At the heart of every SEO campaign lie the keywords that your site will be optimized for. Having the right keywords means
- Understanding what your customers are actually searching for
- Knowing what your chances are at ranking for these keywords
- and Where to strategically place these keywords throughout your website.
Picking The Right Keywords
You may be an expert in your industry, but do you know how regular people outside of your industry talk about it? The data may surprise you. I've researched all manners of industries and I'm always surprised to learn what people are actually searching when they need a particular service.
Search Volumes
Every single keyword comes with its own set of data points. One of the most important metrics to jot down is search volume. This is the average number of times a keyword is searched every month. It is beneficial to rank highly for keywords with a high search volume.
Relevance
Its not enough to rank highly for keywords with a high search volume. You also want those keywords to be relevant to your business or service. Somebody searching for an air conditioner repair man wont get much help if they're finding an ice cream shop in their search results.
Competition
Once you've found the perfect set of keywords for targeting your customers, you will quickly discover every other business that ranks for these keywords already. These are your competitors. Most competitors will have poorly optimized websites and can be beaten with a straight-forward on-page optimization strategy. When all your competitors have optimized websites, you start look off-page, beginning the journey to grow your digital footprint to improve your website's relevance and authority. In the event of a highly competitive digital marketing space, the company with the bigger budget is the one that takes the lion's share.