Keyword Optimization

 

 

A couple of weeks ago we talked about the importance of user testing. User testing allows you to see your site through the eyes of the people that matter the most, site visitors. But if you aren’t driving traffic to your site, website improvements won’t matter. This is why keyword research and how you use keywords is so important to the searchability of your site.

Keywords play two different roles. First, they allow you to optimize your site with content relevant to the user and second, to the search engines.  For the user, that is content about your products and services optimized with words that the user would enter into a search engine to find a company like yours. Search engines use elaborate programming algorithms to find and display web pages with content that is relevant to the searchers search terms.  So if your site is not optimized for the best keywords (search terms) for your business, the search engine will not find and place your relevant web pages well on a search results page.

When we are first approached, the conversation usually goes something like this. “We have hundreds of keywords and keyword phrases listed within our site, but we don’t rank well for any of those words and phrases, except when our company or product name is used.” What gives? Can you help us?

We start any optimization project by asking the following four questions to gain an understanding of why they were not ranking well.

First, are they using the right keywords? And are they using words that extend beyond just branded keywords (words with the company or product name in them), which is a common trap industrial companies fall into — focusing just on branded keywords. The problem with branded keywords is that unless the searcher is already a customer or is someone who knows about your products, they won’t perform a search using your branded keywords. You need to focus on words and phrases that searchers use. The most important search engine optimization activity is conducting keyword research. You must drill down deep to determine if searches for popular words apply to your specific market and target audience. It is also valuable to know just how difficult it is to rank high for those keywords, and what supporting words and phrases can be used to to drive even more qualified leads to your site.

Second, is the site optimized for keywords (search) on both the front end and backend. Each web page should have a primary keyword focus (on one main idea, product, or service). Page content (front end) should use that primary keyword, along with supporting keywords (we call these secondary and tertiary keywords). And, metadata (backend) should also incorporate keywords.

Third, are they providing content that addresses customer issues and solves their problems? Most industrial companies claim to be solution providers, but their content does not always support this claim. A lot of websites are feature heavy, sometimes bypassing benefits altogether. When creating content, ask yourself, “why would the customer care?” If you can answer that question, your content will be deeper and more relevant, which is a big search engine ranking factor. Focusing content on customer needs and issues also helps you produce new and fresh content, another search engine ranking factor.

Fourth, do you analyze your site’s search and visitor data on a monthly basis?

After doing the appropriate research, we make sure we understand the overall goal of the website. For industrial companies, this is almost always lead or sales generation. Armed with this information, we then can develop a project plan to optimize the site.

Typically, the project plan includes slightly reworking the front end, even adding a few new web pages to ensure each page is focused on one topic and then keyword optimizing that content. And, updating backend metadata by giving each web page unique and relevant keyword optimized page titles, descriptions, H tags, and Alt tags.

Search engine optimization is a long term strategy. It can take months to improve your search engine results page rankings, but with a little due diligence and consistently monitoring the site’s performance, you will begin to see change and start gaining a competitive advantage.