Search Engine Optimization – Page 9

How to do Keyword Research to Improve Your SEO

Keyword research is the core of digital marketing. This SEO strategy should be performed regularly in order to stay in touch with your audience as they grow and evolve.

The goal of YOUR research is to find out what words or phrases your target audience is searching for, so you know what it will take to rank on search engines for those specific terms.

If you don’t know what keywords you should be targeting for your business – how are you going to optimize your website and create content to best serve your client?

In this guide, we will cover:

What are keywords?
What is keyword research and why is it important?
How to conduct keyword research using SEMrush
How to use that keyword research to get more clients (with some BONUS TIPS)

What is a keyword?

Keywords, also known as search terms or search queries, are the words and phrases that searchers use to perform a search in a search engine (like Google or Bing). Keywords are extremely important in an SEO strategy and should be the backbone of any written content you release on the web.

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is an SEO strategy that is used to find specific terms that users enter into search engines to find products, services, and information. More importantly, keyword research helps you figure out how people find you. Using this knowledge, you’ll know exactly what to write about on your website and blog for your target audience.

In order to get traffic from Google, performing keyword research to understand the words and phrases used by searchers is essential. Google uses this information to determine what content is relevant to a search term, and how that page should rank in search.

Proper keyword research will help you:

Understand your audience
Reach your audience
Find new hot topics to cover
Improve ad campaigns
Build brand awareness

Why is keyword research important?

Do you ever wish that you could read the mind of your perfect client? With a little bit of keyword research, you CAN jump into their mind to figure out the exact words and phrases they are using to search for results that relate to your business.

Who wants to waste time creating content on topics that aren’t being searched for?

Keyword research can help you answer the following questions:

How difficult is it to rank for this keyword?
How much traffic will I receive if I rank for this keyword?
What keywords are my competitors ranking for?

How to do keyword research

Keyword research consists of collecting relevant variations of all keywords that relate to your website, products, services, etc.

We are going to walk you through researching keywords using SEMrush. This is an amazing tool that is used to improve online visibility and discover marketing insights.

Step 1: Build your keyword list

Let’s build a list of keywords for ABC painting company. To begin, we will start by searching for a general keyword relating to this business. In the image above, you can see that we searched for “professional painter” in the keyword overview section of SEMrush.

Keyword overview gives you a quick analysis of your keywords. You can see a summary of metrics for each keyword such as number of results on a search engine results page, monthly search volume, average cost per click in Google Ads, paid search competition, and more.

You can create your master keyword list using the keyword magic tool. Starting with our seed keyword, professional painter, we are now able to see lists of keyword variations and related keywords.

You don’t have to stop here; continue to search for other seed keywords if you would like to keep growing your list. When researching keywords, be sure to also search for location specific keywords. For example, “professional painter pittsburgh” or “Pittsburgh painting company”.

The photo above shows the list of keyword variations for “professional painter”. Although the results show thousands of keywords, this does not mean that they will all be relevant for you. After your initial list has been built, it will need to be trimmed down to just the terms that are truly relevant to the site you are researching.

Step 2: Analyzing your keyword list

Having a list of thousands of keywords is all good and well but how do you know which ones are the best to use? SEO keyword metrics can be used to narrow your master list down and find the best of the best.

Export the data from SEMrush and make note of the columns boxed in red – these are the categories that you want to look at. These are the keyword metrics that will help you narrow your list and find the best keywords to use.

Search Volume

Search volume shows you the number of monthly searches for a particular keyword over the previous 12 months.

Keyword difficulty (KD%)

The keyword difficulty index (from 1 to 100%) shows you how difficult it would be to outrank your competitors in the Google organic top 20 for a given keyword. The higher the percentage, the harder it will be to achieve high rankings for each targeted keyword.

Cost per click (CPC $)

Average price in USD that advertisers pay when a user clicks on an ad triggered by a given keyword.

Competitive density (Com.)

The level of competition between advertisers bidding on a given keyword within their PPC campaigns. Competitive Density is shown on a scale from 0 to 1.00 with 1.00 being the most difficult to rank for.

Now that you have formed a list using what you think that people search for, it’s time to confirm your suspicions by researching your competitors.

Competitor-based keyword research

Competitor keyword research uses seed websites instead of seed keywords to begin searching. This approach can be used in conjunction with traditional keyword research.

Discover organic competitors

Using organic search, you are able to find who Google believes your competitors are. You can also see what keywords they are ranking for.

Even if you think you know who your competitors are, it is still a good idea to check it out with this tool. One important note, if you don’t see any of the competitors that you expect on this list, there is a good chance that your website is not optimized for the right keywords.

Navigate to the organic search tab on the left side menu and enter your domain in the search bar. Click on the competitors tab to reveal the table of domains that you are in competition with.

Here is a list of your competitors that can be used as your seed domains. They are sorted by competition level showing how close of a competitor they are to the one that was entered in the search bar. This metric is based on the total number of keywords of each competitor and the number of common keywords between the competitors.

How to get your competitors keywords

Under the positions report of the Organic research for the seed domain, you can find all of the keywords that a domain is ranked for.

Each keyword that a domain ranks for is shown in this list and is accompanied by a link to that corresponding landing page along with metrics to help further your research. So, for each of your competitors, type their URL into the search bar under “organic research” and you will have access to all of the keywords they are ranking for.

Between using a seed keyword and your competitors’ keywords, this method should help you create a list of keywords relevant to your business.

What Should I Do With a Keyword List?

Taking the time to create this list can help your business in multiple ways, but the ultimate goal is always to get more clients.

So how do you use this list?

Write Relevant Blogs for Your Clients

You can use the list to write blogs or articles about the things that your target market are searching for. SEMrush will also give you FAQs about the keywords your search. Pick a few of these questions that are focused on a keyword and answer them.

BONUS TIP – You can also turn that blog into a script for a video that you can post on YouTube.

Improve Your Onsite SEO

You can use the list to improve the onsite SEO of your website. Make sure that common keywords and phrases are found in your website headers, page titles and more.

BONUS TIP – Include keywords when you are naming images. This is one trick that people do not typically take advantage of.

Improve the SEO of Your Social Media Profiles

Use the list that you create to craft the perfect message in your social media profiles. By using words and phrases that they are using frequently, they will feel like you are talking to them and that you understand them.

Create Google Ads that Perform Well

Keyword research is critical when it comes to creating Google Ads and not spending a fortune. Be sure to figure out what people are searching for when it comes to your business so you don’t waste your time and budget by showing ads to people searching the wrong thing.

Questions about keywords? Need help doing with your keyword research? Contact IFTS today and ask about our keyword research package! We do the keyword research for you and set you up with a content plan for the next 365 days!

On-page SEO Techniques that will Help Boost your Search Ranking

On-page SEO specifically focuses on web page and content optimization. The factors associated with this all have to do with the elements of your own website, which you can change and improve over time.

The 2 main factors to look at when you want to optimize your on-page SEO are:

CONTENT on your site
HTML SOURCE CODE of a page

The goal of on-page SEO is to make it easier for both search engines and users to:

Understand what is being presented on a web page
Relate that page to a particular search query (or keyword phrase)
Find that page useful and worthy of ranking in a top position on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

Ready to improve your search ranking? In this blog post, we will review five on-page SEO factors and explain techniques for optimizing those specific areas.

How to Optimize Your Page’s Title Tag

What is it?

The most important of all tags on your page is the title tag. The title tag outlines what the page is about; it is the clickable headline users see on the search engine results pages, and also the words that appear at the top of each tab in your browser.

Why is it important?

You are helping your website rank better just by having heading tags on your web pages. Having heading tags alone won’t do the trick to get you to the #1 position. By having heading tags optimized specifically to the content on that page will work in conjunction with the other optimizable elements of your site

Techniques to optimize your heading tags

Adding keywords to your heading tags is a great technique to use when trying to outrank your competition. Be sure to only use keywords that are relevant to the content within the page.

Another suggestion is to add keywords that are synonyms of the main keyword in lesser headings. So, if the main keyword phrase that you are targeting is “Finding a Pittsburgh Attorney”, a good synonym phrase to use in an h2 or h3 header would be “Working with Lawyers in Western PA” or something similar.

How to Optimize your Image Names & ALT Tags

What is the image name and alt tag?

Image optimization is often overlooked when it comes to SEO. For search engines to understand your photos, they too need to be optimized.

Image name is simply just the name of the image file. For example, the original name of an image of a woman at a fitness center may be “img74635.jpg.” This can be renamed with a more descriptive title such as “woman-running-on-treadmill-at-planet-fitness.jpg.” Using hyphens when naming your images makes it easier for search engines to individually read each word.

Alt tags or alternative text are not only used to help search engines accurately index your images, but they can be used to help provide context for visually impaired users too. This can aid in your page’s ADA compliance. Alt tags can include more detail than the image name, but it is best to keep it between 10-15 words.

To create an alt tag, you add an “alt” description to the image’s html code. For example, the html code for an image may look like this:

When you add an alt tag, it will look like this:

To create an alt tag in WordPress, you need to click on your “Media Library” and select an image. This will open the image properties on the right-hand side of your screen. In the example below, we show the image properties for a lapping compound called “LINDE-A”.

To add your alt text, click into the “Alternative Text” box and add a description that would benefit a person if they could not see your image. This also gives you a chance to use a keyword phrase for your SEO.

To finish on our example, we have now added an easy to understand description that would benefit anyone that could not see the image, but also uses the keyword phrase “lapping compound”:

wordpress media library showing alternative text example

Why are they important?

Choosing the right name for your image is extremely important for your page’s SEO. When using images on your website, make sure to include your most important keyword in the image name or ALT tag. This is such a great way to help search engines better index your images and they can even appear when users search for images with that certain keyword.

Techniques to optimize your image names and alt tags

Describe the images as specifically as possible while using relative keywords. The more specific you can be, the better chance you have of that image ranking highly. Keep in mind that it won’t be beneficial to use the same keyword for every image on your page. Write unique text that is specific to the contents of each individual image.

How to Optimize Internal Links

What are internal links?

A great way to help search engines learn a lot more about your site is by building internal links to other content on your website. An internal link is a link from one page to another page on the same domain.

a link from one page to another page on the same domain — The content in one blog post links to another blog post on the same domain.

Why are they important?

Internal linking allows users to easily navigate a website and help spread ranking power. Search engines use these links to navigate your website which is important because they will not find a page if there are no links to it.

They also help describe to the search engine bots how your site is organized. If you think of your website as a spider web, these are the inner strings that connect related topics.

Techniques to optimize your internal linking

Make sure that all of the most important pages on your site are linked. Search engines heavily rely on sitemaps and internal links to discover web pages. Another good rule of thumb is to include breadcrumbs on your site.

Set up an internal linking strategy and determine a structure for your website. Imagine your site as a pyramid with your homepage on top, sections or categories in the middle and individual posts and pages on the bottom. Having the ability to reach each page on your site within 3 clicks of the homepage is considered a good internal linking practice.

Want to Keep learning about SEO? Check out these other helpful resources

How Can Off-Page SEO Factors Help You Improve Your Ranking?

How can off-page SEO factors help you improve your ranking?

Off-page SEO is all of the factors that contribute to your search ranking, yet take place outside of your controlled business environment. These factors cannot be directly controlled by you, but there are ways that you can improve your search ranking outside of improvements to your website and online profiles.

With on-page SEO, factors that you can control, you are able to optimize things such as your website structure and content. This allows you to structure your website to emphasize chosen keywords and phrases. You can create optimized content with a solid site structure that loads in just a couple of seconds, but all of that is nothing without being able to bring in many site visitors and potential customers.

On-page SEO and off-page SEO work hand in hand as they are both equally important pieces to the puzzle.

So, what makes up off-page SEO and how can these factors help improve your search ranking?

Backlinks – What are they?

A backlink, also known as an “inbound link” or “incoming link”, is a clickable link to your website from another website. Having high quality links to your site is one of the most important factors of off-page SEO. This is because search engines determine the value of content and websites using these links.

The number of backlinks to your site indicates the popularity or importance of that website. Sites that have a number of high-quality backlinks are given higher priority in the search results for relevant terms.

Backlinks – Why are they important?

Google sees each backlink to your site as a “vote” that the webpage the link is pointing to has quality content. The more high quality backlinks that your website has, the more “votes” you receive. This will ultimately make your site more trusted by the search engines, thus improving your site ranking.

Check out our blog, “What Are Backlinks and Why Are They Important for your Website?” for more detailed information.

Link building is one of the most popular, most effective off-page SEO techniques. It will increase your ranking, but you also need to remember that it favors quality over quantity.

It doesn’t really matter how many backlinks you have in total, but it is more important to see where these links are coming from. This information will dictate your overall rating. If you’re serious about ranking on search engine results pages (SERP’s), getting quality links to your site is the best approach.

How to get natural, high quality backlinks to your site

There are many ways you can get high-quality backlinks to your site. This can be done through social media activity, influencer marketing, blogging, and creating high quality, shareable content. The more creative, relevant content you post will increase the chance of people sharing your content with others.

Social Activity

Did you know that marketing on social media is an off-page SEO activity?

This is called social media SEO, which relates to your activity on social media and how that can increase your website’s organic traffic on SERPs. There is no doubt that social media and SEO help each other. However, social media does not directly contribute to SEO – meaning, social signals such as likes, shares, and views will not help you rank higher.

Sharing links on social media will definitely increase brand exposure, but Google does not see this as a ranking signal. Now, here is where things get tricky: even though social media does not directly contribute to ranking, it does still have significance. Social media indirectly has a positive effect on a page’s ranking.

Here’s why:

How Social Media Supports SEO

You create and post informative, eye-catching content
That content is then shared and linked to by your audience
Your social media profile attracts new followers and your website receives traffic
There is a community growing around your brand
You now receive consistent interactions through social media, and you build authority
Search engines will now index your website higher on SERP’s
Now, users can organically find your site through search engines

If you look at social media accounts of top ranking websites on Google, you will find that they have strong social signals. Although Google typically ignores social signals, they essentially work together. This is why search engines are becoming more social and social networks can be seen as valuable search engines.

SEO is about gaining organic traffic to your website. Social media marketing is about getting found on social networks by the right crowd. Both social media marketing and SEO may look different, but what makes them work hand in hand is their overlapping goal of gaining more visibility.