When you began to develop your website, you were most likely inundated with information about the importance of keywords. The difficulty for many people, however, lies in how to use these valuable tools correctly. Everyone has read content that relies on ‘keyword stuffing’ and quickly turned away, so how do you get keywords to work their magic without destroying your content? Here is the secret:
Develop Your Keywords Based on Your Buyer Personas
As you develop your marketing plan, you should have a concrete idea about who your ideal customer is and what they are looking for. Use these buyer personas to develop your keywords. Consider the vocabulary your customers typically use when they are interested in buying your products. What types of information do they seek? What words would they search for? Avoid using industry jargon that you and other professionals use — this is more likely to bring competitors, rather than buyers to your website.
Use the Keywords to Add Value
Keywords must be used in content that adds value to the reader. As SEO writers know, using a keyword incessantly in a post or article might bring people to the site, but when they see that you have nothing to offer them, they will click away. You have to show page visitors your value if you are going to convince them to stay and convert them into leads.
When people type search queries into search engines, they are interested in learning something, doing something, or going somewhere. Google works to ‘understand’ different websites so that they can offer each user the search results that answer their query. When you provide valuable content, it becomes easier for Google’s spiders to ‘crawl’ your website and see what it is you have to offer. Google continues to refine its algorithm to try and weed out sites that might contain keywords, but offer nothing of substance to the end user.
Placing the Keyword Throughout the Page
Many people do not consider the various parts of their websites when they think about including keywords. The keyword should appear in the content itself, but should also go it in the the page URL, title, header, and meta description. When Google and other search engines are looking to rank sites, they also scan these areas to try and get a better idea of how relevant this page is to a particular query. When your page appears on a search results page, customers are going to be looking at these areas to see if a particular page addresses their search. Using the keyword throughout these sections is an excellent way to incorporate the keyword into the page more frequently, without making the content sound unnatural.
Getting your website ranked well on the major search engines can lead to a major boost in your business and keywords can help you accomplish that. By keeping these three points in mind, you will naturally incorporate the words and subjects your customers are looking for, which will help you produce results.
When Jessica B is not writing about marketing, real estate, pets, or any of the other fascinating subjects her clients send her, she tends to be singing nursery rhymes or playing at the park. Sometimes at the same time.
