When it comes to your SEO, there are a variety of factors to keep in mind to help your business make the most of it. Keyword optimization is an integral part of good SEO. In brief, keyword optimization is the act of researching, analyzing, and selecting the most relevant keywords to drive qualified traffic toward your site.
Keep in mind, choosing the right keywords is only the first step. Ongoing optimization is a must to maintain your business’s momentum. While the best SEO agency in Toronto can offer a helping hand with your keyword optimization, it also helps to have an idea of how to proceed to enhance your approach.
Here’s a list of ideas that can help you maximize your keywords and help them contribute to your business’s growth.
1. Give your site an audit
If you already have a few webpages, it may be a good idea to do an SEO audit before producing any new content. An audit helps you check how SEO-friendly your site is, and allows you to detect any problems. In case of issues like duplicate content, defunct pages, or broken links, the audit can bring them to your attention, allowing you to maximize your online traffic. Audits are also a good way to ensure that your older pages can still pull their weight.
Old content may still rank for keywords even with the changes in trends, but they may need a tune-up to perform better. Performing regular audits can help you find older, but still high-traffic pages and improve the amount of traffic they get. After all, good content can last for years, and just because it’s old doesn’t mean it isn’t relevant anymore.
2. Insert your keywords organically
When it comes to inserting your keywords, one of the most integral points is making sure they’re inserted into your content organically. Any digital marketing agency Idaho company will tell you one thing – making your content sound natural instead of forcing keywords is better. Keywords work more optimally when you write them into the content in a way that sounds sensible. Google favours websites that use their keywords naturally, and it improves the visitors’ user experience as well.
When writing content, focus on answering the question the content is meant to answer, instead of how many times you can insert the keyword phrase. While you’re at it, remember to place your keywords in strategic locations as well. Titles, meta descriptions, and headings are prominent places to insert keywords, which can help get Google’s attention and improve your rankings.
3. Specify your keywords
Specifying your keywords is a great way to narrow down to your target audience. In general, you have a contrast between wide keywords that anyone can search for, vs narrow keyword phrases that matter to your audience niche. For example, if you target keywords like “sports injury therapy in Toronto,” it’s clear that you cater to the needs of clients in that city. More long-tail keywords tend to have lower competition for search results, which can help your pages rank higher. Narrowing down your area also makes it easier to show up on search results of queries made nearby, especially if you’ve also taken the time to set up your business listings.
Long-form keywords are also a golden opportunity to sneak in a little advertising. Tailor your keywords to reflect some of the services you offer. For example, if your business specializes in law firm web design services or 24-hour emergency plumbing services, use those keyword phrases to help match your pages to relevant search queries.
4. Use variations
When it comes to inserting your keywords, one thing that typically helps is utilizing variations. For example, given the keyword phrase “sales training,” you can also come up with phrase variations like “sales training tips”. These variations can give you new ideas for content creation, and offer ways to make your word choice more diverse.
With naturality being so important for content creation, it’s a good idea to have some synonyms for keywords to keep things fresh. Semantic differences are also a good way to catch more users. Users may use different variations on keywords for their queries, so using variations yourself can help match the content to different versions of the same essential queries.
5. Use keywords to drive the content process
Many SEO content strategies develop the content first, then go back and add the relevant keywords where they’re most appropriate. However, you can also do the opposite.
Take the list of keywords you develop after you’ve done your keyword research, and use those keywords to devise new content. The keywords can offer new ideas for interesting content, allowing you to keep releasing fresh content and maintain Google’s attention. It’s also more convenient for your content creation team. Rather than insert new keywords after the fact, you’ll be able to insert those as the content is being made.
6. Use different keywords to make the same points
When it comes to your SEO strategy, there’s often more than one way to get a point across. For example, there’s a difference between “what is the price,” and “how much does it cost,” even though they express similar ideas.
What you can do is create different blog posts based on each keyword phrase. Clients are likely to use either phrase when searching for the cost of yourproducts. Making content optimized for both keyword phrases is a good way to increase the odds of your clients finding your content, regardless of the exact phrasing they used to search for it.
7. Pay attention to mobile keywords
Like other elements of your site, it also pays to consider mobile when optimizing your keywords. Queries and keywords are liable to change depending on the device used to search. On mobile, queries tend to be shorter either because of the smaller keyboard or because users are using voice search. In general, it’s the difference between “auto tires Toronto” vs. “where I can buy tires”.
When optimizing your keywords, remember to take the desktop and mobile versions of keywords into account to make sure you get the attention of both types of users. For businesses with brick-and-mortar stores, it’s also vital you consider the location. Users often insert “near me” or similar elements into queries, so update your keywords to match those queries.
Strong keyword optimization is as invaluable a tool as quality SEO, content, andweb design. Whether law firms, plumbing businesses, or physiotherapy clinics, every business needs these tools to maximize the flow of traffic and increase their online visibility as time goes on. Keep these ideas in mind to ensure your keyword optimization always stays strong and that the keywords do their part to help you succeed.
