TJ Vasquez
High-competition keywords are scary, it’s easy to target the low-hanging fruit and the long-tail. But put a lot of resources into a “maybe it’ll work out”? Now that’s a daunting task. We’ve broken down some of the most important factors and tools to consider when targeting your money words. Good luck!
Only about 25% of consumers visit the second page of search results when browsing online, which already cuts out around ¾ of prospective customers and clients. On top of that, though, many internet users don’t even scroll down past the first two or three results on the first page of search results.
If your website doesn’t rank within the first few hits, consumers are going to opt for your competitors’ websites instead of yours.
However, building your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy and getting your website in the top rankings is usually far easier said than done. There is a plethora of factors that can positively or negatively affect the way your website ranks, from the quality of your blog posts to your website’s loading speed (and SO much in between).
One of the most crucial factors that contribute to your website rankings is keywords and how you use them within your content. Search engines like Google want to provide users with the most accurate, relevant search results when they search for any keyword on the internet. Providing the best possible results makes an effective search engine more attractive to users, which helps them rake in traffic and revenue. This means in order to rank highly on search engine results pages, you need to make sure you structure your website and the content you produce so that you’re housing the most relevant, accurate results.
But, how can you do that if you have your sights set on high-competition keywords but you don’t know how to get from Point A to Point B?
Here are a few ways for you to make sure your website ranks above your competitors when consumers search for high-competition keywords:
Identify High-Competition Keywords
First, before you can develop any sort of SEO strategy, you need to be aware of which high-competition keywords are the most relevant and appropriate for your business content. When you successfully use keywords that closely relate to your products and services, you can enhance your SEO capabilities and drive relevant traffic to your website.
To accomplish this, you need to research your keyword options carefully.
Applying the results of your keyword research correctly means that your website, or one of its pages, will populate in search engine results when someone in your target audience searches for the keywords you’re using in your content. Proper SEO methods garner the attention of search engine algorithms, and in turn, the algorithms recommend your website to internet users in your target audience. Promoting your website at the top of search engine results pulls more traffic to your website.
In this way, keyword research is essential for helping your business stand out among competitors.
To effectively research your keyword options, take these steps:
- Brainstorm a list of topics, words, and phrases that you think are relevant to your business. Put yourself in the consumers’ shoes: if you were looking for the products and services your company offers, which words would you key into a search engine?
- Browse through your competitors’ websites and blogs to see what words and phrases they use most frequently. Add these to your list.
- Using a keyword research tool, like the one on SEMrush, look up the words, phrases, and topics on your list. Make a note of each entry’s search volume. The greater the search volume, the more important these keywords are to consumers.
- At the bottom of your Google search results for the words on this list, you will see related searches. Add these words to your list of keywords.
Once you complete these steps, you should have a decent number of keywords that you know your target audience uses. You can then work these keywords into your SEO strategy so that you can improve and optimize your website.
Plan Out Your Content
Now that you have a solid list of high-quality, high-competition keywords, you can start incorporating these keywords into the pages on your site.
Here are a few places where you can naturally include these keywords:
- Blog posts
- Product descriptions
- Web page navigation links
- Title tags
- Meta descriptions
- Infographics
- Page headers
- Captioned videos and images
Try using your keywords in the titles and several page headings on your website, as well as meta descriptions and pieces of written content.
It’s important to proceed with care when adding keywords because simply inserting specific words and phrases into your content at random isn’t going to yield positive results. It’s incredibly difficult to trick search engine algorithms, so you’ll need to instead use your keywords with care. If your blog posts are just compilations of keywords or you are putting a keyword or phrase in every other sentence just for the sake of boosting your ranking, it will actually have the opposite effect.
This tactic is known as keyword stuffing and because it produces content that’s neither relevant nor informative, search engines penalize content that’s produced this way.
Here are a few best practices to help you use these keywords effectively:
- Develop blog posts around your keywords. Instead of writing content and then squeezing in a ton of keywords, find a keyword or phrase and use it to create your content. For instance, if your keyword is “dry food for dogs,” you could have a blog post titled “The top five brands of dry food for dogs” or “How do I find the best dry food for dogs?”
- When you write your content, your keywords should make up approximately 1.5% of the body of work. To avoid stuffing keywords into your content unintentionally, you should also use variations of your keywords, such as “dry dog food.”
- Understand how Google and website crawlers work. If you know how these tools work, you can apply your understanding toward developing strategic ways to optimize your website. For instance, Google searches headlines before the text on your website, so try to incorporate your keywords into the titles and headings of your blog posts.
- Add value. Even though your goal is to boost your keyword ranking you still want to add value to your content. Remember, search engines recommend the most useful content they find in an effort to provide internet users with the resources they’re looking for. As such, you should aim to provide your audience with information that benefits them.
- Keep a consistent content production schedule so that your pages remain active and your website becomes a reliable source of current, constant information.
- Review your content. Read your content through the lens of your target audience. If they were to read the articles linked on your website, would they be annoyed at your incessant use of keywords or would they feel like they received valuable information?
- Look at your feedback. Check your analytics, send out a survey, and look at the comments and feedback on your blog posts. This will help you see whether or not your keyword integration is working. Use the feedback you receive to make necessary adjustments to your SEO strategy and content creation methods.
Create and Follow an SEO Checklist
Depending on your SEO approach and the goals you have in mind, there are a couple of checklists you can use to make sure each piece of content is produced with quality in mind. However, it’s often best to combine points and create your own checklist based on the unique parameters you need to follow to keep your pages performing well.
These are a few points you can include in your SEO checklist to improve your keyword usage and create better content overall.
- Find a “main” keyword and build upon it with relevant keywords
- Understand the intent behind searches your audience members type
- Research the most pertinent information related to your keywords so that you know what your audience is looking for
- Review your work through Google Search Console and Google Analytics regularly
- Keep content organized, easy to read, and free from meandering content
- Create honest, yet compelling title tags and meta descriptions
- Write your content with a purpose (answer a question, solve a problem, offer guidance)
- Make sure your site and pages are mobile-friendly
- Keep your site and pages loading as quickly as possible
- Be aware of the search volume and competition of each keyword you use
- Use and optimize images to break up sections of text (in addition to headings, subheadings, bullets, numbers, etc.)
Review. Review. Review.
Implementing keyword research is not a one-and-done task. It involves constant review and adjustment in order to be an effective SEO tool. SEO protocols are constantly evolving to more effectively meet the needs of internet users, so staying current with the latest SEO news and strategic opportunities is a must if you don’t want your content to lose ranking.
Revisit your keyword research sessions frequently to determine whether new keywords and phrases have cropped up, or if once-popular keywords have become more obscure. Add new keywords to your list or remove old entries that no longer benefit your strategy.
Continue to scour your competitors’ sites and high-competition keywords to make sure that you aren’t somehow out of the loop in your industry.
Use an SEO rank-checking tool that can help you pinpoint any website issues that are influencing your SEO so that you can address the issues at hand, correct them, and avoid making the same mistakes in the future. Additionally, a ranking tool will help you determine what you’re doing right in terms of SEO as well, so you can use the reports generated for your site to optimize your site and climb up the search engine results pages.
SEO rank checkers are one of the most objective resources you can use to make sure your website is ranking for high-competition keywords. Check your analytics to see whether or not certain keywords or posts are successfully reaching your target audience. If your keyword research and implementation are not driving traffic to your website and boosting your search results rankings, then you need to make a few (or many) changes.
Don’t feel discouraged when issues come up that you need to resolve. Even the most successful businesses with the most experienced SEO teams have to go back to the drawing board sometimes. Making changes and learning about new techniques is just a normal part of operating a business online.
Ultimately, your goal is to do everything in your power to encourage consumers to visit your website instead of your competitors’ websites. When you follow these steps and consistently look for ways to continue to optimize your website for SEO, your page will rank higher than your competitors on search engine results pages. This, in turn, will lead to more people visiting your site who are actively looking for the goods and services you have to offer.
After reading through this guide, you may feel motivated, but you may also feel overwhelmed. SEO strategies take a lot of work in order to produce the right results. If you’re not very confident in your ability to create content that drives traffic to your pages, you’re in luck.
Working with a team of SEO experts can take the burden off your shoulders and point your website in the right direction without requiring you to invest all that time and effort.
Reach out to Content Cucumber to learn more about our SEO and content creation services! We’re here to help.
SOURCES
https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/crawling-indexing/
https://contentcucumber.com/2021/06/10/what-is-considered-good-website-traffic-and-how-do-i-get-it/
https://www.webfx.com/blog/marketing/marketing-stats/
https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-checklist/#keyword-research-checklist
