Search Engine Optimization: The Right Keywords Matter

Whether you like it or not, your website wants to rank high on search engines. But ranking high is not without putting solid time to nurture your site's content. To rank high on search engines you need a good solid foundation and that foundation to ranking high on search engines is keywords. Why do you need a solid keyword foundation is because people shopping behaviors have changed in this age of search engines. People are increasingly using search engines to help them find the products or services they are looking for. To do this, they type keywords into sites like Google, YouTube or Bing. The engines then rank sites related to these keywords based on relevance and authority.

To those of who are not in the inbound marketing space you might not fully comprehend some of the things in this article, however I have made it simple enough to understand the value, you might not understand the process. Choosing the right keywords is often the difference between getting found in search and not getting found. As a result, keyword research is the foundation of an effective online marketing strategy. Doing research is so essential that if you don't do it, you would have wasted your time and money. When developing a keyword strategy there are 3 things that you must do without fail:

1. Do your research
2. What are your competitors doing
3. Develop your keyword strategy

When you have developed your strategy it is time to review it before you implement it. It is important to understand what aspects of keywords make them important to your business. The different keyword characteristics will help you determine if the keyword is worth considering for your strategy. Only if keywords pass the primary selection tests can they be subjected to the prioritization variable tests. Considerations for primary keyword selection are: 

• Phrases have sufficient search volumes
• Assessing levels of relative competition
• Making sure the chosen keyword terms are relevant. 

You need to consider two things when prioritizing keywords are whether your keywords have a competitive advantage for the product/service you are offering and the profitability of the products/services associated with the keywords. Yes, please believe this, your keywords are going to be in competition with millions of your competitors around the world and this is why this process is so essential. Your website needs to gain authority and relevance above your competitors for your site to rank high on these searches. As I am writing this article the word 'branding' brings up 158 million results and only the first 15 searches appear on the first page. This alone shows that this process is essential to your website's success. 

For your site to have authority the following needs to happen, the number of links to a website - the more the better, number of links to the specific page will rank for the term in question and the anchor text of links to the specific page. Essentially in lay-man terms, links are the biggest factor in gaining authority and search engine rankings. 

And of course relevance on the other hand means looking to see if the other sites are specifically trying to rank for the term(s) in question. On-page relevancy can be quickly assessed by looking at simple elements. By considering both authority and relevancy, it's relatively simple to process to determine opportunities. If rankings for a given keyword term are dominated by much more powerful sites obviously targeting the term with their on-page factors, then it's likely best to look for another keyword opportunity. 

The benefit of having a good keyword strategy is that you site will rank high, ideally on the first page on the organic searches on the search engine sites. And since more and more people are relying on search engines to provide them with details of product, services, and businesses, your website has now become a entry-point for people to find you. Research in 2009 shows that people who are shopping for a service or product do not scroll to the second page, they rather change their search criteria, and the business they find on the first page of an organic search gives them confidence that the business has the capability to deliver services they require. Should you want your website be that extra employee that generates income for you and your business, then developing a good, solid keyword strategy is a good place to start.