Choosing keywords is the foundation of successful search engine optimisation. Why do you need to do keyword research? Here’s an example:

Suppose someone is looking for fresh berries. What might they search for? It could be simply berries, or it could be strawberries, blackberries, blueberries or raspberries. If you sell fresh berries, you need to know the terms people use most often when searching. Ideally, you’ll match your website content to what people are actually looking for. If you don’t, there could be a disconnect: visitors to your site could be looking for one thing while you are talking about another. There are three things you should consider when choosing the keywords for your

plan.

First, frequency, or the number of times a word is searched for. Obviously, you want to include the terms that people search for most often in relation to your products. Just keep in mind that it may be difficult to differentiate your business on highly searched-for terms. That brings us to our second consideration: Competition. If you have a large, established website, you may be able to appear on the search engine results for high-volume, highly competitive keywords, like fruit and veg.

But new sites have big opportunities too: if you’re just getting started, look for keywords that have a bit less competition.

Only a small number of keywords have very high search volume. But there’s a large number that have low search volume.

This is what’s called the “long tail” of

.

While the keyword strawberries might have a lot of competition, a term like get organic strawberries delivered in Cornwall would be an example of a long tail keyword that might give you more immediate
results. For a small business, the long tail is often where you will find your

opportunities. It typically takes a website lots of time and focused efforts to appear in the results on searches for popular generic keywords. However, smaller websites may get good rankings for long tail keywords with less effort. Finally, and most importantly, the third consideration is relevance. The keywords you select should closely match what you actually offer. If someone comes to your site looking for strawberries but you only sell raspberries, they’re just going to leave.

Make sure your chosen keywords match the intent of the people who are searching.

How? One option is to use Google Search Console to see which pages appear in search and get clicks. (Stay tuned for our Google Search Console video.)

Through all your

efforts, remember the golden rule: Your site’s content should be made for your human visitors, not for search engines.

Don’t add extra keywords or variations of keywords to your pages. Repeating them unnecessarily is called “keyword stuffing” and is against search engines’ guidelines. So that’s what you need to consider when selecting keywords: frequency, competition and relevance. Keeping these things in mind will set you on the right track for successful
.