What is a Keyword? A Basic Intro
Keywords are words or phrases that form the basis of any online marketing campaign but are not always understood by online business owners and workers. A keyword is a word or phrase that you want to rank for on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) and often carry significance. They are words that almost always should describe one of the two following things:
- Your product or service (your offered solution)
- Phrases people use to find a solution to their problem ( The problem your product/service solves)
There are 2 main types of keywords: Broad and Long-Tail. Broad keywords consist of one or two words and are not specific. Long-tail keywords consist of phrases or questions. Generally, it is easier to rank for long-tail keywords but they do not have as much search volume, that is, people using the phrase in search engines.
Keywords are important for your visitors, because they describe what your site and content is all about. Keywords are reflected in the topics of your posts, pages, and the description of your business.
Keywords are also the cornerstone of your business’s web page. Your company’s keyword list will guide you to what type of content you should create, how to attract potential customers, and what type of personas you want to target.
When determining what keywords
you should target for your business, it is important to think about the
relevance of the keyword to the users journey. For example, it would be
great to have our company name Growth Labs to rank highly on SERPs, but
it doesn’t mean anything to people who are not already familiar with our
name. It would be better to rank for keywords like “inbound marketing”
and “how do I create content for my website” for example, since those
phrases are a lot more relevant to what we do. This way, we try to
target people looking for information and solutions to problems that we
can help with.
Long-tail keywords tend to do better than broad ones because they are a lot more specific and show intent to purchase. Think of the reasons why someone would want to search for “Cars” in Google. They might want to know when the movie is playing on tv, they might want to see some pictures of cars, they might want to find cars.com. On the other hand, if someone wanted to buy a the movie Cars, they might search for “Cars DVD on Sale”. From this phrase, we know that the searcher is looking for a specific item and has a stronger intent to buy.
This phrase is a lot more worthwhile for a company to focus on than the word “cars”.
Think about what kind of phrases you use when you search for something. What kind of keywords would be good for your business to target?
What kind of phrases show intent to buy in your customers?
Are your targeted keywords related to a problem that your business solves?