Search Engine Optimization is one of the most important marketing strategy for businesses. As such, Keyword optimization still stands as an integral ranking factor of SEO. This article walks you through the basics of keyword optimization as well as the best and most effective types of keyword optimization to increase search rankings.

Content:

1. What is Keyword Optimization?
2. Importance of Keywords in SEO
3. Best Tools for keyword optimization
4. Best tips and strategies for Keyword Optimization
5. Conclusion

What is Keyword Optimization?

Keyword Optimization can be described as the process of researching, structuring, analyzing, and implementing the best and most relevant keywords to your website to increase its search rankings. Keyword Optimization helps search engines decide if your website content is relevant to a search query. Search engines reference the usage of the specific keywords searched for against the content on your website and others like yours to determine each website's position on the search engine results.

The process starts with keyword targeting. This is the practice under which you research what keywords are used most frequently by your target customer base to search for relevant products/services or content that your website is offering. Afterwards, comes the on-page SEO step of writing valuable content rich with keywords. These keywords should be relevant to what your customers are actually searching and should be kept to a reasonable level. Spamming keywords is frowned upon by search engines and may reduce the visibility of your website. For example ‘Marketing firm in Seattle’ carries the following keywords relevant-

(Source: Keywords Everywhere extension for Chrome)

You should focus on using these and other relevant keywords for searches related to ‘Marketing firm in Seattle’.

Importance of Keyword Optimization in SEO

Keywords optimization helps boost your organic traffic and search ranking. SEO is one of the greatest marketing tools of the digital marketing age. It not only it helps you connect with more potential customers, it also provides a great database for information on potential customer base. Through research. you can analyze the behaviors and lifestyle preferences of your customers to modify your market campaigns and boost goodwill for your website.

Best Tools for Keyword Optimization

Answer the Public.

Answer the Public is a great tool for commercial blogging and generating traffic towards your blog via keyword optimization. It is especially helpful for keywords optimization for smaller businesses which require ultra-specific keywords to rank in search engine results. When you search a topic, Answer the Public will generate a list of the most popular searches related to that subject, sorted by rankings. It's a great tool for blog keyword optimization and for finding blog topics. The platform allows only a limited number of free searches a day, so make each free search count.

Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is an efficient keyword analysis and management tool which can be used as an extension for Chrome and Firefox browsers. Keywords Everywhere shows valuable data for your search query and related queries that may result in more keywords. This add-on provides search volume, CPC (cost per click), & competition for every keyword in the search box. It also shows what keywords your most popular competitors are using. Keywords Everywhere is also helpful for paid Search Engine Marketing campaigns and works alongside Google Keyword Planner to provide valuable data for your campaign targeting.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics offers you the power to monitor every kind of traffic you can imagine on your website. It also offers feedback on which keywords visitors use to reach your web pages, which makes it an essential tool for traffic monitoring and content optimization.

XML sitemaps

XML site maps (with a robots.txt file) allows and guides search engine crawlers to crawl and index all the pages of a website sufficiently, involving sorting by keywords as well. Hence XML sitemaps help improve search rankings by enhancing the rankings of a website in a search result.

SERP robot

SERP robot connects directly to your website’s rankings. You can check your website’s rankings for up to five different keywords to see where your website stands. Not only that, but it allows you to check and compare with other websites’ rankings as well, making it an effective tool for competitor analysis.

Best Tips for Keyword Optimization

Focus on ultra-specific keywords for small businesses

• (also known as long-tail keywords analysis). This is especially helpful for local organizations offering specific products. For example, the keyword ‘Haircut salon Greater Seattle’ is better optimized for a saloon in Greater Seattle than let’s say ‘Haircut salon’. Although these need not always be location based, for example ‘Black leather formal shoes nike at discounted price’ is another long tail keyword, emphasizing on the ‘discounted price’ phrase conjoined with ‘black leather formal shoes nike’ to make it ultra-specific.

• Title tags are the first thing that web crawlers as well as the traffic on your website read. Image text should be added in the alt attribute of the image as well as its file name, otherwise crawlers and search engines do not recognize images as pieces of content but simply take them as blank blocks. An image without an alt attribute is a missed opportunity for extra keywords and a potential penalty toward your site from search engines.

Focus on developing a user friendly site structure.

• While keyword optimization can improve your search ranking, it is bounce rate that determines the public’s verdict on the content of your website. Bounce rate is the percentage of traffic that leaves the website after viewing only one page. Some website tend to go overboard with keyword stuffing and fail to produce on-point and relevant content. You should focus more on producing quality content over quantity so as to minimize bounce rate and cater to your traffic’s actual needs.

Decrease bounce rate by creating an organized list of keywords to improve landing page relevance.

• You should pre-determine what keywords you will be using in what type of content by researching and comparing the most popular keywords in the categories. It can greatly reduce time, effort, and cost put into optimizing and researching for different pieces of content.

Audit your keywords with mobile users in mind.

• Editing the contents of your website to keep up with the trends and search patterns is an excellent idea to keep up to date with the ever changing search dynamics, especially for mobile users. Nearly 60% of all search queries made on Google are on mobile devices. Moreover, data released by Google shows that a 53% of users bounce off a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. This shows not only the importance of loading speed optimization, but also content optimization for mobile users.

Conclusion

Google claims to have hundreds of factors when it comes to ranking. However the above listed SEO strategies and tools have proven to be repeatedly effective. It is important to stay dynamic and optimize your content as fresher ranking factors are introduced. Search Engine Optimization can be a tricky concept to understand and even trickier to tackle. However, with expert guidance it can be used to the best of your interests.

We Can help!

Symphysis maximizes the number of times you appear in organic search queries. Our SEO team begins by reducing loading time, improving image quality, removing leftover template code, implementing analytics, all while improving keyword ranking. For more information and a free initial consultation, call or text @ +1 (425) 390-4738.