SEO: How to Utilize Keywords to Bring Traffic to Your Website
As a business owner, there are many marketing channels you can use to grow your business. Some will be worth your time and energy, while others won’t based on your ideal audience. Today, we’ll tell you about one marketing channel that we believe every business owner should implement and understand, even if it is at a basic level: SEO.
What Is SEO?
Search engine optimization, better known as SEO, is the technique of optimizing your website and all of the content you create, to generate organic traffic – traffic you don’t have to pay for. SEO can get complex, but the basics are pretty simple to understand. You can read our article on SEO 101 to learn more. Properly using SEO can enhance your business by increasing visibility and the quality of traffic that is coming to your website. That said, SEO is often overlooked, misunderstood, or just not done correctly. We want to make sure you are doing it right.
Types of SEO
There are two primary types of SEO:
On-Page SEO is the process of optimizing your web pages and the content on your website. This includes the blogs and product pages by properly utilizing keywords, meta descriptions, titles, headers, images, and more.
Off-Page SEO is the action you are taking outside of your website. This includes things like backlinks to your website and your social media. Doing these things will drive additional impressions and website visits, impacting your rankings with search engines.
The Importance of Keywords in Your Content
Your content is much more than a few pages on your website. Your content consists of your web pages, blogs, podcasts, videos and any other content that will live on your website. It is also the links and social media that will live off of your website.
As you are creating your content plan, SEO is a big piece of the puzzle. Keywords are a big part of SEO. Keywords are the words and phrases used to find online content. They are the actual words people use when searching for something using a search engine.
Properly researching your keywords is what will make all of this work. Doing your keyword research is a very impactful way to help your business increase quality traffic that will ultimately lead to more sales.
Important Tips for Your Keyword Research
With SEO, it seems like there is always more to learn. Once you dive in, you will see exactly how powerful SEO can be for bringing traffic to your website and for your business as a whole. Here are some tips to help get you started.
- Understand your business goals and what you are trying to accomplish – it always starts there.
- Identify your ideal customer persona, what makes them buy, where they will find you, and what problem you will solve for them.
- Keyword Research:
- Begin keyword research by creating a list for your business and testing these words in google. Then, rank the importance of keywords based on those results.
- Understand the intent of what people are searching for. Which words and phrases will resonate with your ideal persona?
- Search and test manually, but also consider using one of the following tools (some of which have free versions or free trials) to aid in your keyword research:
- Conduct competitor research to better understand concepts of what is working, types of content, and types of links that are being used.
- Finalize your keyword list and begin utilizing them in your content.
At the end of the day, you are trying to create the best user experience to help grow leads and increase sales. If you are not using some form of keyword research to help guide your content creation, improve your SEO, and to help drive more traffic, then you are likely missing a lot of opportunities.
If you have any questions on SEO and keywords, we’re always happy to answer them. Also, as part our Strategic Marketing Roadmaps we can include keyword research for our clients. Reach out to us at any time for more information!
