I was moving house the other year and got a lift in the removal truck with the team. As we were making small talk on the short journey, they asked me what I did for work. I explained I’m an SEO and digital marketing freelancer and the response was ‘SEO? That’s all about the keywords isn’t it?”
And yes, it’s true. Understanding the keywords your target audience are searching for on Google (the search query) and implementing them on your website (search engine optimization) is going to ensure you rank higher on search results.
But there’s so much more to keywords than that. Think about when you go shopping. If you are buying a book you’ll look for certain words in the description or blurb to identify if it’s something you’ll enjoy – ‘thriller’, ‘ghost story’, etc. They’re keywords! Or when you go to the supermarket and want a ready meal, you might look out for ‘low fat’, ‘low calorie’, ‘healthy option’, etc. They are keywords too!
Understand that keywords aren’t magical phrases that will boost your website traffic when you use them three times on a page (no, using keywords on the article title, descriptive title and meta description is not enough) is important. Keywords and serarch phrases are simply descriptive words that your audience are looking for on search engines to find and connect with you.
When you understand this, you’ll be able to see how all of your marketing works together and everything becomes a lot easier when you use relevant keywords across all your social media channels, email campaigns and other promotional campaigns such as printed advertising and sales funnels.
How to find the right keywords for your business?
When we think of keywords as ‘identifying’ words, i.e. descriptions, we can consider how:
- We describe ourselves and what we do
- How others describe themselves and what they need
- How others describe what we do/what they want from us
Let’s imagine that you are a psychotherapist and you specialise in helping people with anxiety disorders. You might use broad keywords like ‘psychotherapist, ‘anxiety disorders’, ‘generalised anxiety’, ‘CBT’ etc in your content writing and website copy. But your potential clients only know what they are feeling and needing help with, and so they are going to be using Google and other search engines to find matches with their keywords of ‘panic attacks’ ‘anxiety’ ‘feeling anxious’ ‘help with anxiety’, etc.
You can see how the two keyword lists are not the same – although they are very similar and Google does have artificial intelligence that understands synonyms so you will still rank online, your website isn’t going to perform as well without the keywords your potential clients are actually searching for.
Let’s go back to that ready meal shopping. You know you need to eat better so you’re looking for those ‘healthy option’ and ‘low fat’ meals. You will instinctively go for the ones using those descriptions on their packaging, even though the ones you’re ignoring may be better for you if you looked at the nutritional information. It’s the same principle with your marketing, you might be the best placed psychotherapist to help them but unless you’re using the descriptive words they’re entering into search engines, they’re likely to pass you by for someone else who is using those relevant keywords.
Consistency matters with your marketing
And the same applies with the keywords.
Just like some people think using keywords enough times is all you need for high rankings, others thing you only need to put keywords in certain places to get the same result. Neither of these beliefs are true.
Consistently getting your core message across, in all of your marketing, is what counts. This means using the same keywords, information, tone, and even style across your content writing – whether it’s for your website, social media, printed press or email campaigns. Google, when scanning and contextualising your website for ranking, is thinking and acting like a potential client – looking out for the same information and keywords that your potential clients are using and looking for. This is what Google and other search engines use as the basis for your search results ranking.
That’s why we always say ‘write for people, not robots’.
But there’s something else to consider here. When your social marketing is saying one thing but your website copy and content writing is saying something different , it creates a disconnect in the minds of your audience. It’s these little things that don’t quite add up that can create ‘red flags’ in the minds of a potential client and prevent them from choosing you rather than a competitor.
So, find your keywords and use them across all marketing channels
A lot of business owners consider SEO to be completely separate from their other marketing channels. They’ll outsource to a freelancer to get their website working well for Google, but it’s all done in isolation. They don’t then tweak and change their other marketing to accommodate the changes made on the website. And the end result? Higher search rankings but not the anticipated increase in clients or profits.
It is so important that the messaging and keywords on your website are the same or reflective of the messaging and words you use on your social media, printed advertising, email newsletters, and other marketing strategies and campaigns.
Rather than treating each channel as a separate entity, decide on the right keywords for your business, create a core message that will resonate with your dream clients and then use that information each and every time you create a new piece of marketing content.
That’s how your digital marketing efforts will get the results you’re looking for. And, if you need a little help with that, get in touch with me today.
