How To Research Keywords for SEO - 3 Tips for Improving Your Keyword Research
How improving your SEO will improve your search ranking results.
You’ve probably heard that implementing keywords into the content on your website, blog, and URL are key strategies for improving your SEO ranking. However, long gone are the days when adding random keywords to your website could get you ranked on Google’s first page. Now, including the wrong keywords or too many keywords can cause penalties for your website that can take months or years to overcome.
Keyword research should never be a one-time commitment, but rather an ever-changing process that involves a strategy and a comprehensive understanding of your business and your industry.
Although, it may seem mysterious, SEO is really just a combination of having good authoritative content and clean, updated code. Websites that provide visitors with the information they’re looking for with speed and ease of use will be favored by Google’s ranking algorithms.
With that in mind, including keywords that are specific to your business and industry will help to ensure that the right customers are being driven to your door rather than just any customer. Although we want to increase our customer base, we don’t want to target consumers that may not find the value in our business.
Short-tail keywords, or keywords composed of very generic keywords, might seem appealing because they’re searched more often than long-tail keywords, however, they’re also a lot more competitive. So, unless you’re writing content for a large organization, like Apple or Macy’s, and consumers are likely searching specifically for your product, you don’t want to enter into a sea of competitors with big brands that have even bigger pockets.
Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, may not be as frequently typed into a search engine—think, “Pizza” vs. “Pizza delivery near me.” With so many searching for everything under the sun, it will be easy for your small business to compete on local specific keywords than the ones the big brands covet. By including more long-tail keywords into the content on your page, you’ll attract a larger number of customers who are likely to search for any combination of those long-tail keywords.
Location-based keywords are keywords that directly relate to your business’s physical location. For example, if your business is a cleaning company in a popular neighborhood in San Francisco, CA, you’ll want to include not only San Francisco, but also the name of that specific neighborhood, like North Beach, or Mission District. By doing so, you’re more likely to target visitors in your area rather than across town who may or may not ever make it to your location.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Speaking of misleading customers that may not find value in your business, adding practically any keyword under the sun is referred to as keyword stuffing and is largely considered a taboo in the digital marketing world. Like with any other digital marketing rule of thumb, less is more, and quality will always conquer quantity. Ideally, a website’s content should include keywords in a natural way. However, by inputting keywords into a few sentences and repeating them over and over, you’re stuffing your content with keywords. Even if they’re good keywords, it’s still too much.
These are just a few tips that anyone can use to improve their search rankings. Remember, although it might be “easy” it takes a consistent long-term commitment to gain the type of page authority Google and other search engines reward. And, of course, there are plenty of companies (like Piinch Web Design), that have lots of experience helping small businesses with their SEO strategies.
That’s it for now and happy Easy SEO!
Dave Coleman
Piinch Company
