Producing and publishing content on blogs, websites, and social media pages helps you to make current and potential clients aware of what you do and offer while establishing your expertise in your industry. The most effective online marketing requires keywords and SEO to ensure that major search engines can find and promote your content. This post discusses the roles of keywords and SEO while offering a cautionary message to those who obsess over the effort.
What Are Keywords and SEO?
Keywords are individual words or phrases that represent what your clients are most likely to search for when looking for businesses like yours online. For example, an architect might use keywords like "architecture" or "building design" in their online content.
Content creation should be more than just focused on developing strategic keywords. The focus should be on creating great content that will capture the attention of your prospects and clients. A search engine will not admonish you for failing to underuse keywords or having a well-written, optimized page. However, they will punish you for cramming your pages with many keywords.
A lot of people needlessly obsess over keywords. If you find yourself with a keyword fixation, you should know Google does not match the keywords you enter into a browser. Google algorithms aim to understand the intention behind your query to provide the most relevant, high-quality search results.
Stop wasting your energy obsessing. Simply focus on developing great content organically. When you write freely, you will find new keywords, and keyword phrases will present themselves naturally. In effect, trying to meet your keyword quota stifles your ability to develop a creative marketing piece.
SEO, or search engine optimization, strategically places those keywords throughout a blog post, Facebook update, or web page. There should be a balance of SEO keywords to help your online content rank higher in the results lists returned by search engines. SEO aims to make your site or content appear as early as possible in search engine results.
Using Keywords and SEO
- Do your research: Use online tools such as the Google Adwords Keyword Planner for help determining which keywords are most effective for your campaign. You'll have a good idea of what keywords are common in your industry, but use online search tools to confirm the status of keywords and their variants.
- Place keywords properly: Keywords should be placed in the article title, the meta description tag, the page title tag, and in the first paragraph of the SEO-optimized content. You should also put the keywords in several other paragraphs throughout the content.
- Maintain correct keyword density: Keyword density is the number of times the keyword appears in your content. A good density level of 2 to 4 percent translates to two or four times per 100 words of content. Don't overdo the keyword placement; keyword "stuffing" will work against you.
To sum it up, keywords and SEO are essential. However, it should be separate from the main focus of your content marketing effort. If you’ve become obsessed with keywords and SEO, shift your energy towards a more content-centric approach. Try it for a week and share the results in the comments section.
Contact Colosi Marketing today for more information on the most effective ways to use keywords and SEO for your online marketing projects.
