There are no two ways about the importance of link building in an SEO campaign. But a proper keyword strategy too is being hailed as equally important, if not more, in order to enjoy a greater conversion rate. David Dougherty, in a bid to accord keyword strategy a supreme position as far as an SEO campaign is concerned, says, “Link building may be regarded as the “holy grail of SEO”, but what do you think fills the cup? Keywords are the fuel for all search engine optimization campaigns.” So without dwelling much on the importance of a keyword strategy, let us have an insight into the best selection process of a keyword for your site.
Start with thinking of words that best describe your products or services, because that will help you target visitors that might become prospective buyers. Keyword selection also depends a lot on the type of your website. Static sites that are not database driven must be optimized for a few keywords, while dynamic sites that are database driven can be optimized for an unlimited number of keywords. Some keyword selection tips worth considering are coming up.
Analyze the competition
Whatever keyword or phrase you have in mind, it is necessary to check how competitive the term is. This means checking out how many other sites are competing with yours for the same keyword or phrase. There are tools available to determine not only the level of competition, but also the amount of traffic you can expect to receive for your keyword.
Be specific
It is better to keep a keyword or phrase specific to drive qualified traffic to your website. Single word phrases or short phrases in general make it difficult to rank well with search engines due to their not being highly targeted. Longer phrases that are strongly related to the content of your web page will see more visitor-to-buyer conversions than anything else. It is also a known fact that short phrase searches denote shoppers while long phrase searches denote buyers. It, therefore, pays to be precise.
Make use of keyword variations
Some universal words that can be applied to any keyword phrase are known as qualifiers. These include the names of the country, state, region, city, or words like help, tips, services, information, etc. These qualifiers should help enhance the effect of your keyword phrases. Make use of these qualifiers to make keyword variations and rank well for all of them. For example, if your website is being optimized for pipe repairing, make it rank well for pipe repairing services or pipe repairing information.
Word stemming
When a search engine crawls the web for the root of a word instead of only that form of the word that is searched for, it is called word stemming. So, when a searcher searches for ‘conversion’ it will be treated the same as ‘convert’. Search engines usually use word stemming, but it is safer to include the most frequently used versions of a word as your keyword variations. Also, a searcher might misspell a particular word. Though it is not advisable to have a misspelled word as your keyword, it is a good option to include it in the keyword meta tag. Do not forget to include both the singular and plural forms of the words, too.
Hyphenated phrases:
If your keyword phrase is hyphenated, check the level of competition as well as traffic for both the hyphenated and non-hyphenated term. Go for the term which has low competition and more traffic.
Brand names
Most searchers enter a popular brand name as a search term. It is always a good option to include them in your keyword or phrase or at least, make them one of the qualifiers. But also take care to be politically correct when using brand names of your competitors.
Traffic driving ability
Test your keywords or phrases for their traffic driving ability. Though you want maximum traffic to visit your website, it is better to concentrate on building a steady stream of quality traffic. A mere quantity in terms of traffic will not ensure high conversion rates. Always bother to take a look at whether your keywords are capable of driving targeted traffic to your website and decide on an appropriate keyword accordingly.
A searcher’s motive
Be careful about a searcher’s motive when deciding upon a keyword phrase. Like if you are optimizing for ‘duct tape marketing’, a Google search for the same phrase will prove that people are looking out for companies that are marketing duct tape and not for information on a particular type of marketing. So look out for the real reason behind people’s search.
While selecting a keyword, it is best to follow the elimination approach. List any words or phrases that best describe your area of business. Keep on eliminating others that do not fit in. Like if you are into marketing packaged food in California, the major keywords can be packaged food, food items, ready to eat food, etc. Adding qualifiers to these words is the next step. If you want to attract customers from the vicinity, add California to your chosen keyword. If you are selling products of a particular brand, which is also one of the most popular one in the market, try adding the brand name to your keyword. So it will be something like ‘Kellogg’s packaged food in California’.
If you are building a new website and want to think of optimization beforehand, it is necessary that you build its architecture around the keyword. It is better to increase the number of pages depending upon the number of keywords you want your site to be optimized for.
With so many factors deciding the selection of a right keyword, the only thing that can safely be said about a keyword selection strategy is that it is as difficult as it is important to an SEO campaign.
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