Tips on How to Choose the Best Keywords for Your Website

When you have an SEO or PPC campaign, it all starts with one basic element: keyword research. Keywords are the driving force that enable web crawlers and indexers to find your page through the throngs of websites in the world-wide web. In order for you to choose the best keywords to target, it’s highly recommended that you do keyword research.

Keyword research not only helps you determine which terms or phrases you need to use for your SEO campaign; it also helps you predict and respond to shifts and trends in the market, enabling you to provide relevant content that users actively search for on the internet.

Here are a few tips on how to search for the best keywords to use on your website:

1. Determine what your product or service is all about

Your targeted keyword should describe exactly what service or product you’re offering. It should be relevant to the focus of your website’s content. The trick here is to think like a customer. Use a term or phrase that your customers are most likely to use to describe your product.

Knowing what your product is all about is an essential factor when searching for the keywords that are relevant to your business. For example, if your website is all about Managed IT Services, you can work around the term to find relevant keywords using keyword research tools.

2. Use keyword tools

Keyword research tools are handy applications used for finding the best keywords for your website and ad campaigns. Free tools, such as Google Adwords Keyword Planner, make it easier for you to create a strong keyword list to use in your PPC campaign. You simply input a keyword in the search bar and the tool automatically shows a list of relevant keywords you can choose from. You can also find keywords based on your landing page URL or product category.

Aside from providing you with a list of relevant keywords, keyword research tools can also be used to compare keyword trends, create campaigns, and gauge SEO metrics such as bounce rates, CPCs, and more. While Google Adwords is the go-to keyword research tool, there are also other tools available out there such as Wordtracker, WordStream, KWFinder, and Moz’s Keyword Explorer.

3. Focus on long tail keywords

Long tail keywords are keyword phrases that are three or more words long. Using specific keyword phrases help you target specific customers. Keyword phrases also help you rank in search engines better compared to single-word keywords.

For example, instead of using just “IT solutions” as your target keyword, phrases such as “managed service provider Dallas TX” provide much more detailed search results for users who search using specific phrases. However, the catch here is that these targeted keywords may be too specific and may lessen your chances of reaching out to a wider audience. It’s recommended to use long tail keywords that are less than nine words long.

4. Use short tail keywords sparingly

Short tail keywords are general and broad keywords, such as “IT support” or “network administration”. Broad keywords also make it hard for you to rank on the first page of search engines because of the density of websites containing the same keywords you are using, hence the competition is high.

If you choose to use short tail keywords, use it sparingly. There needs to be just the right mix of long tail and short tail keywords in your content to bring a steady traffic of visitors to your website. A trick you can use is to incorporate single-word keywords in long tail keywords, such is in the case of the previous example where we used the targeted long tail keywords “managed service provider Dallas TX” — where “IT support” is our short tail keyword

Keyword research isn’t exactly rocket science if you have the right tools. While the tips above are just general guidelines on how to properly choose your target keywords, these can help you get started running your PPC campaign.

If you want to know more about keyword research, or for Ilfusion to help you with your SEO campaign efforts, give us a call at 888-420-5115 or send us an email [email protected].

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