4 Ways SEO Keywords Can Improve Your Marketing Campaign
Around 90% of businesses have some kind of digital marketing strategy. But if that strategy doesn’t use SEO keywords in the right way (or at all!) then it isn’t anywhere near as effective as it could be.
SEO marketing is a toolbox of techniques you can use to increase the rankings of your online content on search results pages. And keywords are the foundation on which you build any good SEO marketing campaign.
But how do you find these magic keywords? And why are they so vital to your marketing efforts?
These points will prove to you exactly how important SEO keyword research is and will help you get started!
1. Force You to Find Your Focus (And Stick to It!)
Let’s say you want to write online content on your website and you have so many ideas. You might own an online letterbox florist, and want to create content about Christmas flowers before the festive season.
So, “Christmas flowers” is your keyword, right? Potential customers will type this query into Google search and your blog post will be the first to pop up, yes?
It’s unlikely.
There are so many possible intentions behind “Christmas flowers” if people were to search for this term. So, you should focus on long-tail SEO keywords instead. These are more specific keywords that will help you create content that has one targeted purpose.
For example, here are more focused ways you can use “Christmas flowers” in your keyword phrase to shape your content:
- How to arrange Christmas flowers
- Best varieties of Christmas flowers and plants
- Alternative Christmas flowers
- Best Christmas flowers for wreaths
- Best dried and artificial Christmas flowers
This is only one example, but it’s good advice for all businesses and content ideas. Then, there is no doubt what your reader wants to find out about.
Plus, if you can split up your content ideas into many different keywords then the more keywords you can target. That means the more content you can create and the more eyeballs on your website!
2. Help You Find Problems You Can Solve
Using an SEO keyword research tool can help you identify problems that your content can help solve.
You might want to create content about the different types of golf balls for your sporting goods store. But do many people want to know this information? Do enough people search for it?
You can find this out by researching keywords. Here are some paid and free keyword research tools:
- Keysearch
- SEMrush
- Google Keyword Planner
- Ahrefs Keyword Explorer
With most SEO keyword research tools, you can type in the keyword you have in mind to check to see if it’s a good keyword. A sweet spot is a high number of searches but low competition from other web pages.
But the best part about using keyword research tools is that they can offer better alternatives. Is the competition too high for the “different types of golf balls” keyword? The research tool might suggest “best types of golf balls for beginners” instead.
This SEO keyword search term might have a lot of demand but no other web pages meet this demand. So, your website can solve that query and appear on the results page for that search term!
Increasing Your Reach and Solving More Problems
As well as choosing one main keyword, keyword research tools can help you identify secondary keywords. These are keywords that mean almost the same thing as your primary/main keyword but users search for them less or they have higher competition.
Let’s say your main keyword is “best types of golf balls for beginners.” A secondary keyword could be “beginners golf balls.”
Using a few secondary keywords in your content will help your marketing campaign reach even more people.
3. Improve Your Search Engine Rankings
Speaking of rankings, using keywords (and being strategic!) when you create your content will increase the rankings of your web pages in search results pages.
Users are far more likely to click on the first three results, so that’s where you want your content to be. You can watch this webinar on search rankings to learn more about ranking factors.
After you’ve researched your keyword and you’ve picked a good one, you need to place it in certain places within your content. If you are writing a blog post on your website, put it in the following places:
- Heading (H1 title tag)
- Some subheadings (H2 and H3 title tags)
- URL
- Introduction
- Conclusion
- Throughout the body of your content
If you are creating a video and posting it on YouTube, the same rules apply. Put your keyword phrase within the video’s heading and in the hashtags.
These SEO keyword ranking techniques leave search engines like Google in no doubt what your content is about. But, be careful that you don’t stuff your content with keywords as that looks spammy and is a huge SEO no-no.
4. You Will Be Able to Spot Trends
When creating content for your marketing campaign, you want most of your content to be evergreen. This is content that is almost always relevant no matter the season and will never become out of date. But you also want to capitalize on trends.
Search for popular keywords (that are relevant to your business) using tools like Google Trends. And if you have a brick-and-mortar business, you can see what keywords are popular in your area too. These keywords will help you steer your marketing campaign in a fresh and current direction.
All Good Marketing Campaigns Start With SEO Keywords
Now you know that researching the best SEO keywords to use in your online marketing campaigns should be the very first thing you do. They will give you ideas, shape your content, and give it the best possible chance of success.
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