Search engine rankings are great ways to get targeted traffic to your website. When a person searches for a term, let’s say in your industry, the idea of search ranking is that sites that are the prime authorities on that search term (or keyword) are then ranked for you in Search Engine Results pages from best authority to worst. Sometimes Google is great at providing these search results with websites that serve the user’s needs exactly and sometimes they don’t.
But one way they achieve that ranking is evaluation of keyword usage. In SEO management, keywords are terms we use to find what we want. And, of course, there’s no set rule for identifying which keywords are most suitable for our needs.
The problem with identifying the keywords your site should rank for is often based on industry vanity and not actual data. What that means is an accountant in Poughkeepsie, NY is managing his or her own website’s SEO and plans a strategy around the keyword(s) “Poughkeepsie Accountants.” Without any research, the assumption that he or she will get the best bang for their buck by pinning all their hopes on ranking for that search term is kind of like swinging a bat at a piñata. It may land and hit paydirt or it may not. While he or she may ultimately rank highly for that keyword, it may not produce any noticeable results simply because Google receives very few searches for “Poughkeepsie Accountants” in a given month.
With keyword research (via Google’s Keyword Research tool or other online resources), however, you can start with “Poughkeepsie Accountants” and find keywords that actually are searched to a higher degree – perhaps keywords associated with nearby towns or alternative industry terms like “Accounting Professional.”
You see it’s the search engine users who determine what keywords you should rank for, not Google, not your SEO manager, not you. Keyword research helps you identify which keywords, related to your industry and (in some cases) location, will produce the greatest volume of traffic with targeted users.
Any other strategy for search engine optimization using keyword targeting is useless.
Never assume you know what terms people use to find your business or businesses like yours. Do the research first and your strategy will produce results.
And spending your time and energy trying to rank highly for searches that don’t actually bring targeted traffic to your website is kind of like spinning your wheels. Once you do finally rank well for terms that aren’t being searched for in great number, you quickly realize it’s like a tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it. So, while it may make a noise, it doesn’t matter.
Unwinding all of the content, meta data updates and SEO protocol you instituted to get that ranking takes about as much energy and work without the added value and that’s because when you do unwind it all, you’re starting from scratch.
If you would like to work with Proctor Digital strategists to help develop a powerful SEO strategy to build targeted website traffic for your site and grow your brand, call us at 773.664.5819. We’d love to help!