Why You Need a Keyword Strategy for Effective Web Content

Publishing blog posts or web pages without optimizing them for search engines seriously limits their potential to get website traffic and leads for your business. That is why at the heart of any successful content development lies a keyword strategy.

According to Ahrefs, 90.63% of all web pages get no organic search traffic from Google. That is particularly shocking when you consider that 92.96% of all global web traffic comes from Google. In other words, you can crank out all the content you want, but unless you have a keyword-driven optimization strategy, you might be wasting your time creating that content.

I say might because you can always pay for traffic. Personally, I would prefer to put in a little extra time and get that same traffic or more for free. If you are anything like me, you want to keep your hard-earned dollars in your pocket too. Let’s talk keywords and content strategy.

What is a Keyword and Why Is It So Important?

At its most basic level, a keyword is the topic or main idea in your blog or on your web page. It can be a shorttail keyword (1 to 2 words) or a longtail keyword (more than 3 words) in length. This keyword will be used to optimize your content so that search engines can tell what your content is about and whether to show it to someone in their search results.

Choosing the right keyword will determine your chances of getting a lot of traffic, some traffic or no traffic at all. Optimizing your content using the right keywords can generate quality organic traffic for your site and search-generated leads. Optimizing your content around the wrong keywords will doom it to the bottomless abyss of the continuous Google search engine results page scroll.

Keywords are also important because they tell us something about the intent behind the search, which can be a powerful tool person in delivering customized information for a specific audience at a specific point in their relationship with your business.

According to OptinMonster, search-generated leads have a 14.6% close rate vs just a 1.7% close rate for leads gained through outbound marketing tactics like advertising and direct mail. In other words, keyword optimized content is a powerful lead generation tool that can help you grow your business.

A keyword-focused content strategy can help you grow your business in several ways:

•  Improves your search engine rankings, which in turn can lead to more traffic to your website and more opportunities to convert visitors into customers.
•  Helps to increase the visibility of your brand, products, and services the more often they appear at the top of search engines results.
•  Leads to more targeted traffic by honing in on what searchers are looking for and carefully matching that to the content you are offering.
•  More cost-effective than paying for advertising and promotions.

How Do You Choose the Right Keyword?

Before creating any online content, it is important to conduct keyword research. Keyword research is the process of identifying words and phrases that people use to search for your products or services on search engines. It is a relatively easy and essential step that every business blogger should do to improve the performance of their blogs exponentially.

Basic keyword research can be done using one or several free tools like Google Keyword Planner, WordStream, SEMrush or MOZ Keyword Explorer. These tools can help you generate a list of related keywords, and provide data on search volume, competition, and other metrics.

When choosing the right keyword, you should ask yourself several questions:

1.  Is the keyword relevant to my business?
2.  Does the keyword get sufficient traffic?
3.  Can I create quality content that matches the search intent for the keyword?
4.  What is the competition like for the keyword? Can I rank for it?

If you can answer yes to all four, you have identified a quality keywords that can help you generate quality organic traffic and search generated leads on your site. The next step is to work them into your blog content following a proven step-by-step process to optimization like the one in my FREE guide The Optimized Blog Blueprint.

How to Grow Your Business with A Keyword Strategy

In today’s digital world, content is a vital way for brands to attract clients and customers. Whether your content is audio, visual or written, the planning, development and management of content should be focused on the customers needs and intent with an eye on your larger business goals.

Learning how to leverage keyword research to power your content strategy is how you ensure your target audience finds your content online and engages with it. Understanding how to develop relevant content to generates quality leads and grow your brand is the second vital step in the process.

In my upcoming course Blog Booster: How to Create A Blog That Generates Traffic & Quality Leads for Your Business Even If You Hate Writing, I teach an entire module on the art of keyword research for blogs.

The course goes in depth on how to use the best available tools. Plus, I take you through the exact process I use for conducting keyword research to build stellar keyword lists and how to use it to build an entire traffic and lead generating blog strategy for your business.

You will create a content calendar for your business and learn how to write blogs that people want to read with ease even if you hate writing or don’t think you have enough time. Our blog templates and writing strategies will take you from novice blogger to confident content publisher.

Join my weekly mailing for updates on when registration opens for Blog Booster!