Keywords are words or phrases that inform search engines about the content your webpage contains. They’re crucial in helping you align your content with words, topics, and search queries that your target audience would potentially look for. In short, they let people find your site.
By optimising the right keywords, you’ll get to increase the chances of your webpage appearing on top search results. It’ll also help drive more qualified traffic to your web pages and improve conversions.
This article will help you understand the importance of keywords in SEO, how to choose the right keywords, and the density of keywords you should optimise on your website.
READ: The Beginner’s Guide to SEO Keywords
How Many Keywords Should You Optimise for Your Website?
The straight answer to this question is one main keyword per page, along with two or three SEO keyword variations. Each page should focus on a single topic having the most important keywords. According to SEO experts, the ideal keyword density is around 1-2%. Once you go over, you may face a penalty and lose a significant amount of potential traffic.
Let’s look at a few things to avoid when optimising keywords:
- Keyword cannibalisation: The use of the same keyword for different website pages. You can prevent this by keeping track of keywords that you target on each page of your site.
- Keyword stuffing: The over-repetition of the same keywords on your page. Google classifies this as an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in the Google search results.
- Irrelevant keywords: Don’t use keywords that are misleading or don’t exactly describe your pages’ content. Insert keywords naturally and subtly.
Tip: It’s best to use long-tail keywords alongside your root keywords. They are more specific, longer forms of your root keyword and help rank your website on search engine results better. For example, your home renovation business can optimise long-tail keywords like “modern bathroom suite remodelling”.
Moreover, it also matters where you insert your keywords that will let search engines favour your website on search results. Here are the most relevant places to place them:
- Title tags
- Meta description
- Headers and subheaders
- Page content
- Page URL
- ALT and title attributes
How to Choose Keywords for Your Website?
1. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes
Keywords are an indicator of your audiences’ searches rather than the content you offer. It is important to identify and understand the needs of your customers and the language they use. This will help create relevant and engaging content resulting in better rankings and more traffic.
2. Analyse your competition
Checking the pages of your competitors to see which keywords they use can help you identify keywords that you need to target. It will help broaden your list of ideas and help you notice anything you might be missing.
3. Use research tools
To decide on the keywords to use, you can create a brainstorm/seed list of anything that describes your product, service, or information. You can also use keyword research tools to expand or refine your list and verify phrases to narrow down your desired keywords.
4. Follow-up on your keywords
It’s very important to monitor the keywords you have chosen and analyse the results. Update trending keywords or phrases and new keywords that your competitors might be using.
What are the Different Types of Keywords You Can Use?
Based on the keyword’s functionality, it is classified into seven categories:
- Short-term or fresh keywords are words reflecting a trending topic, item, or service.
- Long-term or evergreen keywords cover topics that are continually and consistently in vogue. They are more educational or informative in terms of promoting a product or service.
- Product-defining keywords are very specific to the product that someone is ready to purchase.
- Customer-defining keywords describe your target visitors. They specify your ideal market base and include gender, age, occupation, and lifestyle.
- Geo-targeting keywords include the attribute of a location for your target audience or market. They are ideal for small businesses that provide products or services to local customers.
- Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI keywords are an extension of your main content.
- Transactional keywords align with answers users expect to get out of their search query.
Leverage keywords to boost your SEO
Keywords are a critical component of SEO. You need to have a well-planned strategy to maximise them in improving your website usability, traffic, and search rankings. On top of that, you should invest in the best tools that will help you streamline your SEO processes – from planning to implementation to tracking.
