How Do Keywords Work?
On the Succeed Online Blog, we’ve been talking about Backlinks, ASO, and SEO. But at the heart of all this are keywords. When you hear the term keyword or keyword phrases, you know what they are but what is their core importance?
What Are Keywords?
At the most basic level, keywords are the concepts and themes that define the topic your website is presenting. And when it comes to SEO, these are the words or phrases that people use when looking for information on search engines.
And ideally, they will find that information on your website. You want to be sure that the right keywords appear on the relevant page. The faster users find what they are seeking, the more satisfied they will be.
Why are keywords important?
Keywords are important because they are the connector between what people are searching for and your business.
Your objective is to bring organic traffic to your site by using the right keywords in your content. And this traffic comes by ranking high on search engine result pages (SERPS) with those keywords.
At the same time, you want to make sure you’re using the keywords correctly. If you have a site page about the powerful health benefits of dates, you don’t want site traffic from people after summer date ideas.
So it’s not only how you see your subject matter but also how your audience thinks about it. You have to know your customer.
How are they searching, and what terms are they putting in the search field that’s going to bring up your site pages?
How to use keywords on your site
To attract the right customer or client, don’t splatter keywords around your site pages attempting to attract search robots. If you misrepresent your page, using clickbait tactics for example, it’s not going to help, probably the opposite.
Your content has to be valuable to actual human beings, not bots. Write for your audience and follow standard keyword usage rules. This includes using unique keywords for each page of your site where visitors and bots can see them. This includes the title tag and the body text.
Other standard methods to attract the search engines include using keywords on your site are in your URL, the H1 tag on the page, the meta description, and alt attributes on your images.
Keywords and content strategy
When you’re writing something new, you can begin with a keyword and write text around it.
But sometimes, you already have the content, and you want to incorporate the right keywords into the text. A way to do this is with keyword mapping, a means of assigning keywords to particular pages on your site based on keyword analysis.
This exercise, often done using a spreadsheet, will help you understand your current content and evaluate areas that need improvement.
Using keywords as identifiers for each page of your site also helps organize the site structure and content strategy.
If you wish to talk about your online presence and strategy, please feel free to reach out.
