When using tools to research a topic online, keywords are the backbone of any Google search. Keywords are utilized in every search engine you’ve ever used to determine the relevance between a term and a specific page you may be looking for based on your search terms. Web pages are displayed to the end-user based on how high of a ranking the keywords within the page rank on Google’s SEO system.
If you want your website to be more visible on Google, you’ll need to ensure its keywords rank highly enough on Google’s search algorithms and appear often enough to rank over and above the competition.
Understanding keyword research fundamentals
To understand how keywords play a role in your website performance, you’ll need to understand how they function on the Internet. Keyword research is a data analysis technique that analyzes specific words typed into search engines over a period of time and their popularity as it relates to directing web users to specific pages.
Keyword research is beneficial when building a website or a blog to help you learn how to structure your posts to make them easily locatable when potential customers search for businesses like yours.
Understanding the best keywords to use for your website’s content and their frequency of use will help your website rank higher on Google, Bing, etc. This will mean more website visits, which could translate into sales of your products or inquiries about your services.
Understand your audience
This requires an understanding of what your target audience is with your web content and accurately predicting their search terms. It also requires understanding whether your website is optimized for mobile users and computer searches. Do most of your target audience access your site via phone or computer?
Understanding how your audience searches for your website and the terms they use will help you choose the right keywords to include on your web pages, helping your site rank higher on Google, above the competition.
Essential tools and resources for effective keyword research
When researching which keywords are trending, many tools are available to help, including:
- KWFinder from Mangools helps you locate keywords in any language from any country. It also gives you rank-order listings of the most popular keywords and precise keyword statistics from competition with similar keywords in their content.
- SEOPowerSuite is one of your most comprehensive options for keyword research tools. It provides you with an included keyword audit of your website, link management (outgoing links help your websites rank higher!), and cloud storage support for up to 400 projects.
- Ahrefs is the premier choice among content creators on the net today. It provides accurate keyword difficulty scores for your content (that is, how easy or difficult it is to locate your content based on the existing keywords), support in 171 countries, and offers 1,000+ keyword suggestions.
Utilizing Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends
Google provides two helpful tools as part of Google Suite. The first is Google Keyword Planner — their proprietary research helpful tool when searching for optimal keywords for your content. However, it isn’t a catch-all tool like some of the more dedicated keyword research tools, and it does have certain limitations. For example, it limits you to 700 daily keyword searches.
Google Trends is another essential tool for those whose website depends on staying up-to-date with the latest search trends on the Internet, regardless of industry, location, or language. Google Trends uses artificial intelligence and data mining to analyze the top search trends across languages and regions. This can be useful when building content in a specific country or for a specific audience.
Unearthing high-performance keywords
One of the keys to outperforming your competition in the SEO space is utilizing different tools than they are. This could mean leveraging third-party keyword search engines like SEMRush or Frase or even WordPress SEO plugins to allow you to find untapped keywords and best the competition.
Conduct competitor analysis
You’ll also want to conduct competitor analysis to see what they’re doing properly and how you might learn from it. That is, scouring their websites to identify how often they use the keywords you’ve come up with from third-party SEO keyword trackers. Keywords are easily identifiable as repetitious, relevant words within a web page or article related to the website’s topic.
Learning how your competitors use keywords could help you construct a methodology for using different, higher-ranking keywords from third-party keyword search programs.
Understanding user intent and content alignment
To construct a keyword-rich website, you must understand how your customers search for the topics your website covers. It may seem obvious that customers use Google and other search engines by typing in keywords, and then relevant pages come up based on those keywords. However, checking how your website is doing regarding what people search for can be done using algorithms created by companies like Google.
Once you understand how your customers search the internet, you can ensure that your content aligns with those searches. This may mean revamping your website a fair bit, but the goal of gaining more website traffic via ranking higher on Google searches will have the revamping paying for itself in no time.
Tracking and measuring keyword success
Many of the analytical tools mentioned above can measure each website post for keyword success and how your use of keywords ranks among others on the internet. However, it’s not just the words themselves. It’s how they fit into each sentence’s context and the broader context of the website.
Specific tools can measure how keywords perform on your website and whether they improve organic traffic (an original click on your site). Monitor the keyword trends as they change throughout the year and as things become more or less popular by using different analytical tools having these figures in front of you will allow you to adjust your keyword inclusion strategy to keep up with the ever-changing pace of keyword use online.
Final thoughts
Website construction and maintenance technology is evolving at lightning speed. With the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the ability to analyze a website’s performance has never been more effortless.
Focusing on keywords and how search engines are utilized allows web builders to bring genuine, data-backed insights to their team meetings on organic web growth. Using strategies like the above and SEO tools will only help your web copy composition go from strength to strength and allow your website to climb the Google rankings.
