How to Find the Right Keywords to Boost Your Website’s Visibility

Written by: Daniel Groves.
Daniel is a UK-based business consultant who specializes in helping startups grow and scale.

Content is king – but content without the right strategy and purpose won’t reach your target audience. This is where keywords come in. A great keyword strategy is your gateway to SEO success and website traffic.

By optimizing your website with the right keywords, you can increase your website’s visibility on search engines, expand your website visitors pool, and, ultimately, boost sales. In this article, we examine the importance of a keyword strategy and give you the necessary tips and tricks to find the right keywords to take your website to the next level. 

Before we jump in, let’s highlight an important side note; one of the key areas of website visibility is the website speed. How quickly are you delivering a solution or answer to a searcher’s query? Alongside well-considered placements of keywords throughout your website, it’s recommended that your website is optimized for web loading time. 

Consider engaging with an expert in the web platform you use for your development to ensure you don’t lose out on potential customers as a result of slow-loading pages.

Understand your target audience

The first step in finding the right keywords for your website is to understand your target audience. You can start by asking yourself questions like: 

• Who are they? 

• What type of content do they like? 

• What type of language do they use? 

• What are their preferences and pain points? 

Once you have answered these questions, you’ll be well-equipped to develop your customer personas. 

A customer persona is a fictional representation of your target customer. To cover the majority of your customer base, you typically have to create multiple customer personas. In your personas, you need to take into account factors such as age, gender, location, preferences, and lifestyle to ensure they’re as realistic as possible.  

By creating personas for your website visitors, you’ll be able to understand them on a deeper level and know the type of content they’re looking for. This will, in turn, help you determine what content and keywords you need to include in your website in order to increase your site traffic. 

Brainstorm keywords

Once you’ve determined who your target audience is and your customer personas, it’s time to brainstorm keywords. Brainstorming is a crucial part of the SEO strategy, as it’s a good way to develop root keywords that you can later build on. 

Look around you for inspiration, take a look at Google trends and read the keywords used to describe products on places like Amazon. At this stage, it’s important not to limit yourself or worry about competition. Focus on developing as many relevant keywords as possible and the rest will follow. 

Use keyword research tools

Now that you have a list of potential keyword ideas, it’s time to introduce keyword research tools that will boost your keyword strategy. These tools provide key data that will inform your strategy, such as search volume, competition level (how hard it is to rank for the keyword) and relevance of certain keywords. 

Google Keyword Planner is a great tool to start with. This free tool is ideal for recognizing SEO opportunities and checking how often a particular keyword is searched on Google. It also shows how much it costs to advertise an article for this particular keyword, which gives you a solid indication of its popularity. 

Two other popular tools are Ahrefs and SEMrush. Unlike Google’s Keyword Planner, these are paid tools. However, they’re considered industry standard because of how detailed and insightful they are. They provide important data such as competitor analysis, keyword difficulty scores, search volume, and competition, which make a world of difference when developing a keyword strategy. 

Analyze your competitors

Your content doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Therefore, analyzing your competitors is crucial to ensure that your content—and keyword strategy—is a cut above the rest. 

Analyze the keyword profile of your competitors using tools such as Ahrefs and SEMrush, and pay attention to factors such as keyword gaps, keyword stuffing, high-ranking keywords, and long-tail keywords. You can then use this information to inform your keyword strategy, identify the keywords you want to target, and ensure that your strategy is solid. 

Use keyword domains

Keyword domains are domains that contain keywords that describe your business. It’s worth considering using one. When users surf Google, they’re more likely to click on a website whose domain includes the thing that they’re looking for. 

Therefore, including specific keywords in your brand name and domain will likely increase user click-through rates. You can search for a domain name on Hover to find a great option that not only includes your target keyword but also meets your business needs. 

It’s important to mention, however, that keyword domains must also suit your branding. Google and other search engines focus a lot on user experience. Therefore, if this keyword doesn’t fit your branding, the use of the keyword in your domain could actually hurt your ranking rather than improve it. 

Focus on long-tail keywords

Nowadays, long-tail keywords are where it’s at. Long-tail keywords are longer phrases specific to a particular topic. Although they have lower search volume, they have higher conversion rates, as those who search for this particular keyword are really interested in finding an answer. For instance, “domain name checker tool” is more targeted to a specific customer than simply “domain.”

A long-tail keyword doesn’t have to be of a specific length. However, it usually consists of a head keyword – the main keyword — and 3 to 5 words. Generally, the longer the keyword, the easier it is to rank for this specific term. Remember not to shy away from long-tail keywords simply because they have a low competition volume. The Internet is so vast that you’ll always have people looking for long-tail keywords, and these are the ones you’re likely to hook in!

Consider search intent

Have you ever wondered why your audience is typing in a particular query that leads them to your website? This is what we call “search intent.” Understanding why your audience is looking for a particular topic will help you build your content and keyword strategies. 

In general, there are four categories of search intent: navigation, commercial, transactional, and informational. Let’s break these down: 

• Navigational – users are often looking to find a specific product, physical location, or a specific page on a website for a brand they are already aware of.
• Commercial – these types of searches usually indicate a user’s interest in a specific product and/or service with a strong intention to purchase at this stage or in the near future. 
• Transactional – this is the strongest intent to buy or use a service.  The user has researched different options and is ready to convert into a paying customer. These keywords will be much more tailored towards a specific product or service. 
• Information – users are often looking for an answer to a question. Keywords usually contain questions involving words such as “what”, “why”, “when” and “how.”

By understanding search intent, you’ll be able to create content that your audience is looking for when they search a given keyword. This is, therefore, the perfect opportunity to amp up that type of content and focus on the keywords matching their search intent. 

Monitor and refine your keyword strategy

Monitoring and refining your keyword strategy is crucial to ensure your content comes out on top. Search engine algorithms and trends are constantly changing, so keeping up with everything SEO-related is essential to stay relevant. 

Use analytics tools like Google Analytics to identify the most popular content on your website, keep an eye on what your competitors are doing content-wise, and update your content with new keywords. Tracking results, monitoring the most popular keywords, and testing different keywords is the way to increase your website’s visibility. 

Final words

Keyword research and SEO strategy go together like peanut butter and jelly — you can’t do one without the other. By understanding your target audience, focusing on long-tail keywords, using keyword research tools, monitoring your competitors’ keyword strategy, using keyword domains if and when necessary, and selecting long-tail keywords, you’ll be well on your way to SEO success!