Keywords remain an important part of online marketing.
The real advantage of keywords is that with them you gain knowledge about your target customer.
With each keyword there are certain challenges and the main challenge is figuring out what a person is really looking for when they search.
This is a challenge we have at Ghost Blog Writers when it comes to blogging.
We work with clients to create blogging strategies to bring in traffic from a variety of sources including organic search traffic as a long-term strategy.
Some of our clients have done some keyword research and it’s usually at this point when we have a discussion about keywords for blog posts versus keywords for main website pages.
Keyword For Main Website Pages
Let’s use the example of an email business that creates ongoing emails for businesses.
An email business might start the process of online marketing with a list of important keywords. If the business can rank for the keywords on this list they would get a good amount of targeted traffic and that will lead to conversions and sales.
That keyword list might look like:
- Email Design Service
- Email Marketing Service
- Email Marketing
- Email Designers
- Professional Email Design
And you could go on with a few related keywords, but that’s a basic list of important keywords for an email service.
The first thing we do when we look at a keyword list is determine what we think a person searching for these keywords would want to find.
We often search for the terms on Google and see what is ranking. That will give you an idea of the top content, which is usually a sign of the pages searchers find most relevant for that keyword.
What we find with terms like the ones above is that they’re more related to a product or service a business provides versus what you would build a blog post around.
A person searching for a term like Email Design Service is very likely looking for just that. They know they want email design services and they’re looking for a provider.
For this type of keyword you want that person to land on one of your main website pages like your homepage or perhaps your services page.
You would optimize your on-page information for those keywords. You might include a good bit of information about how your process works for providing email design services. You would include that term in your title tag and in the heading on the page and so on.
You want to take that approach instead of creating a blog post titled something like 10 Tips For Picking An Email Design Service.
A post like that might be helpful, but it’s probably better to take some of the content you might write on that post and add it to your services page.
With this process you’re thinking about your sales cycle. And if someone is already interested in email design services they are already past the first few points in the sales cycle. They’re ready for your main website pages.
Keywords For Blog Posts (And Other Content)
But blogging is still important.
However, instead of focusing on the keywords that are better suited for your main pages you’re looking for keywords that your target customer is searching for when they’re usually at the stage where they might not currently be thinking about email design services or they might not even know they need email design services.
This approach widens your audience. You’re still writing about the things your target customer is looking for, but you’re broadening the list of things you can blog about (or create content about). You can attract your target client with a blog post, earn their trust and chances are good that they’ll see the service you provide and that will intrigue them to learn more on your main pages.
Our strategy for finding these keywords or topics is to focus on the questions a target client is looking for in relation to their life if you’re B2C or their job if you’re B2B.
So the email design company is likely targeting CEOs, Marketing Managers and folks like that. Those people have a lot of questions and a thirst for a lot of information as it relates to their job. They might be looking for information on all things online marketing, maybe management items, business operations and much more.
You can find niches within that scope, but the main goal is to find the questions your target client is asking and then answer those questions with blog posts.
We often go to industry forums and look at what people are asking.
We look at industry blogs and look for popular articles.
We look at the comments on those popular articles and see if readers have questions that aren’t being answered.
You can survey your current clients and ask what they’re struggling with in their job right now or ask them what they are curious about as far as the industry.
Building Your Site’s Overall Authority
What we’ve found at Ghost Blog Writers is that with this approach to keywords you’re building the overall authority of your website.
When you’re a new site it is next to impossible to rank for those important keywords right away. That takes time. You have to build trust.
That’s where blogging can help. You can help people one blog post at a time with questions they have and over time your site becomes an authority in your industry. Even on a small scale you can become an authority and you’ll notice that your main pages will begin ranking for the important terms (as long as you do the basic optimization for those keywords for your main pages).
It can take a while, often years, but it is well worth the effort. You can cut into that time if you can grow the authority of your blog quickly and that certainly is possible.
Because it can take a while to build authority there are only a few willing to invest the time and effort. That’s an opportunity for those that are willing to invest.
Conclusion
Hopefully this has provided some insight into how best to approach your list of important keywords. Content marketing is great whether you’re doing blogging, creating guides, filming videos, recording podcasts or whatever you’re doing, but it’s best if you’re approaching keywords in the right way.
And the way described above is a good long-term strategy that will help your target clients, build your authority and bring in inquiries through your website.