SEO Content: How to research the right keywords to optimise for

Creating quality content for your business website is only half the battle: if you’re serious about being successful online, you’ll need to “optimise your content”.

Don’t worry, this is just a fancy way of saying that the pages and blog articles you write for your website need to include a good quantity of the keywords you want to rank for in Google search results (and other search engines).

So, what makes the ‘right’ keywords?

1. Keywords that clearly define your product/service
2. Keywords that your potential customers are searching on

Researching and optimising for the correct keywords is important because it allows you to drive targeted, qualified traffic to your website and is a powerful leads generation tool (especially when used in conjunction with a paid Google Adwords campaign).

How to work out which keywords are right for your website copy:

Step 1. Make a list: For each of your website pages you will need to sit down and make a list of all the keyword phrases you think your potential customers might be searching on. The key here is to pick phrases which are about 2 to 3 words long and are relevant to your product/service. Don’t overthink it, just get the brain juices flowing and write as many as you can for now.

TIP: Got writers block? Here’s a great tool which actually spits out suggestions on keyword phrases you might like to optimise for: ‘Wordstream’

Step 2. Cull that list: Once you have a list of at least 20 to 30 keywords or phrases, the next step is to cut it down to size! You can do this by using Google’s free (and excellent!) keyword tool ‘Google Insights’ which allows you to compare search volumes across a range of locations and variables.

Tip: This step of the process is important: if you sell used cars in Sydney, you wouldn’t choose just the keyword ‘cars’, you’d want to target customers who are searching for ‘used cars’ at a minimum; targeting for just ‘cars’ would mean that you could capture irrelevant visitors who could be searching for ‘new cars’ or ‘toy cars’ etc. So make sure you cull the keywords which are too general and keep the longer, targeted phrases.

Step 3. Focus on ‘long tail’ keywords: Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture here! So many businesses concentrate on the search volume of keywords instead of the quality, and as a consequence their website copy is then wasted since it just contains broad general terms which any tom, dick or harry could be searching on. Your website will be lost in a sea of higher ranking website pages on Google if you do this.

TIP: Put yourself in your customer’s boots: Think about what YOU would type into a search engine if you were looking to buy your own product. Going back to the used car example, the keyphrases ‘buy used car’ or ‘buy used car Sydney’ etc. would feature frequently and generate a great targeted audience to your website.

But hold on… there’s more to it than just getting the keywords right!

Once you’ve done your research and chosen your keywords and keyphrases, the next step is to write the content for your webpages. Remember, there is an art to getting content written well, and written well for search engines. Google is too smart to be fooled by content which is just a page stuffed with keyword after keyword – it will know if you’ve decided to ‘keyword stuff’ and penalise you accordingly. Make sure your content is well written and relevant to your audience. There is much more to SEO than just keywords alone – if you’d like more ideas on how to optimise your content, read our article ‘7 ways to optimise your next blog post’

Hey….one more (unrelated) thing:

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