What is Keyword Strategy?

Keywords are fundamental to SEO. They are the important search terms that the search engines interpret and analyse to rank pages on their Search Engine Results Page (SERPs). Based on their Natural Language Processing (NLP), they furnish pages with the most suitable answers to the searched terms.

If you want your website to rank higher on search engines, then you need to optimise your website with the right keywords. It would require a strong keyword strategy. 

Now, a decade ago it would have sufficed if webpages had keywords mentioned on them multiple times for search engines to believe that a page is relevant. However, this led to unhealthy practices such as keyword stuffing and publishing low-quality irrelevant content just to gain page visits.

Over the years, the algorithm has improved and become more advanced. Now, there are multiple factors that developers must consider including UX, content quality, off-page, on-page SEO etc.

The same principle applies to keywords. It isn’t enough simply to choose keywords and stuff them on your page. You would require a concrete keyword strategy to help your page rank higher. 

Let’s start understanding what a Keyword Strategy is?

What is Keyword Strategy?

It is a process that allows you to select and incorporate search terms on your web pages. This will help your site rank high on search engines for those specific keywords.

Now, the strategy goes beyond mere selection. It involves understanding various factors such as the search intent and the searchability of the terms. To create a keyword strategy, you would need to conduct keyword analysis.

Keyword analysis involves using a keyword research tool to find the best keywords for your business. It involves looking at various metrics such as Search Volume, Search intent, Keyword difficulty, Cost-Per-Click (CPC) etc.

Keyword Research is a crucial process providing the perfect foundation for your keyword strategy. There are many keyword research tools available online. You can access both paid and free tools including Google Keywords (Free), SEMRush (Paid) and UberSuggest (Paid).

In essence, Keyword Strategy is a framework that you can rely on to device your content strategy. 

So, you’ve understood the importance of Keyword Strategy and you’ve also been acquainted with a Keyword research tool. Now, a good question right now would be – How do you create your own Keyword Strategy?

How to create a Keyword Strategy?

There are many ways for approaching a keyword strategy. Here is an example of how you can go about creating a keyword strategy for your website – 

#1 – Understand your niche

First things first, you need to understand your industry and the specific sector. This means you need to look at specific keywords and their potential to improve your rankability. 

For instance, if you’re in the automotive industry, trying to rank for ‘mobile phones’ might not be a good choice. On the flip side, you are more likely to rank for terms such as automobile, cars, vehicles, etc. 

#2 – Select Keywords that your target audience is looking for

Often digital marketers end up selecting keywords that are irrelevant. A key step here is to match the search query of the user to keywords in your niche. The next step is to calibrate the intent of the search terms. 

Once this is done, you would have an idea of the specific types of keywords best suited for your industry.

#3 – Target long-tail keywords 

There are two types of keywords – Short tails (head terms) and Long tails. Now, it is difficult to rank for short tails because everyone is trying to rank for them. So, their SEO Difficulty is very high. 

Long tail keywords are specific and narrowed-down keywords with a lower SEO difficulty. This allows you to drill down and filter keywords to optimise your list.

#4 – Target keywords with a large volume

Targeting keywords that are popular amongst your audience is a given. This is called keyword search volume. You need to choose keywords with high search volume. 

If no one is looking for a particular keyword then it might not benefit you even if you rank high for it. In the end, you would want your web pages to bring traffic to your website. 

#5 – Choose terms that are not difficult to rank for

In order to find keywords which are easy to rank for, you need to look at the Keyword Difficulty metric. If many sources are competing to rank for the same keywords then they would have high keyword difficulty. 

You may come across keywords which would require you to publish extremely well-written content with a high amount of backlinks. The key here is to look for alternatives. You could either look at related keywords including Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) search terms. Or you can go back to looking for specific longtails. 

So, these are the major aspects to keep in mind for creating your keyword strategy!

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