How to Find the Best Keywords Your Potential Customers are using

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how to find the best keywordsA large piece of your marketing efforts should be centered around SEO (search engine optimization) and your content that contains KEYWORDS – the best keywords your potential customers are using and searching for!

If you have a website and/or blog and want to grow your traffic and sales, keep reading because this is about working smarter, not harder. And heck, for those of you writing blog posts…if you’re writing blog post anyways, they might as well be effective and working for you, right? Right.

What is a keyword?

A keyword is a word or phrase that is a topic of importance.

People searching online use keywords as a way to identify and verbalize their topic or problem that they’re looking for more information on. YOU should be creating content and blog posts around relevant topics that your potential customers are looking to find!

In order for the search engines, like Google, to offer your web page as a relevant result to what people are searching online, this keyword or phrase MUST appear visibly in your site.

There are four different types of keywords that you should understand:

1. Broad Keywords. These are short words and most often one word on its own. Broad keywords are general to your business, have a high search volume, and have lots of competition.

Note: Broad keywords are difficult to rank (show up on the first page of search engines) and get traffic for. And these visitors are less likely to become leads.

2. General Keywords. These are similar to broad keywords but are usually made up of two or three general or more defining keywords.

3. Niche Keywords. These keywords are more defined and specific, essentially keywords and phrases that potential customers are typing into search engines every day.

4. Long-Tail Keywords. These are typically longer phrases or a series of words that are very specific to your blog post topic, business, or industry. Long-tail keywords have a lower search volume and less competition.

Note: Long-tail keywords are easy to rank and get traffic for. So when you’re first getting started, you definitely want to start by targeting long-tail keywords. And guess what? The visitors from these keywords are more likely to become leads because YOU’RE VERY SPECIFIC!

Here are some examples of each:

four different type of keywords example
Why are keywords important?

-Keywords are important because they are the foundation of your website content.
-Keywords help search engines understand your page(s).
-Keywords give potential customers quick cues to determine if you’re a match.

Every page and blog post has a main topic, and that topic should tie back to a keyword or keyword phrase that your potential customers would be searching for. When you use the right keywords, the right people will be able to find you!

4 ways to find the best keywords your potential customers are using.

1. Talk to people. Ask your customers, ideal target customers, honest bff’s, etc. what they are searching for? Ask them what the hot topics and trends are. Ask them what sorts of questions or struggles they might have.

2. Use social media tools. Instagram has ‘trending tags’ and you can also look at what others in your industry are using as popular hash tags. On Twitter there’s a ‘trending toolbar’ that shows popular topics and a ‘trending page’ on Google+. I personally like Pinterest; I’ll search a keyword or words and see what images have a lot of repins under certain keywords.
Using social media tools for keywords
3. Check out your competition. A good idea is to run a list of keywords through the search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to see who is ranking for those terms on the first page. Don’t forget to check out the searched images too!

4. Google Autocomplete. This one is my personal favorite! You know when you go to search for something and Google starts to populate additional words, thoughts or adds words to your question? These queries reflect what other people are searching for. Pretty cool, huh?

Google Autocomplete exampleBased on what you now know AND all of your keyword research above, you can start the process of optimizing your site and blog posts using keywords that your potential customers are using and searching for!

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13 Comments

    1. I’m so glad Kelley! Knowing the RIGHT keywords to use and then building blog posts around them will help you grow so much quicker! It’s all about working smarter, not harder… and being strategic AND intentional in what you’re doing. Good luck – can’t wait to hear how it goes! xo

      BTW: Did you notice my long-tail keyword example “Neutral Bedding Makeover from Matching and Coordinating” actually came from a blog post I read that YOU wrote on your site! Haha, love your site and blog!!!

    1. So welcome, glad this helped! It’s hard to find the time to learn all this STUFF on your own – I’m here to help you! xo

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