If you’ve been venturing into the world of digital marketing, SEO or even simply getting your website set up, you may have heard mention of ‘keywords’. By selecting relevant words and phrases that reflect you and your business, you can compete with others in your field to rise up the rankings of search engines. We’ve put together 5 quick tips to help you to make the most out of your keywords.
1) Size Matters
Forget what they say: when it comes to keywords, size really does matter. Although you may want to use a simple keyword such as ‘café’ or ‘coffee shop’, it’s really quite vague and can lead to mass competition. Instead, try to create longer chain keywords such as ‘independent coffee shop in Manchester’ – you may have to get creative with the website copy, but it’ll be worth it!
2) Keep Your Audience in Mind
Think about who you want to find your website and keep them in mind at all times. What are they likely to search for? What are they looking for in a shop/business/café? This will help you to decide how to phrase your keywords and will appeal specifically to the customers you want to see!
3) Be Social
Keywords aren’t just useful for your website – employing plenty of useful keywords on social media can help your brand to extend its presence and generate traffic and opportunities. On LinkedIn, ensure that your team’s personal profiles contain the sort of keywords your ideal clients will be looking for, such as ‘sustainability’, ‘digital marketing’ or ‘Manchester training’. Similarly, adding keywords to your brand’s Twitter and Facebook accounts will help people to find you in social searches more easily. Don’t worry about longer keywords so much on social media – users aren’t as likely to use long phrases compared to when they search for websites.
4) Get the Spelling Right
This may seem like common sense, but you’d be surprised at how many keywords have been rendered useless by a slightly incorrect spelling – especially when it comes down to American English vs British English (those pesky z’s!) Double check keyword spellings before committing, however, and you’ll be fine.
5) Keyword Everything
Although we’d advise against cramming a hundred keywords into a small paragraph (Google actually penalises for that), we do recommend that you’re sure to include keywords in alternative text for images and in links/URLs. This allows for an even spread of keywords, and ups the amount that Google can find. Even better, if there’s a particularly long keyword that you’ve only been able to mention once in the text, use it elsewhere for an advantage!
We hope these tips help you wrap your head around keywords, but if you’re still in the dark simply get in touch and let’s talk SEO!