How to choose your keywords: the complete guide

The choice of keywords is a crucial step in SEO. If you intend to create a blog or a commercial site, know that the ranking of your site on search engines will depend, in large part, on an adequate keyword strategy. While it is true that optimising your traffic depends on the relevance of the keywords you select, it also depends on good SEO techniques. As a leader in SEO, Smartkeyword's goal is to provide you with the right keyword solutions to help you succeed in your inbound marketing strategy.

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Learn your target audience’s language

To better understand the language of your target audience, it is essential to ask yourself some key questions. These will allow you to know who exactly is your buyer persona (target) and what is the audience you want to address. You will also have to study the virtual media (forums, social networks, blogs, etc.) on which this target is used to surfing. Ask yourself how they express their ideas and how their requestsare worded . In practical terms, this means identifying the keywords that your audience usually enters to find your site. To do this, you need to master the language and know the needs of your persona. Once you've identified the terms they use most often, you can build your list of keywords that can help you rank high on the SERPs.

Search for topics related to your business

Some big brands get robbed of the spotlight simply because they don't do enough work on keywords related to their business or brand. However, you can get the traffic generated by your keywords thanks to Search Console. To position your site well, it is therefore imperative to define the keywords related to your business sector. List all the expressions that come to mind and that are related to your business. Then, try to understand the ultimate questions to determine the terms that your target and your competitors use to describe your activities or your company. Always put yourself in the shoes of those who visit your site and imagine the words they may type to find you on the internet or social networks.

Select the main keywords on which you want to position yourself

The keyword represents the group of words or the expression that users search on Google. In reality, the objective of an SEO strategy is to make sure that your page is positioned at the top of the results, on a maximum of keywords of all kinds. For example, if you sell shoes, you would like your site to appear in the first few lines when a user types in "buy a pair of shoes" or "cheaper shoes".

The process to optimize the keywords you want to rank for is simple. It is possible to list 10 to 50 relevant words in a Word file that you will name "main keywords". This list of semantic fields will be very useful in the following operations. For better traffic on your site, it is very important to take the time to draw up an exhaustive list of priority keywords.

Create a list of secondary keywords

Secondary keywords are generally words derived or synonyms of your main keyword. They offer opportunities for better ranking. Secondary keywords give Google the opportunity to link your page more easily to one or more "corpora". In other words, they allow you to link your main page to other secondary pages that talk about the same subject. This is especially crucial if you are in a very competitive industry and have several pages (blog and commercial site) on the same topics.

If you want your page to appear on several search results, it is essential to create a list of secondary keywords. Without this list of keywords, your page will not be able to be linked to the corpus and also runs the risk of being difficult to classify by the search engines. Thus, by having a page specialized in organic food products, it would be wise to have another page presenting the activities related to the marketing of natural products or those related to well-being. To achieve this, use a keyword planning tool such as "Keyword planner" or at best Optimiz.me. However, the Keyword planner should be supplemented by a keyword generator. The way a lexical field generator works is as follows: enter the term of your choice, the software will suggest alternative keywords with a possibility of comparing the number of potential searches.

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The advantages of long tail keywords

The long tail keywords designate the totality of the keywords having a weak competition and a weak potential traffic. The whole of these words arranged or cumulated to each other will help, nevertheless, to easily rise to the top of the SERPs. When they are well chosen, they constitute about 80% of your traffic. There are several advantages to working on long tail keywords.

They are less in demand by the competition and therefore easier to reach.
They allow you to obtain a better conversion rate and more qualified traffic.
They promote good exploitation. If you lose position on some long tail keywords, it will not really have repercussions since you are working on other similar words.

Where to find relevant long tail keywords?

Most of the best SEO tools that offer featuresthat automatically suggest keywords are chargeable. However, there are good software to detect long tail keywords.

The search engine bar

The first thing you can do is test the intuitive search engine bar. This tool will offer you suggestions as soon as you start typing a word in the tab. Take advantage of this opportunity to build your list of keywords.

Related research

Use the related searches at the bottom of your Google page to create your list of relevant keywords. You can also use AnswerThePublic.com to find all related results by typing a short keyword.

Your competitors' keywords

The method of using your competitors' keywords is also a good strategy to find long tail keywords. To identify them, you just have to type some information related to your sector of activity and to locate the sites that appear at the top of the rankings.

Blogs and discussion forums

On social networks, blogs and forums, you will find the keywords that your subscribers and your various targets are used to formulating. These relevant keywords represent real indicators to better understand the direction of your followers' requests. These channels are therefore real blog criteria that will help you better position yourself on the market.

Evaluate the potential traffic of each keyword

An adequate keyword strategy promotes qualified, long-lasting and sustainabletraffic. This strategy involves researching the words and expressions for which you want to reference your site. The notion of weighted search volume remains an excellent way to evaluate the potential traffic of a keyword. When this index is integrated into the selection criteria, it allows you to find the most profitable keywords or terms. The weighted search volume is a simple concept to calculate. You just have to insert your list of keywords on an Excel sheet while providing a column for the search volumes, a second for the competition and a third for the index. This method allows you to arbitrate the keywords and have a better return on investment. Several tools can help you determine your list of keywords. Ahref and SemRush are good applications that promote SEO and better visibility of a website. They provide web agencies with very complete functionalities such as keyword planning and tracking, content exploration or competitive site analysis.

Integrate a relevant lexical field

Web experts are unanimous on the fact that to have quality content, it is no longer enough to list keywords. Ideally, you should use a relevant lexical field. Thanks to technological evolution, Google is now able to identify the quality of a content depending on the lexical field that has been used in the text. The Internet giant attaches great importance to the variety of words or expressions and the use of a rich vocabulary. This is why it is necessary to integrate synonyms and derived words to support content on the Internet. The richness of a text is to make use of a vast semantic field. However, in order to write a reliable article that attracts the attention of Internet users, it is necessary to keep in mind the interest of the reader and not only the ranking of a page. To effectively work on your lexical field, you must first analyze the SERPs. The methodical study of the results proposed by the search engines will allow you to obtain precious information on the users' expectations and the appropriate semantic context.

Conclusion

You have all the keys you need to find a relevant list of keywords. It is a job that requires patience, imagination and strategy.

Next comes the writing of your pages, the content of which must be optimised with the right lexical field in order to be well referenced by the search engines.

We can help you through this process, who better than SmartKeyword to find keywords after all ;)