The “why”of keyword research
You have a financial services business website for a reason, right? To attract new prospective clients and generate business. But what good is a business website if no one ever sees it?
For any website to be successful it must generate traffic. There are many potential traffic sources available which are discussed on here http://www.getaheadofthecurve.co.uk/marketing-matters/ (email, social media, and YouTube to name a few), but only one consistently puts you in front of prospects at precisely the moment they’re looking for you: search engines.
Unfortunately, competition for search engine traffic is savage and winning clicks is not easy task. To succeed you’ll need strategy, patience, and a little thing called search engine optimisation (SEO).
What is a keyword?
A keyword is essentially any word or phrase you use when searching with a search engine. The search engine does its best to match your words with the words on a website. The mathematics involved is complicated and something I am not going to research, but the first link you see in the search results should be the best match for your keyword, followed by the second best, and so on and so forth, not taking into account personalised searches e.g. based on your previous search history if you use a Google account when searching.
What does this mean for your business?
In order for you to be deemed the best match for you potential clients keywords your website must use the same words they do. SEO involves the strategic placement of keywords throughout your website and on external websites that link back to you (backlinks). You can discover which words and phrases you should be optimising for by conducting keyword research using a tool such as Google AdWords Keyword Tool or trying to put yourself in your clients shoes i.e what words would you use to search for the services and/or products you offer.
Keyword research and website copywriting
As previously mentioned, search engine optimisation means using specific keywords in specific places on your website. Your web developer might populate some of these for you (e.g. URLs, title tags, page descriptions, and image alt tags). But one aspect of SEO that confuses many webmasters is the proper usage of keywords in website content (the text that your viewers actually read) e.g. the welcome page or ‘about us’…
Some writers make the mistake of overusing keywords to the point of incoherency. Others completely ignore keywords, missing an opportunity to improve their website’s search result rankings. But the crown jewels of SEO copywriting is to use keywords as often as they make sense, and no more.
A few tips for writing with keywords:
1. Use keywords in headlines and subheadings.
2. Use keywords in bullet lists.
3. It’s okay to use variations of and synonyms for your keywords.
