How to Choose the Right Keywords for Content Marketing: An Overview
When it comes to choosing the right keywords for content marketing there is much to be considered. It’s not merely an effort to find words and terms people are searching for, but almost more importantly would be why they are searching for those words. Google looks at intent very highly in their algorithms and this is the one thing many people get wrong when trying to find the right words that their audience might be searching for. In order to better understand how to choose the right keywords, let’s start there. Let’s look at intent.
Why Is Someone Searching for That Word (Term)?
The whole idea of intent is something that has evolved over the past decade or so. While there was a time when Google simply ranked for the number of times a word was searched, they now look more closely at intent. This is why you need to answer the question carefully. What are they really looking for? What is their intent?
Take a case of someone searching for the vague term “fashion blog.” They could be looking for a blog post on fashions or they could be looking for a blog site dedicated to fashions. This is intended and it is very important to identify why someone is searching for that term if you want to get inbound traffic. Identifying intent, then, is also ranked on the number of hits (click-throughs) you get for that search term.
Identifying an Audience
Even before looking for SEO keywords and intent would be the issue of identifying an audience. This is one of the reasons so many people simply choose to work with a professional SEO marketing group. There is much to consider when identifying an audience that you want to target, among which might be:
- Industry
- Demographics
- Location
And the list goes on. So, for example, the SEO keywords a digital agency Birmingham might target may be altogether different from than SEO keywords a digital agency London would target for a local retailer (industry and location) but then they would need to account for linguistic variations by age, gender and so forth. Identifying an audience is a primary consideration and not one easily determined.
What Is the Purpose of Your Content Marketing?
This is another very important consideration when choosing the right keywords for your SEO strategy. Are you looking to sell something or are you perhaps just trying to inform your audience? The keywords people search for are especially related to what they are searching for (intent). However, your use of specific keywords is also related to your intent. Therefore, if you are trying to sell a product or service you might be targeting a whole different set of search terms than you would employ if you were trying to impart information.
All of this can get extremely confusing, and this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. Then there are SEO tools you can use to gather data and analyze metrics. When you stop to think about it, Search Engine Optimisation is so involved that people actually get graduate degrees in marketing with a specialization in SEO. Since results are what you are after, you just might need an expert on the job.
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