What Is Keyword Targeting?
Keyword Targeting is the process of selecting certain words or phrases relevant to the product or service on your website and ad copy. Finding the best keywords can help you achieve top ranking in search engine results pages and help your business get in front of your desired audience when it is most relevant to their needs. Therefore, thorough research is crucial to determine which keywords your business should implement.
Why Is Keyword Targeting Beneficial?
- gives you the best opportunity to rank as high as possible in search engine results page
- helps generate traffic for your business from networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Bing, etc.
- helps create inbound links and shares across the internet
- builds your brand's image, perception, trust, and increases your potential to convert customers because they are actually engaged and interested in what you have to offer
Seven Important Keyword Targeting Elements to Help With Optimization
- Page Title - using the primary keyword or phrase near the beginning of the title helps with optimization and also dramatically increases your click through rate.
- Headline - visitors expect to see keywords in both the title and the page headline on they page they visit. If they do not see the title their chances of bouncing back increases.
- Body Text - obviously using your primary and secondary keywords in the body of your text is important. However, you must ensure that the keywords are relevant to the topic being discussed or search engine algorithms could penalize your page for keyword stuffing in the early days. This is still worth checking for your target keyword.
- URL - good URL's often have keywords in them. It helps with search optimization as well as with click throughs when these links get shared and posted across the internet.
- Images and Image Alt Attributes - you want your images to appear in image search results. Even though traffic from image searches has declined over the years there is still value in associating your brand and website with powerful graphics, images, and visual elements.
- Internal and External Links - a good page should be accessible through no more than four clicks from other website pages. It should also have useful, relevant links to other credible information for visitors
- Meta Descriptions - although meta descriptions aren't directly linked to search engine display rankings they do greatly impact click through rates. If the description uses the keyword query then it usually appears in the results when searchers are evaluating their results.
Effective keyword targeting is key to generating web traffic and revenue. If you are performing detailed, competent research when deciding on keywords you will be able to find phrases that have higher search frequency but less competition. Since you can not target everyone and everything you should really focus on the smallest component that brings in the greatest amount of revenue or the 20% that will generate 80% of your profit. By correctly identifying potential growth opportunities you can truly utilize search engine results to generate the highest amount of traffic possible, and in turn, achieve the greatest amount of revenue potential.