If you’re planning on using search engine optimization(SEO), to help your website or webpage rank higher than your competitors’ websites, it’s important to understand the two components of keyword strategy: keywords and key phrases.
Keywords are the actual words used in your content while key phrases are the variations of those keywords that might also be searched by potential customers.
Knowing which one to use will help you optimize your webpages and maximize their ranking potential.
Keywords you should use
Keywords are words or phrases typed into search engines by people looking for information. These keywords typically describe a topic and are used in order to match search engine users with relevant websites.
There are several different types of keywords, each of which is suitable for a different purpose.
For example, keywords for blogs should focus on being descriptive and include SEO-friendly words that will get your website ranked highly in search results.
This means you can’t just include any old word; you have to use ones that will help your articles show up in searches for certain topics and make it look like you’re an expert on those topics.
The Importance of Contextual Targeting
When you do your keyword research, be sure that you look at context as well. In other words, don’t just find keywords that have a high search volume.
Find keywords that fit in with what you’re writing about and make sense in context. Your page is much more likely to show up in searches if it matches what people are looking for exactly!
And since most of us write on topics we love, we can often think of great contextual terms right off the bat.
So while it might seem like an extra step, adding contextual targeting to your keyword strategy will actually help you write better content overall—and that’s a win-win!
Optimizing Your Pages for Long Tail Searches
If you think about your audience as having a range of knowledge on a particular topic, you can see why long tail keywords are important.
For example, if I’m writing about SEO best practices for building webpages, and many people reading my content will be newbies (low search volume), but there will also be some higher-skilled readers (higher search volume) who are familiar with these concepts.
With that in mind, it’s important to use keywords for your page—whether they’re long tail or broad—that appeal to both audiences.
That means some of your pages will have more informational content geared toward beginners while others include industry lingo that may appeal more to experienced marketers.
Finding Low-Competition Keywords
To start, you need a tool that can tell you which keywords are getting searched and which ones have lower competition.
If you’re using a tool like Moz (previously mentioned), your research will focus on high-competition terms with more than 100 monthly searches. Once you’ve found that initial set of keywords, add them to your list of low-competition search terms.
Continue to refine your list as needed by researching other keywords or doing other keyword research tools.
For example, Google offers free keyword suggestions, or YouTube lets you see what kind of videos pop up when a particular phrase is searched.
Start by making a master list and then evaluate how long it takes for each keyword to get traffic.
Getting Readers to Click
Though there are a lot of complicated factors that go into making a web page rank well in search results, keywords play an important role. Keywords are search terms (usually 1-3 words long) that you include on your webpage because they’re relevant to your content.
For example, if you run a vacation rental website and you’ve written an informative post about winter travel destinations in Canada, some of your keywords could be travel, vacation, Canada, and so on.
The more relevant keywords your page has, the better it will rank for those specific terms in Google’s search results.
If someone searches for winter travel destinations in Canada, your page should appear at or near the top of their list. And that means more traffic for you! So how do you get people to click?
It all comes down to creating compelling headlines and summaries. If your headline is intriguing enough, people might just click through without even reading your full post.
But even if they do read it, a great headline will encourage them to share it with friends—which can also lead to increased traffic!
Try using emotional language like scared or excited instead of boring descriptive words like learn.
Also try using numbers—they tend to draw attention from readers who want quick answers rather than longer explanations.
And don’t forget: always link back to original sources whenever possible! Readers are much more likely to trust information when they know where it came from.
In today’s ever-changing technological world, search engine optimization has become a vital component of doing business online.
Because there are hundreds of thousands of pages on Google, it is critical for companies who hope to make their products and services easily found by customers.
The problem is that there are an infinite number of ways companies can optimize their content for search engines.
That is why it’s important to know what keywords you should use in your SEO strategy, as well as which ones you should avoid.