We’ve spent a lot of time in class talking about the importance of keywords and their use and importance in SEO. Hearing professor Sweet talk so much about them got me thinking and I realized that keywords are much more than just an SEO tool.
Keywords are really a description of what the business is and/or does. This actually makes it easier to think about keywords in an SEO context. SEO is all about optimizing the findability of your business. Knowing what makes your business unique and what it is is a pretty crucial aspect of that. See, if you don’t have a good handle on what your business is and what it has to offer (why people would want to do business with you) then keywords are going to be pretty useless.
So, when looking to develop keywords, don’t just think about “how do I want my business to be found.” Think bigger picture: “What is my business, and therefore, how can I best connect with customers?” Adopting inaccurate keywords simply to drive more traffic is a disaster waiting to happen. When people do end up on your site, they will be dissatisfied with what they find there. Instead, pick keywords that are true to your business so that the right people will find what they are looking for!
In conclusion, keywords are really a short description of what a business is. Their purpose is not to be “wishful thinking.” Instead, they should be realistic so the right people find the right business.
2 Responses
I was thinking about this idea a lot as well as I wrote my post for this week. SEO is still about people. What the search engines and web crawlers do matter–but assessing user intent is still the first step in effective SEO. If you aren’t reaching the right audiences, it doesn’t matter how well your site is ranking.
This is definitely a helpful way of looking at key words and how to use them. I like your point at the end about how key words should be realistic so that the target market can find your website easily.