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Before you can optimize your website for search engines, you need to know what you’re targeting. Selecting that target means picking your keywords. While putting together a simple, straightforward task, don’t disregard it as busy work or assume the answer is obvious! Without good keywords, your inbound strategy will be seriously limited.
Inbound marketing is the backbone of digital marketing. Traditional marketing takes an outbound approach, reaching out to customers and hoping that someone happens to be interested. Inbound marketing, however, makes content available and then lets customers come to them when they are interested in the topic.
For example, Home Depot may post blogs with DIY tips for home improvement, like how to build a raised flowerbed. People who need tips on how to set up their own flowerbeds are likely to do a Google search and read relevant blogs. Once those strangers visit Home Depot’s blog, they are in the perfect position to be converted to customers, since they have a need relevant to Home Depot’s business. After making a purchase and having a good customer experience, customers can promote Home Depot by bragging online about the flowerbed they created using Home Depot’s tips. Both products and services can establish their trustworthiness to potential customers through online reviews. This is inbound marketing.
This formula can be applied to any business, since every industry has customers with access to Google. Effective inbound marketing means you need to be relevant to customers who are making their interest known. If your business doesn’t target the appropriate keywords, you could end up missing out on countless sales.
In order for your business to take advantage of inbound marketing, you have to ask yourself, what searches do you want to pull up your website?
No one knows your business better than you. Before you involve any technical tools, take a moment to write down what words or phrases that are relevant to your business. The website for Digital Marketing Sapiens’ U.S. location, for instance, includes the keywords “search engine marketing San Antonio” and “SEO San Antonio” since we have clients who want SEO services and we are based in San Antonio.
As our SEO example indicates, it’s helpful to consider what your potential customer would search, not just what you yourself would search. Our team may search SEO but that acronym may not mean anything to a client who hasn’t used a digital marketing agency before. In every industry, there are terms and phrases that become normal but, to outsiders, would mean meaningless. Consider how your customers or clients refer to things, rather than how your own team discusses your products or services.
When your goal is the first page, it’s important to consider how competitive the keywords you are selecting can be.
Short, high traffic words will be incredibly difficult to overtake. If you want to be the top result for the word “food,” you’ll have to compete with every restaurant, food truck, cooking show, grocery store, food photographer, recipe list, yelp review, food bank, and news article on the internet.
Meanwhile, if you want to be the top result for “vegan ice cream shop downtown San Antonio,” it won’t take too much effort or money. However, that is because no one is searching for that term.
None of this is to say that you should not target high traffic, popular words or low traffic, specific terms. Both have their advantages! Ultimately, it is a matter of balance. Where can you get the most bang for your buck?
To determine that, you can use various online tools that can help you flesh out your keyword list.
Keyword Tool.io uses Google Autocomplete to help you make informed decisions about your keywords. This helps you see what actual people are searching based on whatever starting point you provide. If you have only been able to come up with a few terms on your own, this website can help you think outside yourself in order to take a closer look at where your potential customers are spending their time.
For example, when you search “search engine optimization,” the keyword suggestions show a pattern of people looking for help. They want tips, basics and tools. As you can tell from the title of this blog, Digital Marketing Sapiens can meet this need!
Google Trends provides a very different set of data. By searching a keyword on Google Trends, you can see how many people have searched for that keyword over time. You can even compare keywords.
By reviewing the interest in a keyword over time, you can see whether a certain term is gaining interest, holding steady or losing interest. Some keywords hold steady but many others can vary by time of year or based on recent fads. It’s great to take advantage of the seasons or a new trend but, if something is on the downswing, you may not want to dedicate too much time or energy to pursuing it.
These tools are useful from a high level but nothing beats historical statistics. If you know what keywords people are already using to find your website, you can make informed decisions for your website’s future. Google AdWords has a keyword planner that can give you basic analytics about your website as well as provide related keywords for your consideration.
If you’re not used to reviewing analytics, this can easily be overwhelming. While you have a unique insight into your customers, you also have a business to run. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you need extra help! We are available to talk at (210) 582-5842 or by email at info@dmsapiens.com.
