Keyword research is the foundation for all your digital marketing efforts, driving every decision that you make. When you take the time to do it properly, it makes everything down the line more efficient. The difference between showing up for the most important search terms organically and having to pay for all your website traffic is based on the keywords that you focus on and implementing them properly.

At Calibrate Digital Marketing we live and breathe SEO and it’s an important factor in every decision that we make for your website. Search engine optimization in Springfield Missouri isn’t an afterthought. It’s what we focus on as soon as we start working on your business.

Since SEO is our primary focus, that means we need to take the time to pick your keywords carefully. A keyword is a specific word or phrase that someone types into a search engine to find a topic they are looking for. Your keywords impact what pages you’ll need on your website and what content should go on those pages. Before we start to build any website, we first determine what keywords it needs to rank well for.

So how do you determine what keywords to focus on? Ideally, you’d like your website to be the first thing that shows up regardless of the search term. Since that isn’t feasible you need to narrow your focus on which keywords really matter. If you try to rank well for everything, you won’t rank well for anything.

So how many keywords should you try to rank well for? That depends on your business. Are you local, regional, national or international? Just like it’s harder to rank well for a greater number of keywords, it’s also harder to rank well for a larger geographic area.

What type of keywords should you try to rank well for? Looking at which keywords get the most search traffic is a good place to start. But you also need to consider how much competition there is for the keywords. And which keywords have more “buyer intent” associated with them? If a keyword has a very high search volume, but it’s very competitive and most people searching for that term are simply browsing or doing research looking for general information, then that may not be a good term to optimize for.

You may know exactly what keywords people are searching for, have the best solutions for them on your website, and know that those keywords have a high degree of buyer intent, but if no one can find you because your competition is too strong, then all of your SEO efforts could be wasted.

But if another keyword still has decent search volume, less competition and the majority of people using that search term are looking to pull the trigger, then that’s probably a good term to go after. Keyword research is both an art and a science. You can look at what the numbers tell you as a starting point, but you also have to consider your business and decide whether that keyword makes sense for your business.

You also have to keep an open mind. You may start off assuming that a certain keyword is the most common search term only to find out there’s a synonym that basically means the same thing, but has a much higher search volume. As you do your keyword research, you will start to find a pretty clear drop off point where the search volume isn’t worth trying to be one of your core search terms.

Once you come up with your initial list of keywords, you can use it to start to plan your digital marketing. Over time, you may add to this list, make changes or no longer focus on earlier keywords as things are always changing. You will benefit from using different variations of keywords and long tail keywords as you continue to produce content with blog posts over time.

A long tail keyword is a longer, more specific search term that brings back a lower number of searches in the search engines, but the search results it does bring back would most likely be closer to what the searcher is actually looking for.

This allows you to eliminate traffic that wasn’t interested in your specific topic while also minimizing your competition since long tail keywords are used less frequently on other websites. Having a solid foundation of search terms based on thorough keyword research in Springfield Missouri will help your website perform well in your digital marketing.