For any new business in today’s world, a website is vital to gaining new customers, and with every new website comes search engine optimisation (SEO) which is equally important. If your website is not properly optimised for search engines, then you could fall behind in the searches, no one will be able to find you and if no one can find you, this mean no sales, no customers, no business – and nobody wants that!

In last week’s blog, we discussed picking a domain name that was optimised for SEO. Following from that, the next item to think about is picking the right keyword.

Picking the right keyword first before writing up tons of info is important as this can help shape your website content. By doing research you can see what words your target audience is using to search for your products or services.

Research is KEY

Doing research is vital when picking keywords as many people make mistakes that can affect the way their website ranks. For example some websites can pick a generic words, which is recommended as you will be going against competitors who have been around for a while and will have the edge on that specific keyword. On the other end of the stick would be using specific long keywords, which people may not use.

Tools such as Google Keyword Planner or Moz Keyword Explorer are great for picking keywords. You will be able to see how certain keywords rank, whether they have a high search volume, or the competition.

Short vs Long

While picking the right keywords, it is also important to understand the difference between short keywords and long-tail keywords.

Back when search engines were a new thing, keywords were the most important element when determining what website rank the highest. Companies would floor their websites with specific keywords in order to rank high. However, fast forward to the present day and things have changed.

While keywords are of course still very important, short keywords are not as important as they used to be, and websites can be penalised if there are too many keywords.

Long-tail keywords are beginning to become more of a focus, this is due to a few reasons, 1) search engines take into account content, so look for key phrases; 2) people are becoming more conversational when searching; 3) they normally have less competition as they are more specific, and 4) have a higher conversion rate, as people search for specific items they tend to be more likely in buying mode.

An example: Someone who is looking for makeup could search for “foundation”, but if they have oily skin, they may search for “good foundation for oily skin”, this would be a long-tail keyword.

So, what next?

Taking all of this into consideration and doing keyword research will help you find good keywords for your new website, and will help towards building better content that your target audience is looking for, which will then result in better rankings.