Keywords 101

Keywords are words and phrases that consumers use when searching for a particular service or product. It’s important that your website rank high in search results for the keywords most closely associated with the products or services you offer.

For example, an auto repair shop in Duluth, Minnesota would want to show up on the first page of search results for the term “auto repair duluth”. An online retail store, or ecommerce store, selling women’s shoes would want to rank highly for the term “womens shoes”, as well as the terms “ladies shoes” and perhaps “womens pumps”.

In order to rank well for these search terms, websites must incorporate these phrases into on-page text, page titles and meta data. Without first researching to find out which terms are actually being used by consumers to search for products and services, a website will have little hope of getting found by the right customers – or of getting found at all.

Keyword Research

Consumers use a wide range of terms to search for the same products and services, and it’s important to make sure your website is targeting the terms which are most valuable – those which are being searched for the most.

Google’s Keyword Tool is free, and it’s one of the most useful web marketing tools available. By entering a list of words and phrases associated with your business, you can quickly see which terms are being searched – those with high “Search Volume” – and which are not. Google’s keyword tool also shows you related terms and synonyms you often wouldn’t have thought of.

Let’s take auto repair services as an example.

Acme Repair Shop uses the term “Community Car Service” in its page title (the words at the top of the browser for any given web page) and within the body of its home page.

We plug the following terms into Google’s keyword tool:

community car service
car service
car repair
auto repair

After we hit “Get keyword ideas” (and enter the annoying anti-spam bot letters in the box), we see the following results:

“Community car service” is the least searched term, while the most searched term is “auto repair”. To optimize his or her website, the owner of Acme Repair Shop would need to change the page title and content text to reflect “auto repair” as the most prominent keyword, with “car repair” being used frequently as well.

Longtail Keywords

Rarely does a business offer a single service or product; getting your business’ website to rank for secondary products and services is important, too – especially if you offer a diverse range of products.

“Longtail keywords” are keyword phrases containing a longer string of words. Some longtail keywords may contain as many as 6 or 7 words, others may contain only 2 highly specific words. Consumers often use longtail keywords when they’re looking for a very specific product or service.

Users are becoming more and more adept at refining their searches using longtail keywords. Individual longtail keywords may have a relatively low search volume, but when you add up all the longtail searches relating to a specific product or service, longtail keywords often account for more search volume than shorter, more basic keywords.

For example, the owner of a Subaru who’s having transmission problems might search for “subaru transmission auto repair” rather than simply “auto repair”. If Acme Repair Shop wants to get found for this term, the terms “Subaru” and “transmission repair” need to be incorporated into website content on either a service-specific page or a blog post.

An ecommerce store selling women’s shoes would do well to not only rank for “womens shoes”, but for “red high heel pumps” and similar variations as well.

Read more about using business blogging to capture longtail keywords at Business Blogging 101.

For more info, check out keyword research articles on our blog.