Most people trying to use digital marketing have heard of keywords or key phrases but do you really know what these are and how to best use them for your business? In this blog we delve into this in a little more detail.
Keywords what are they?
Keywords or Key phrases are the words your customers will most likely search, This is called a keyword search. These can be used to find an answer to a questions or to look for a business or product. So, for example, if you are looking to find out more about blood pressure you might type in What is blood pressure? or how do you measure blood pressure? If you are looking to buy a blood pressure monitor you might type in buying a blood pressure monitor or supplier of sphygmomanometer. Depending on your knowledge level will determine the words you use. You need to think carefully about your target audience, your buying personas should help you with this. We have another blog on this here. If you are looking to sell medical equipment into hospitals sphygmomanometer is more likely to be used but if your end user is the general public you might want to stick to blood pressure monitor.
Your post should include these words within the post or article. Search engine algorithms are quite sophisticated and if you pepper your article with keywords unnecessarily it will be flagged. You need to write in a way that is readable to your audience.
Why use Keywords?
As already mentioned they are important for the search engine. If your keyword is only used a few times over a 300 word article how does the algorithm know what your article is about?
It's not just about the algorithm though. You want people reading your post that are interested in your topic. Imagine if you were looking for an article to help you better understand the use of colours in branding and this article appeared. It wouldn't be of much use to you and it wouldn't help my business either. The use of keywords will help your audience engage with your content as it's relevant to them. By the way if you are looking for advice on colours in branding this is probably a better blog for you
Where to use keywords
These should occur throughout your post or article but in a readable manner. there are also a few key places to ensure you include them. These are;
Title
Subheadings
In your first paragraph
Meta description
Image Alt Text
URL slug
Most of these are obvious but lets take a closer look at Meta description, Image alt text and URL slug.
Meta Description
This is the text google displays in its search results giving you the short description of what you can find on the website page.
This is automatically completed from the first couple of sentences on the page but can be amended separately if it doesn't show what you want. you cannot guarantee what google will show but having written a clear Meta description is a good habit to get into. Ensure this is a good description of the page or blog and should include a key word or key phrase. Depending on the platform you host your website on the way of changing this will be different.
This is what you see for my home page
Apple Orchard Marketing is here to help start up companies who need marketing support but aren't ready for a fulltime marketeer. Either in brand development ...
Image Alt Text
Your page or post should ideally include images related to the topic you are talking about. It's good practice to get into adding Alt text to these. This is text that is used by screen readers to tell visually impaired users what the image is of. They are also used by search engine algorithms to understand the context of the image so are a great place to include the key word or key phrase. The image used at the top of this article had the Alt Text of flooring tiles so I have amended this to say tiles showing keywords
URL slug
This is the second part of the URL or web address that identifies a specific page. For this blog the URL is https://www.appleorchardmarketing.com/post/keywords-what-are-they-and-how-to-use-them
The keywords-what-are-they-and -how-to use-them is the slug. This should be descriptive and if possible include keywords or key phrases.
Keyword research
Often it's obvious what Keywords to use. I am sure you won't be surprised to hear its KeyWords and Key Phrases. You can use free online tools like wordtracker tool to find out how frequently these words are searched for and if there is an increasing or decreasing trend for the word over the last 12 months. So, Keywords has been searched for 32,775 times over the last 12 month according to this site, so is probably a good Keyword to include to have this article picked up. These can give you an idea of words that might help get your page blog picked up and seen by your target audience.
We hope you have found this article useful and now better understand using key words or key phrases but if you have any questions or want help optimising your website or blog please get in touch.
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