How important are keywords on your website?

Keywords help Google find your websiteKeywords, SEO and keyword research, SEO, Website copy, optimised Google friendly copy for websites.

For search engines, keywords are an essential element as searches are matched against them and in short, that’s how the search engines find and display your website.  Google gives a lot of attention to the keywords in the title tag but also expects those same keywords to appear in the text, headers etc to show relevance.

Think about keywords first!

So, it’s very important to use the right keywords on your website for the best SEO results and it’s important where you use them and how many times you use them.  I strongly believe that this is the one of the first things you should think about when setting up your new website (or revamping your old one) and that it shouldn’t come third to design and content.  From an SEO point of view it’s not much good if the text on the pages of your website is full of words and phrases that you think sound great but nobody actually searches on.

Research your keywords, don’t just guess at them

It’s important that you use a keyword tool such as Google’s keyword planner to check you are using the right keywords.  What you think are the best keywords or phrases for your products or services might not be.

A good example of this is was when a friend of mine set up her website to sell holidays in Greece.  The website looked gorgeous but on most of the pages there were only occasional mentions of Greece and a couple of mentions of the destinations she offered and nothing much about the types of accommodation.  The tags were even worse. There was a lot of talk about how they offered an expert service for individuals who wanted a different holiday experience etc etc.  This was great as they are selling their speciality service and it was very benefit driven copy but how were people going to  find the site in the first place.  Nobody goes to Google and types in “holiday for the independent traveller,” they type in “Villas in Greece” or “Apartments in Greece.”  So these are some of the keywords they should have been emphasising.

By all means sell your product or serves on the site but not at the expense of keywords

You can sell your product once you’ve got the visitor on your site and it’s very important that you do so as you want to convert the visitor into a customer but don’t confuse the marketing with the selling.  Marketing in the case of websites is about getting the customer onto your site, the selling begins on your site when your content makes them pick up the phone or fill in the enquiry form.   You can’t sell your service to the search engine, it’s only interested in the keywords and the keywords you want are the ones that people are searching on.   Anyone can get you to page one of Google for a search term that nobody searches on, what matters is getting your website up the rankings for searches i.e. keywords that people are typing it into Google and other search engines that are relevant to our business.

it’s not just about keywords but how you use them on the site

There are lots of keyword tools out there so it is possible to do the research yourself but that’s perhaps the easy bit.  You then need to use the right keywords, in the right places, in a way that sells the benefits of your product and makes the customer want to buy it.  Not as easy as it sounds, which is why a lot of companies are now turning to professionals for help.   It’s not a big investment to get your website copy keyword rich, benefit driven and well optimised but it certainly pays dividends.

If you require further information on Search Engine Optimisation, keywords, copywriting or any of the other services offered by the Colchester SEO Company contact sue@thecolchesterseocompany.co.uk.