Recently, an associate of mine passed along a link to a new business website he wanted me to review for SEO. The development, coding and SEO had been contracted to a web development firm in India, and the firm claimed to my associate that the website was 100% search engine optimized.
Which I found very interesting.
To be fair, the site's overall structure and code was clean and very SEO friendly. There was no text hidden in images, URL structures were neat and each page had a defined keyword cloud. H1 and H2 tags were used, and some in-paragraph keyword text was even bolded.
So, why did I feel this site was not properly optimized? One main reason: its keywords were off. Also, its page titles were not properly formatted, but we won't focus on that today.
A recent guest post over at Men with Pens lists common "SEO mistakes that make you look like an amateur", and two out of five of these mistakes are regarding wrong keyword choice. One of the mistakes is "choosing useless keywords" - in other words, keywords that people aren't searching for. The other is "choosing keywords you can't win" - keywords that are simply too competitive for your budget.
Choosing the right keywords for your website is absolutely foundational to your site's success. After all, the keywords you decide to target determine who will find you in search results - and what your visitors will expect from your site. When I talk about your website's success, I'm not talking about traffic volume. You can choose keywords that bring your site plenty of visitors, but ultimately, number visitors aren't what matter most. I'm talking about quality, engagement and conversions. If you're a marketing manager, it's thing your boss is always nagging you about: ROI.
The right keywords will bring your site visitors, yes, but more importantly, they should bring you visitors who are looking to buy the products or services your site is selling. They're not looking for definitions or general information - they're looking for what your site has to offer.
In the web marketing industry, this is called traffic quality.
Let's take a look at a few key factors to keep in mind when choosing keywords.
Overly competitive keywords.
Aka "keywords you can't win" - these are keywords with a monthly search volume that is simply out of your range. When you check for keyword search volume (which you NEED to do for every last keyword), have a target search volume which matches your budget and project scope already in mind. For example, if your website's budget for startup marketing is only $2,000, you don't want to choose keywords with 110,000 monthly searches. It's simply not practical. You don't have the resources to compete for this keyword, but don't worry - you have other options. Try narrowing your keywords to hone in on your site's specialty or niche; find keywords with between 2,000 and 5,000 in monthly search volume, and optimize for those. Once revenue for these niche keywords begins to come in and your site budget expands, you can begin to try for the more competitive terms.
Overly general keywords.
Another reason not to go for terms with the highest volume is that they may not be as specific as they need to be. Think again about traffic quality, and weeding out potential visitors who are only looking for general information, or services your site doesn't offer.
Going back to my associate's website SEO, this was my biggest problem with the keywords. Most of them were very general and, consequently, competitive, and the site simply didn't have the budget to compete for the keywords it was using. Also, its general keywords could be often used to search for information about the service it was marketing, not the services themselves.
Look, for example, at the difference in search volume in the terms below:
"Product design" and "product development" (the terms being used on the site in question) have a very high search volume, close to 300,000 in global searches each. Yet if you google both of these terms, you'll find 1/3 to 1/2 of the first page results are informational. Even if the budget was expanded to effectively market these terms, a large portion of the traffic would be unqualified.
Smaller, more specific terms such as "new product development", "new product design" and "new product development services" would be easier to gain rankings for AND would bring in more qualified traffic.
Keywords with little or no search volume.
On the flip side of the coin, it is possible to optimize your site for keywords that are too specific - or are simply the wrong terminology. Industry professionals have a tendency to use a different terminology than their consumers, and this becomes very evident when it comes to search. Websites which are optimized for the terms industry insiders use to describe the products or services being offered run the risk of getting little or no traffic at all. You may call your sweater a "brushed Montauk cardigan", but I'm probably going to search for a "merino wool cardigan", and unless you've optimized your product page with those descriptors, I'm not going to find your sweater.
Irrelevant keywords.
This concept is obvious enough: your keywords must be 100% relevant to your products, period. A great way to test to make sure the keywords you've chosen represent your products or services is to do a little searching yourself. Search for the terms you want to use, and browse the results. Are your competitors there? Do the results match the contents of your own website? If so, you've found a winner. If the results are unrelated to your product or service, you'll need to refine your terms.
In retrospect, the firm in India my associate contracted may have done the best with what they had to work with based on the terms they were given. This, however, punctuates how important it is for business owners and their SEOs to thoroughly discuss and research keywords before moving forward on a project.
Over at Creative Web Business, we've got a resource section specifically dedicated to helping business owners understand the keyword research process. Just visit us and click through to the resource section.
2 comments:
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Choosing appropriate keywords is extremely important. Analyze your business carefully and think of all the words that relate to your company or product.
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