Good SEO involves increasing the visibility of your business online, with the aim of driving highly relevant traffic to your website. While SEO keywords do play a part in this equation, most digital marketing agencies fail to understand the need for a ‘less is more’ approach.
The key to success in SEO is to track and rank for valuable keywords that strongly correlate to your business and its offering. There’s little to be gained from chasing a high volume of keywords if the vast majority of these terms aren’t relevant to your products and services.
Simply put, it’s all about the quality of your keywords, not necessarily the quantity. The problem is, a lot of agencies are primarily concerned with the latter.
Beware Of Keyword Packages
Many digital marketing agencies offer SEO services as a package, with pricing that is based on the number of keywords that will be used for website optimisation. If you receive a proposal that claims to rank your website for a set number of search terms, consider this a red flag.
Packages of 25, 50 or 100 keywords might look effective on the surface, but at the end of the day, it will not deliver the same results as a well-rounded SEO strategy that considers your unique business goals.
While rankings are important, the number of keywords you are ranking for alone does not provide a clear picture of your SEO performance. There are many other factors that must be taken into consideration, including growth in website traffic and conversions.
How To Identify High Quality Keywords
Instead of focussing on keyword numbers, your agency should be taking the time to understand your business, its objectives and its market. When armed with this information, a digital marketing specialist can strategically select the keywords that are going to yield the best results for your business and its bottom line.
Effective Keyword Research
It all starts with collecting and analysing a large pool of potential search terms and using a process of elimination to identify the most meaningful keywords.
To narrow down the field, an SEO expert will examine your target market and its search behaviours. Determining the type of queries users are searching (transactional, informational or navigational) and their respective search volume to determine which keywords are the most valuable to your business.
Effective keyword research whittles down a wide range of search terms to a tight set of highly relevant key phrases that will inform the structure of your website and its content. Essentially, the right keyword set will ensure your website is designed to attract visitors with the right intent.
Transactional vs Informational Keywords
A good SEO specialist will prioritise transactional keywords over terms that can be classified as information based. Transactional keywords indicate the user has the intent to perform a meaningful action, such as submitting an enquiry or making an online purchase. For example, “buy organic shampoo” is a transactional search phrase as it demonstrates the user is looking to purchase a product.
Users that are conducting transactional based searches are far more valuable to your business than those seeking general information. When informational keywords are used during a search, it suggests the user is still in the early stages of the buying cycle and may not be ready to convert just yet. For instance, if an informational search phrase such as “organic shampoo benefits” is entered, it implies the user is still conducting preliminary research.
That being said, informational keywords can still be leveraged in supporting blog content to nurture users toward taking action on your site in the future.
Long-Tail Keywords
When performing a search, users may opt to enter a single keyword or a specific phrase. As singular keywords tend to attract a greater search volume, it can be tempting to focus all SEO efforts on these terms and optimise your website accordingly. But beware, with more search volume comes greater competition, meaning it will be much more difficult to rank for a single keyword. Additionally, there is often less intent behind a singular keyword search.
It pays to focus on keywords that have low volume, competition and high intent, or long-tail keywords. For instance, if the term ‘plumber’ is typed into a search, it’s not overly clear what information the user is seeking, whereas if the phrase ‘emergency plumber Joondalup’ is entered, the user is demonstrating higher intent to find a local plumber. By taking advantage of long-tail keywords, your site will be able to attract users that are more likely to convert.
Our Approach To SEO
At Distl, we understand that rankings are not a definitive measure of success and that good SEO is dependent on a combination of factors. We avoid SEO keyword packages and lock-in contracts like the plague as we want to deliver real value to our clients and build a search strategy that’s unique to them.
Our experts are here to do more than provide you with short term results. We’re all about supporting your business in the long term by building equity into every aspect of your brand.
If you like the sounds of what we have to offer.
Cam Dobie
SEO Specialist
