When deciding which keywords and phrases to choose for your optimizations efforts, there are a number of factors you should evaluate.
Keyword Popularity
The more popular a keyword is (meaning the more that people search for it), the more traffic it will drive to your site – IF you rank highly for that particular keyword phrase. When it comes to picking keywords and phrases based on their popularity, there are two general lines of thinking.
- Target the most well-liked keyword phrases – This seems pretty straightforward or obvious. When you want to attract the most visitors to your own web site, you should optimize for the most searched for keywords and phrases. Right? But the more popular a keyword is, the harder and/or more difficult it will be to rank for.
- Target less competitive keywords – It could seem counter intuitive to go after keywords and phrases that aren’t as popular, but for a new website, this is often the most effective approach. It’s very challenging to take on mature sites that have achieved trust and authority for the most well-liked keywords and phrases in competitive ranking verticals.
So websites that are young typically have more success optimizing for keyword phrases that aren’t that popular or competitive or optimizing your keywords and phrases by integrating modifiers (thematic modifiers or geo-targeted modifiers) and developing mid to long tail keywords and phrases.
Keyword Relevance
It is crucial to pick keywords and phrases to optimize for based on how relevant they are to your products or services. If your keywords aren’t intrinsically relevant to what you’re offering on your website, the traffic the various search engines feed your site won’t be delivered a relevant message.
People searching for information are looking for relevance. Without it you are very, very unlikely to convert them into customers.
Keyword Intent
To establish the value of your keyword phrases, you need to determine the intent of the searchers. Where are they in their search cycle? Are they just browsing or looking for information? Are they in fact ready to buy something? Or are they just looking for information or a solution to some problem or issue?
The intent behind keywords or online searches can be divided into three categories.
- Navigational
- Transactional
- Informational
It’s important to optimize for the high intent keywords and phrases rather than keyword phrases of low intent. By identifying, classifying and segmenting your high intent keyword groups into separate baskets of intent and eliminating the low-value keywords and phrases, you’ll see your search relevance rise and you’ll generate more, licensed traffic.
