Selecting and optimizing keywords that you rank for can make or break your SEO efforts. This step-by-step guide provides everything you need for success, from identifying relevant words and using tools to select and optimize them.
Keywords are terms people enter into search engines to locate products, services or information. As marketers, we use keywords to establish online presence and drive traffic through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In this article we’ll provide a process for selecting keywords that meet audience needs while being relevant to content on your website and relatively easy to rank for.
Before beginning research, it’s crucial to fully comprehend your target audience and their interests and pain points. What keywords might they search for, how does your product or service fit into their lives, what queries do they have that you can address with your website, etc. Establishing and updating audience personas will allow you to craft the most effective keyword strategy possible.
Once your keywords have been researched, the next step is deciding on your content type for each keyword. Are you providing informative articles or blog posts; creating product pages to encourage consumers to purchase; using keywords in title tags and meta descriptions to increase SERP visibility? Answering these questions will guide your keyword research process as well as inform what kind of articles or blog posts to write for each keyword. The answers to these queries will ultimately shape keyword research efforts as well as what kind of articles or blog posts to write.
Step two of this process should involve creating a list of keyword ideas for your business. To do this, brainstorm topics related to those your target audience may be interested in before researching competitor websites to see what keywords they’re ranking for and how they use them.
As you compile your keyword list, try to strike a balance between being popular and ranking easily for. Also keep the searcher intent in mind. For instance, someone searching “long head tricep workout” likely wants to learn how to exercise that muscle; if your content doesn’t align with it quickly they may leave quickly without ever returning.
Once you’ve identified potential keywords, conduct a Google search to see what results come up for each. This will give an idea of competition level as well as quality of sites currently ranking.
Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer offers another method for discovering keyword opportunities: filtering by KD% – which measures how difficult it will be to rank for them; lower KD% means easier content ranking – especially among long tail keywords which tend to have less competition and are thus targeted by professional SEOs.