What’s in a keyword?
Small business owners often ask “what are keywords?” or “what are the right keywords for my website to get traffic to my business”? Probably the simplest way of putting it, is that keywords (and key phrases) are the words used to describe your products and services which match the words and phrases used by consumers when they are searching online.
Think about it - people describe things in different ways and it’s never more true than online when people are trawling the internet for information, advice and shopping. For every subject matter or consumable, there are literally hundreds of different ways that an individual could search for it.
So how do you know which are the right words to use in your website? The biggest mistake business owners make when it comes to keywords is forgetting that the words you use in your business may be very different from the words your customers use. For example, ‘digital marketing’ is a marketing industry term and currently receives 135,000 searches globally every month. Compare this to some of the other search terms that a customer may use such as “internet marketing” (2.24 million searches per month) and “online marketing” (1 million+ searches per month).
If you are a small business (or a big one for that matter) and use industry terms instead of customer terms, you’re making it so much harder for your business to be found through organic search and will struggle to achieve progress.
The message is clear. If you’re not getting enough search engine traffic to your site, you’re not using the words your customers use.
As a website owner a fundamental basic is to always write your website copy with your customer (ie target market) in mind, containing keywords that they would use to search by and avoiding heavy use of industry terms (unless you are targeting your industry of course!).
But it’s not just about single keywords. Traditional keyword research and site traffic analysis both use single keywords however single keywords rarely bring enough traffic and response to produce enough traffic to promote your business effectively. You need to think a little bit harder, and recognise that keywords (or key phrases) can actually be up to four words long – which are known as ‘long tail keywords’.
What are 'long tail keywords'? Well, they are those three and four keyword phrases which are very specific to your product or service. It stands to reason that whenever a customer uses a highly specific search phrase, they tend to be looking for exactly what they are actually going to buy and that is where you can really score some serious results.
As for the benefits of good use of keywords in your website...
· Drive targeted traffic to your site by using the words people use when they’re searching
· Enjoy better website copywhich will engage your customers and help them make more informed purchasing decisions
· Measure the sizeof a potential new market and grow your business
· Develop new revenuestreams through better content
So, what happens when you’ve identified the correct keywords to use, where do you put them in your website to make sure the search engines can see them? Well, that moves us on to Search Engine Optimisation....
If you'd like to find out how the Cariad Marketing team can help your business, please contact us.