SEO Keywords are a huge part of SEO. They help guide on-page strategy and content creation, and they even play an important role in SEO Link Building. But, despite SEO keywords’ ability to provide a sound foundation for traffic and engagement, they can lead you down the wrong optimization path if you’re not careful. It’s not just learning how to find keywords for SEO, but finding the right keywords for SEO.
Good keyword research backed by an understanding of the potential for mistakes – and the consequences of misinformation – is essential.
Choose the right keywords and you can successfully frame your entire SEO campaign for success. Optimize for the wrong keywords and you may not connect with your target audience, in fact you could harm your business by wasting time and other resources.
How do you know you’re optimizing for the right SEO keywords? What signs do you look for to make sure your keyword research isn’t deceiving you (there’s likelihood that this may happen)? First, you need to take time to understand the keywords that show up in your research results. You also must thoroughly know your target customer.
Sometimes the results that show up when we’re evaluating keywords don’t mean what they appear to mean. They can lead us down the wrong track if we don’t pay attention to source and context.
One one of the tricky aspects in how to find keywords for SEO, though, is that we don’t always know a keyword is wrong for our audience until we’ve given it time to play out. Often, after analyzing the data, we can usually see much more clearly if keywords chosen based on initial research, competitors keywords, client feedback and other information are not the best keywords for our campaign at all.
Time offers much insight into the effectiveness of our optimized keywords, which is why it’s vital your SEO strategy include ongoing evaluation and redirection.
Content that doesn’t connect with your target customer for a variety of reasons is a basic example of the need to constantly re-evaluation and redirect your marketing strategy. We don’t always get it right the first time. So, a marketer must be willing to switch gears and adapt even if a great deal of time was put into keyword research, or if an article was completely well-planned and thought out.
Failed content often has strong ties to improperly selected keywords. But, rather than retire a piece altogether, regrouping on SEO keywords could be all that’s needed for a successful Round 2.
Here are some ways you can make sure you’re optimizing for the right keywords:
Check for Organic Visibility
When content is done correctly, it can provide you with incredible SEO results. Your goal when creating optimized content, therefore, should be to choose keywords that are in line with what you will write and in turn with what you will offer.
It’s important to look at intent when selecting keywords. Think about the users who type keywords into a search bar. What are they really searching for? If you want your content to show up in the search results for a given keyword, the intent behind it has to match users’ intent.
Essentially, you need to create content that includes the researched keyword and revolves around it. Everything you write in a piece must explain your unique solution to users’ queries (the keywords).
Rankings rely heavily on an organic match between the intent of the person searching online and the usefulness of the content that a website provides.
Based on your keyword research, you should have pages of content that match the intent of a buyer in the early stages of a purchase and that speak to a consumer ready to close a deal (and that address concerns in between).
You’ll know you’re properly (organically) matching your content’s intent with your target audiences’ intent when you show up high in the SERPs. Not seeing the results you want? Take a look at Google Search Console to get ideas for more appropriate long-tail keywords. You can then go back and update your content to give it another shot at being seen by the right consumers at the right time.
Take a Look at Low Time on Page/Bounce Rate
Many marketers don’t like to look at bounce rate because it can be misleading without the proper context. There are so many reasons why a you might see a high bounce rate, but those factors don’t necessarily mean you have a bad page.
If you’re creating content that’s supposed to be informational and action driven though, and you’re seeing a high bounce rate for that content’s page, something is wrong. There’s a good chance that your chosen keywords (and probably the content surrounding them) aren’t resonating with your target audience. In other words, they’re not matching user intent.
The same can be said for indicators of low time on site. If your data shows that users weren’t staying on your pages, even if they’re the correct people, your content might not have been educational or engaging enough. It may not have spoken to your audience’s expectations when they landed on your page. Perhaps you were addressing top-of-funnel topics when your target customers were looking to find solutions at the bottom.
Pay Attention to Impressions vs. Click-Through Rate
You might come across the scenario where your optimized SEO content is getting a good number of impressions but traffic to your page is stalled. This often means that you’re choosing the wrong SEO keywords.
Always keep an eye on Search Console to pinpoint keywords that have high impressions but low click-through rates. When this happens, the problem could be that your content doesn’t match the intent behind the chosen keywords. It could also be a matter of a Title Tag that needs to be rewritten to be more action oriented.
A successful SEO strategy depends on intent-backed keyword research, continuous evaluation of keywords and alignment of keywords and content. To learn more about how to find keywords for SEO and approaching content marketing in this way, contact Galileo Tech Media.