In a career that now spans 11 years, it’s a common misconception I see among colleagues when it comes to keyword value and keyword competition. Today we’re going to debunk the falsity or hollowness of these two different concepts as they relate to your search strategy.
Keywords are more important than images, other forms of creative content, and even links. The truth is that keywords are the key to increasing conversions because they are the first thing search engines see when they look at the relevance of your website.
But if you don’t understand keywords properly, you could end up doing something wrong, even though they have a huge impact on your ROI and rankings.
First, let’s help you understand what a keyword is.
What is a keyword?
Keywords are terms that search engines use to match their users’ search intent with various indexed web pages on the internet.
Keywords in digital marketing are the main element to start search engine research. These terms can consist of one or more words, if there are more than two words they are called key phrases.
Keywords are like anchor texts in web pages that search engine algorithms record in their databases of web pages as preferred content for a search result when a user uses that keyword or key phrase as a query to be answered.
Types of keywords
Key words are tied to search intent. Understanding the search intent behind a keyword or, as mentioned above, a key phrase can help identify the types of keywords that can be found on the Internet.
There are six major keyword types:
- Informative Keywords.
- Keywords for navigation.
- Transactional keywords.
- Keywords for extensions.
- Keywords for Local Seo.
- Semantic keywords.
There are other types of key phrases we can mention, but the six above are the most important, the rest, like:
- Header Keyword
- Body keyword
- Footer keyword
They all belong to one of the six main types of keywords, among others.
5 Characteristics keywords must have:
These 5 characteristics indicate the quality of a keyword and define the effectiveness of keywords along with their success rate in search engine optimization strategies.
Keywords are a fundamental element in search engine optimization or SEO strategies. Therefore, they determine the chances of potential customers to find a product, service or related information.
Not all key phrases are equally effective for the same business or project. Their effectiveness and chances of success depend on certain characteristics that must be considered before using them.
There are five important characteristics that a keyword must have:
- Relevance
- Search volume
- Competitive strength
- Business value
- Specificity
What is Keyword Relevance?
The goal of your SEO strategy must be to attract prospects and customers, not just anyone. Therefore, it is crucial that the key phrases you use are highly relevant to the target audience in your industry or niche area.
Use keywords that directly relate to your products or services without highlighting misleading or unrelated aspects as this will confuse the user. key phrases that appear in the search result should match the searcher’s query in terms of content.
For example, if you sell women’s shoes and use the keyword “clothing deals,” you will likely attract searchers looking for things other than what you sell, so they will leave your site and not convert.
What is Keyword Search Volume?
Identify the keywords and synonyms that your target audience uses most often. If you speak their language, you have a better chance of being discovered.
This characteristic is measured by traffic volume, which is the number of users searching for a particular term in a given time period. Remember that term usage changes with trends and the emergence of new techniques.
For example, in Cyprus, keywords like “SEO”, “marketing” and “advertising” might get the most traffic, while in Greece, the synonyms “search engine optimization”, “online promotion” and “online marketing” are likely to get more searches.
What is Keyword Competitive Strength?
General keywords compete against many pages to be listed at the top of search results, with big websites with established brands and leading ranking always coming out on top.
To stand a greater chance of getting a good search engine ranking, you should select keywords that are frequently searched for, but are not so general and, at the same time, are not competing with too many other big branded websites.
What is Keyword Business Value?
Keyword value provides a measure of the business value that a keyword has within an advertising campaign.
Most Keywords indicate an action a user wants to take that is consistent with the goals of the digital marketing project. The most common are the commercial ones, i.e. those that indicate an intention to buy.
A few good examples are:
- Buy
- Discount
- Coupon
- Offer
- Special Offer
What is Keyword Specificity?
It is important to maintain a balance between generality and specificity so that you can appeal to a broad audience, even though you are targeting a specific audience in a specific area or with a specific need.
Keyword hit rate determines the success of any SEO strategy.
There are several tools you can use to measure the first four parameters from this list, giving you accurate data on search queries, cost, and competitiveness. Also, most of them provide useful information about related queries or synonyms to help with selection criteria.
However, to find the right matching level, you need to evaluate the specifics of your digital marketing campaign and strategy. This way, it becomes possible to tailor the digital strategy to the services and products you offer and align it with your overall business goals.
Keyword Value Vs Keyword Competition.
Keyword value indicates the growth opportunity that optimising your web pages with a particular keyword can represent for your business.
On the other hand, keyword competition refers to the level of difficulty your web pages will find in search results pages because other, more significant websites are using the same keywords you are using or targeting.
Value and competition are two completely different concepts. One is a ranking indicator, the other is a qualitative indicator of whether or not your business is a good fit for a particular keyword.
Understanding this difference will save you time and money. After all, you don’t want to place content on your website that doesn’t provide value to your business. As you can see above, it’s not just about being competitive, you need to strive to get value, and the value needs to translate into business growth.
