Meta Description: Learn why keywords are an essential part of SEO and how important they are for your website’s growth.
You want to rank at the top of Google.
You want to attract thousands of people to your website each week.
So, you go ahead and start covering random topics - in hopes to rank at the top.
You publish 5-10 blog posts each month.
That’s great.
But! A few months from now, you see none of your articles to be ranking at the top.
Why?
That’s because you didn’t conduct thorough keyword research prior. You didn’t try to find any gaps and opportunities that’ll help you rank at the top.
And as important as keyword research is, you need to implement them smartly.
Are keywords really crucial to a successful marketing campaign?
Why is so much emphasis placed on keyword selection?
Let’s find out.
What are Keywords?
To put it simply, keywords are a pair of words that define the content on your web page. So if you want to rank at the top of Google for the keyword “digital marketing,” then you’ll carefully implement the keyword throughout your web page. In SEO terms, keywords are the words or phrases that people enter into the search engine (search queries) to find what they're looking for.
They are the “key” that indicates search engines about the content on your page and hence help people discover your page with the keywords typed. Imagine evaporating everything on your page say videos and images to just words that precisely define your business, those would form your keywords.
If a searcher's keywords or phrases match those found on your web page targeting a particular keyword, then that web page will show up on search result pages.
In more than one way, keywords form the crux and backbone of SEO and ad campaigns.
In terms of SEO, by incorporating the right keywords, your webpage will be displayed at the top whenever a search query is processed in reaction to your product. This, in turn, will ensure organic and high-quality traffic is diverted to your website leading to higher conversions and increased sales.
Google Ads network works by bidding to appear at the topmost of the search results based on specific keywords. The more specific the keyword, the higher the chance of your business being discovered.
Now that we have a vague understanding of what keywords are and why they are important, let us delve deeper.
Why are Keywords Important for Your Business?
To summarize, we have listed why keywords are important to a business below:
● Target Market: Keywords help and match the target market to the business. They are helpful in hyper-targeting the audience, hence enabling the right customer to find the right product.
● Search Engine Rankings: By using the appropriate keywords in the right amount, you are improving the chances of google displaying your webpage on top.
● Content Connection: By weaving the relevant keywords in your content, you are ensuring that high-quality content is delivered to the right target audience at the perfect time, thus being advantageous for both parties.
● Communication: The most important part of using keywords is communicating to Google that your website matches the query searched by the end-user. This helps in delivering the right product to the suitable target audience.
● High-Quality Traffic: By using the proper keywords, genuine, high-quality organic traffic is propelled to the relevant websites.
● High Conversion & Increased Sales: As mentioned above, high-quality traffic will lead to higher conversion which will in turn result in increased sales and ROI. By using relevant keywords, your customer will find your business before your competitors.
To elaborate on the above points, keywords and the research behind them help you, as a business, to understand your target audience. You will need to understand how the end-user best describes your product best and designate keywords accordingly.
Appropriate Keyword research and relevant search engine optimization drastically improve the chances of your webpage being on page 1 of the search result pages. A study from 2020 research on keywords shows that most of the titles on Google's first page primarily contained keywords that were an exact or a partial match to the search query typed.
Besides the SEO and search result ranking part, keywords have other benefits that can help better your business.
For instance, let us say you are a vegan food production company. During your keyword research, you find there is a high search volume for the term “organic bread”. This could indicate there is a new product in the market that you should get on board with.
Where Should You Use Keywords?
While the right way to use keywords differs from business to business, here are some of the most successful ways keywords can be incorporated:
● Page Title - While searching for anything inline, the first thing a user sees is the title of a page. Ensure the keywords are used in the title of the page so that it instantly draws the attention of the user and drives them to your site.
● Meta-Descriptions - A crisp and concise meta description tells the user what your page (and business) is all about. Use keywords in the description to emphasize what it is that your page is displaying. Think of a meta description like a high-quality pitch, that attracts users to your page.
● Site Links or URLs - URLs are definitive in terms of what content is displayed on the page. Keep URLs short and use keywords (even if one) to ensure Google leads your page to the right people. Using keywords in URLs is important as they define the page before a user reviews the content.
● Main Content - The content displayed on your webpage has to have diligently weaved keywords. Content forms the main attraction of a page. Whether it is in the form of text or videos, emphasizing the content with relevant keywords is of prime importance. Keywords help the content you worked so hard on to be found by the relevant audience. A good practice is to ensure important keywords are injected into the first 100 words of your content.
Key Takeaways
While we have covered everything about keywords and why they are important, it is equally significant to understand keyword research also plays a major role in the success of a campaign. Getting in your audience’s shoes and researching keywords that deem most suitable is an approach used by most successful businesses.
With keywords, it says quality over quantity. The consistency and relevance of keywords are more influential factors than the density of keywords used.