How to Improve your Website SEO with Keywords

Website SEO Tips – Keyword Research

HOW TO PERFECT YOUR KEYWORDS

In order to find the right keywords is to understand your target market and how they could find your content. It will help you to know what people are searching for, and how they’re searching for it. Ask yourself who your customers are, and what their goals are. Most people don’t bother doing keyword research as they know what they want to rank for. But many factors come into play as some keywords are extremely competitive in oversaturated industries. Here are my tips for improving your website SEO with keyword research and making you stand apart from competitors on search engines!

How to Get Started

I always recommend taking the time to perfect your keywords. Find out what your target audience is searching for, which keywords are less competitive in your industry, and place them correctly through many areas in your website. This includes your site headings, website meta tags, image alts, blog posts, and other applicable areas. Questions to ask yourself will vary depending on the industry you’re in, but here’s an example below!

Example – Skincare Company Keyword Research

As an example, you’re a skincare brand and want to show up organically in search results. The skincare industry is extremely popular, and it can be hard to compare to competitors in your local area. In order to rank high, you’d really need to pinpoint exactly who your ideal client is. To get to know their target audience a bit better and how they can find their website, you need to ask these kinds of questions:

• What type of skincare are people searching for?
• Who is searching for these terms? Are they younger or older? Female or male?
• When do people search for this? Is it popular all year-long, busier around holidays or certain seasons?
• What words do they use? What questions do they ask on search engines? Is there certain additional keywords with skincare that are popular (e.g. eco-friendly, natural, cruelty-free, fragrance-free)
• Why are people looking for skincare? Is it for themselves, as a gift, to sell wholesale in their own shop?
• Where are these people located?
• What are your competitor’s keywords and what words can you add into your keywords that are different and more unique? Search your competitors on UberSuggest‘s handy tool!

After asking yourself these questions, you should have a good idea of what to ask about your own target audience for your website. To find some answers, I love using Answer the Public, Google Trends & other reliable websites to see what people are asking on search results.

What to Avoid

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is when you stuff your pages and meta tags with the same keywords over and over again, in hopes of ranking for that term. You’d think you’d rank higher since you include the same keyword many times, but search engines actually don’t like it! This can actually give you a penalty with Google, which removes your pages from search engines completely. Instead, focus on creating reliable information with keywords appropriately placed within it.

An example of keyword stuffing: “Creative Candles is a soy candle company offering natural and toxic-free soy candles. Our soy candles are perfect for your home with children and animals, as they are natural and toxic-free. Shop our toxic-free soy candles now.”

Short & Vague Keywords

If you’re a makeup artist, and “makeup artist” is the keyword you choose, how would you expect to rank high for this? You have to remember that you’re competing against hundreds of thousands of other companies that are similar to you. It will be hard for you to reach #1 with a short vague keyword like this that probably has 50K searches a month. The people always on top? Larger businesses that have a lot of authority.

In order to start ranking your small business, I highly recommend long-tail keywords. This is when you place several keywords together to be more specific. It’s less competition, easier to rank, and higher conversions as they focus on a specific product or service they’re looking for. An example of long-tail keywords is:

• Highly Competitive: Makeup Artist
• In The Middle: Toronto Makeup Artist (Location-Based)
• Lower Competition/Higher Conversion – Toronto Bridal Makeup Artist (Location + Specific Service)

As you can see below, makeup artist by location is much less competitive (check SEO difficulty) if adding a location. If you add even more specific services on what people might be searching for (in this case, bridal or commercial makeup) then it leads to higher conversions and less competition.

Ready to Improve your SEO Even More?

Improve your Website SEO E-Guide

I’m here to spill my secrets on improving your search engine optimization for your website! Past clients of mine are ranking #1 on Google for their keywords, thanks to these steps & you can easily do them yourself. My 40-page e-guide covers more keyword research but also: Search Engine Optimization Audit for your Site, Meta Page Titles & Descriptions⁠, Optimizing Website Images, Submitting Google Search Console Sitemap⁠, Installing All Recommended Tools⁠, Blogging and Backlinks Tips.

Interested? Shop the Website SEO Guide Here