SEO + Keywords

My past two blogs have attempted to bring some clarity to someone who has just started researching SEO; this is a continuation of that. One of the most important aspects of SEO is keywords. Put simply, keywords are important to SEO because business attempt to understand and utilize certain keywords to help direct users that may need that company’s good or services. Remember, SEO is really consumer focused. There are ten main steps in Keyword Research.

First, you must think about and research the needs of your target users. What do they need to know in order to do what they want to do? What would they find important? The obvious second step is to do some quick, initial brainstorming. Ask yourself questions you think your prospects may be asking themselves. Next, you must explore a fuller range of semantic variables. A semantic variable is basically a the equivalent of an “x” or a “y” in a math problem. It’s a placeholder word that broadens the scope of a sentence or a search. “Coffee near me” is an example of this; “near me” is the semantic variable. The next step is to use certain tools like Google Keyword Planner and others to help modify this new list of keywords you have started. The fifth step is to create a master list of keywords that could be used while searching for your site. Then, do some searching yourself on those keywords. What other sites pop up when you type them in? Are they real competition? Can you beat them? You must ask yourself these questions. The next three steps are all related. Step seven is to reduce your list to a manageable number, eight is to identify 3-5 main keywords, and step nine is to identify 3-5 secondary keywords. All of this really shows you your strengths. Finally, you need to actively target keywords with onsite optimization efforts. Do the work of implementing keywords and it will pay off faster than you think