4 Tips On Choosing Target Keywords For SEO

Getting started with SEO for your business website?

Want to make sure to choose the right terms?

By now you probably understand the importance of optimizing your website if you want your business to be found in search results. But before you start creating a large amount of new content, you should make sure you have a plan. After all, you want to work smart, not hard.

Below are the 4 crucial tips you must consider if you want to choose the right target keywords for your website.

1. Check Out the Competition

As with many aspects of your business, it’s a good idea to scope out what your competitors are doing. It can pay to be different sometimes. However, researching what keywords your competitors are using will help you start creating a list of initial terms.

Take a look at your competitor’s blog and see what topics they are on and what words are used in their blog headlines.

You can also use a keyword tool to instantly see what keywords a specific site is currently ranking for. This can be a great way to gauge your own site and the site’s of your competitors to start choosing the right keywords.

2. Choose Long-Tail Keywords

A huge mistake some businesses make when starting with SEO is that they choose keywords that are far too broad or are a single word only. When choosing keywords for your site, it is critical that you choose long-tail keywords to rank for.

Long-tail keywords are terms that are several words long and that are specific and relevant to your business.

If you’re a restaurant, don’t choose a term such as “food”. You’ll get much more relevant visitors to your site if you use a long-tail term such as “Caribbean-style seafood in Chicago”.

On the other hand, it can be a good idea to not be too specific. If your SEO keywords are too specific, you may be choosing terms that don’t get enough traffic.

3. Consider the Keyword Popularity

It’s important that you use a keyword tool to make sure that the SEO keywords you choose are getting enough traffic. If you choose a term that only gets 50 searches each month, then no matter how well your site is optimized for the term, you won’t be getting much traffic.

A keyword tool will show you exactly how much traffic a term is getting. That way, you can make sure you choose the right words before you start adding the words to your site.

Of course, if a term is too popular it could also be a problem. A keyword tool will also show you the competition of the term.

If a keyword is too competitive that will mean that too many people are already using the keyword and are probably already ranking well for it. It may be difficult for your site to rank for the term on the first page of search results as well.

4. Research But Don’t Assume

You shouldn’t assume what keywords will be good for your site to rank for. You may think that a certain keyword won’t be competitive to rank for or that a term is getting plenty of traffic. However, you should perform thorough keyword research so you will know for sure beforehand.

Also, the phrasing of a keyword and the individual words included in long-tail term does have some effect as well. For example, you may find that “used cars for sale” has a lot more traffic than “buy used cars”.

It’s important to have a plan before you begin so that you can avoid doing too much work without getting the results that you deserve for your efforts.

Final Thoughts

By keeping the tips above in mind when you choose your target keywords, you’ll make sure that you have a site that is optimized as well as possible.

So to recap the above keyword researching points:

• Research what your competitors are doing
• Choose long-tail keywords rather than single-word terms
• Consider the popularity of your keywords
• Perform thorough keyword research instead of assuming results

By taking just a little bit of extra time to research and create a plan, you’ll be well ahead of your competitors and on the way to boosting your site’s ranking.