Keyword Strategy Is
Your SEO Foundation
Keywords stand as the foundation for optimizing your presence online through content marketing. Creating a well defined keyword strategy for search engine optimization early on in the process of designing or updating your website will help focus your efforts on content in a way that positively impacts your company’s ability to obtain positive search results.
A simple keyword strategy begins with identifying 3 to 5 words that adequately describe what you do as a business. General words, such as “consultant”, or “marketing” are saturated with competition (within search engines) making it difficult to obtain a high ranking. Look for more specific words that are less common but still on point with what you do. For example, using longer phrases, called long-tail keywords, that include your desired keyword, is often searched within search engines. The benefit of long-tail keywords is that your potential client is focused, knowing exactly what they want in their research. If their search matches your keywords, your chance of converting them as a lead is extremely high.
You can test your word choices by using Hubspot’s Keyword Grader Tool or Google’s Keyword Tool to determine the frequency of use. The more popular the keyword, the more intense the competition, so creativity in your vocabulary while working with the most common words is key to your success.
Once you have identified the keywords you would like to use, it’s essential to properly incorporate them into your website so they can be identified by the search engines. This is referred to as on-page optimization—you are organizing and optimizing your website’s pages to be recognized by search engines through the placement of your identifying keywords throughout the entirety of the site. Below are 3 primary locations to place your keywords:
1. Page Title. Keep this to 70 words or less for optimal results.
2. Headings. These are the areas that typically appear in larger or bold type. If you can, check the HTML code for your site and look for words with an <h1> tag surrounding it. Header tags are ranked, <h1>, <h2> etc. the higher the # the more weight it is given by the search engines.
3. Page Description. Called Meta Data, this information is not used in search engine results but does briefly describe the content of your site. It is what users see before clicking and is critical to driving traffic to your site.
4. Image Alt Tag. This is key word language that resides “underneath” an image on your page.
Another thing to consider when designing a keyword strategy for search optimization is the frequency in which your keywords appear on any given page. Keep the frequency between 1% and 2%. This is enough for optimal recognition by the search engines but not so much that it could be considered keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is not only detrimental to your search results but it can often be difficult or uncomfortable to read.
The purpose of developing your inbound marketing effort is to increase traffic to your site by obtaining a higher ranking on the search engines. However, keep in mind that the purpose of obtaining a higher search engine ranking is to lead potential customers to your site to share your expertise and to engage them in a conversation that could ultimately lead to a sale.
The cornerstone of inbound marketing consists of thoughtful, timely and informative information that stands relevant to your customer or client base, all of which must be present within the structure of a well designed website. Your keyword strategy for search optimization is an important part of this process and should be a guiding influence in creating content that maximizing your chances of landing on the first page of any search engine’s results.
Getting Started:
At Hero, being a design and marketing studio, a large amount of our interaction with words exists through keywords. We use words and language to our advantage to communicate ideas and create concepts. Big ideas. Working with keywords, to us, is like a crossword puzzle, a fun word game that we won’t put down until we’ve filled in every letter’s box. In our eyes, the puzzle is a fun challenge to optimizing our vocabulary with those words that are often forgotten. In approaching SEO and content marketing, we apply the same rules—we seek out those words that best identify your brand, and figure out how they fit into the grid. Contact us to set up a brainstorm of the words that best fit your business and, together, we’ll figure out how to finish the puzzle. Let’s start a conversation.
