Digital Marketing

 

Keywords and Your Digital Marketing Strategy: What Do You Need to Know?

One of the most common digital marketing goals these days is to measurably increase online visibility. Whether your customers buy on your website or at your brick-and-mortar store, a strong internet presence helps consumers find, learn about and ultimately purchase from you. 

 

How Do Keywords Relate To Digital Marketing?

When a potential consumer goes to a search engine like Google to look for something, they type in words or phrases to guide their search. These are keywords: the key terms website users enter to find what they are looking for. 

 Sounds easy enough. Users type in their keywords and your business comes up, right? Well, not exactly. Search engines use complicated algorithms to try to help their users find helpful and relevant results. These algorithms use a wide variety of factors such as website credibility, how often the site publishes and keywords used on the website itself.

This brings us to one of the most valuable online marketing tips: Take the time to research keywords. They need to be:

• Something users will search for.
• Relevant to your brand.
• Terms that can be seamlessly integrated into all your online content.

Once you know which keywords to focus on, you can begin to use them strategically throughout your digital marketing content (such as your blog, social media ads and so on).

How To Research Keywords For Your Digital Marketing Content

Different Types Of Keywords For Digital Marketing

There are three main types of keywords:  

• Short-tail keywords usually consist of one or two words (e.g., ”WordPress themes”). These keywords are broad and generic but often ambiguous, with a high search volume.
• Middle-tail keywords usually consist of three or four words (e.g., ”WordPress themes for blog”). They are more specific than short-tail keywords but have lower search volume.
• Long-tail keywords usually consist of four or more words (e.g., ”free responsive WordPress themes for blog”). These are more detailed and very specific, but the search volume is even lower.

Although it may seem obvious to opt for keywords that receive the highest volume of searches, the best digital marketing strategies actually include a mixture of all three types of keywords. This is because, while short-tail keywords are often searched for the most, long-tail keywords usually have a higher chance of conversion.

Short-Tail Keywords

• Volume: High – The shorter the keyword is, the higher the search volume.
• Competition: High – Everyone is trying to rank for short-tail keywords.
• Focus: Low – The search isn’t targeted, meaning users could be looking for a wide range of answers.
• Conversion rate: Low – Even if you get 10,000 searches and 100 clicks, your conversion rate may

• Long-Tail Keywords

  • Volume: Low – They cater to very specific searches.
  • Competition: Low – The search is going to be geared toward whatever it is you are selling.
  • Focus: High – You’re a lot more likely to have the customers you are looking for looking for you!
  • Conversion rate: High – Because you’re providing exactly what a user is looking for, they’re much more likely to convert.

  Based on the above, you may think, “Why not just use long-tail keywords in all my digital marketing content?”

  While you want to include long-tail terms as often as possible, doing it in a natural way isn’t always possible. For example, if your short-tail keyword is “dance studio” and your long-tail keyword is “affordable children’s dance studio in my city,” which do you think will be easier to wrap into a blog post or social media ad while still making sense to your target audience?

  It is important to remember, while keywords are vital to your digital marketing strategy, writing for search engines isn’t the only focus. Search engines will bring consumers to your content, but if your article or landing page isn’t compelling for the potential customer you’re trying to reach, it’s a waste of your company’s time and resources.

• How To Research The Best Keywords For Your Digital Marketing Content

  Brainstorm ideas

• Get in the minds of your target audience. What words or phrases do you think they’ll search for in Google (or another search engine) to find a company like yours? Write down everything that comes to mind. 
•  
  

  Research more terms

  Go to Google and enter one of your keywords, then scroll to the bottom and look for the related searches. Those are more potential ideas for you to add to your list. Add any relevant terms to your list and move onto the next potential keyword. Go through your list, one at a time, until you search for each idea.

• Evaluate your list

  Go through each column and highlight the keywords you think will be best to focus on for your digital marketing. Remember to select a mixture of short-tail, middle-tail and long-tail so you can take advantage of the benefits of each.

• Finalize your list

  Write the highlighted terms down as a separate list so you and your digital marketing team can reference it moving forward.

• How To Add Keywords To Your Digital Marketing Content

  A successful digital marketing strategy requires more than researching the keywords: you also need to use them effectively.

  Remember, the entire point of your content is to connect with people. Keywords are a way to help search engines bring these individuals to your website; when they get there, your keyword-rich content needs to be well-written, easy to read and compelling for the consumer.

  Blog posts are one of the easiest and most effective digital marketing tools in which you can use keywords strategically on your website. By adding new blog content regularly – down to the same day of the week and time of day – search engines will learn to come back and look for fresh articles. If you use your keywords in a natural way throughout the posts, your website will rank higher as internet users search for related terms.

• shared the best places to slip keywords into your articles:

  • The title
  • Sub-heads/section headers (tip: format these as header tags when you upload your posts; Google weights them higher than the body of the article)
  • Photo captions
  • Image file names
  • The URL of the post
  • The meta-description
  • The first sentence
  • The last paragraph

  Your blog posts are not the only place to use your keywords, though! Sprinkle them throughout your website copy as it makes sense, include them in any digital marketing content you create (such as social media updates – both organic and paid) or, if you post videos on YouTube, use the same terms there, too

• Thanks to DIGITAL MARKETING

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