywords. You want to choose relevant and specific keywords for your business so you attract targeted leads. If a house painter chooses the keyword “paint,” they are going to attract more “junk” web visitors than potential clients. People searching the word “paint” might be looking for paint supplies, oil paints, pink paint, finger-paint, etc… These phrases have nothing to do with the house painting services – he has cast too wide of a net. But, if this house painter targets the keyword phrase “house painting San Diego,” the people searching this phrase and landing on his website will more likely fit his ideal customer profile. Determine if your keywords are bringing in the right traffic with visitors that will spend some time on your website rather than leaving shortly after arriving.
Now that you have selected relevant and specific keywords you are ready to go…well not quite. Next, you should research the traffic for your chosen words. If the words or phrases are too niche or industry specific then there might be little to no traffic for these keywords. Try different variations of these keywords to find ones that remain specific enough but still have a critical mass of people searching.
This brings me to my next point – checking the competition for your keywords. If all it took to show up on page 1 in Google was picking the highest traffic, relevant keywords then keyword optimization would be a “piece of cake.” But, unfortunately you have competitors vying for these same keywords. If there is much well-established competition for your keywords it could take years, if ever, to show up within the first 10 results on Google. After you assess the competition for your keywords then choose keywords that have low to low-medium competition so you can start competing today.
Keyword research and optimization is the backbone to the success of your SEO strategy, so take the time to choose the right keywords. In summary, your keywords should be targeted, popular, low competition, and attract your ideal customer. Good luck and let us know if Bop Design can help!
