Keyword optimization (also known as keyword research) is the act of researching, analyzing and selecting the best keywords to target to drive qualified traffic from search engines to your website.
Keyword search optimization is a critical step in initial stages of search engine marketing, for both paid and organic search. If you do a bad job at selecting your target keywords, all your subsequent efforts will be in vain. So it’s vital to get keyword optimization right.
But optimizing keywords isn’t something you do ONLY at the outset of a search marketing campaign. Ongoing keyword optimization is necessary to keep uncovering new keyword opportunities and to expand your reach into various keyword verticals. So keyword optimization isn’t a set it and forget it process. By continuously performing keyword analysis and expanding your database of keywords, your site traffic, leads and sales will continue to grow.
Benefits of Keyword Optimization
In a recent survey, participants listed keyword optimization as one of the hardest tasks in search engine marketing. Because of its difficult nature, most site owners, marketers and bloggers don’t spend enough time optimizing keywords. This is ironic since optimizing keywords is the most important aspect of SEO and PPC. If you don’t choose and use keywords your customers are searching for, you won’t get found. That means no traffic, no sales, no money.
So to look at the big picture, you must practice search engine keyword optimization to:
- Drive qualified traffic to your website: To drive searchers to your site, you must optimize for the keywords they’re searching for
- Measure traffic potential: Analyzing the popularity of keywords helps you gauge the size of a potential online market.
- Write effective content: By incorporating optimized keywords into your website content, you can connect instantly with potential customers and address their needs.
- Understand user behavior: By analyzing the words that your customers use, you get an idea of their needs and how to service those needs.
Where Keyword Search Optimization Comes into Play
Keyword optimization plays a major role in every aspect of Internet marketing from content strategy, to link building, to how you group your keywords in your AdWords ad groups, to how your site content is organized, a.k.a your information architecture.
SEO Keyword Optimization
When it comes to SEO, the success of your organic search efforts rests largely on how effective you are at discovering, researching, analyzing and selecting the right search engine keywords for your website. All other aspects of SEO rely on successful keyword optimization. What’s more, optimizing keywords touches every aspect of your SEO marketing efforts.
- Title Tag: Your target keywords must be included in the title tag (and front loaded). This is the most important piece of content on your website, both on and off-page.
- Links: Keyword optimization should be integrated into your link building strategy. Internal links, inbound links, breadcrumb links, navigational links should all have your top optimized keywords. It’s also important to track and manage your link text efforts
- Content strategy: If you want to rank well and connect with searchers, you need to use your target keywords in your content. WordStream for SEO helps combine keyword research with content authoring (just saying…).
- Images: Don’t forget to optimize keywords in the pictures on your website. Target keywords should be used in your image alt attribute and file names, to name a few.
- Meta Description: There’s some debate over whether or not including target keywords in your text snippets helps rankings. But there’s little doubt that having optimized keywords in your meta tags produces more clicks in searches, which is optimal.
- URL: Be sure to include keywords for SEO in file name slugs, like I’ve done with this page’s URL. The page is about keyword optimization, so the slug name is /keyword-optimization.
- Site Structure: Keyword optimization is also critical to how you structure and organize your site content. Not only do you need to select the right keywords, but you need to group them hierarchically and order the corresponding pages on your website accordingly.
