What Keywords Are and How to Find Them For Your Website’s SEO
Keywords are a very important aspect of SEO.
If you’re not familiar with this branch of digital marketing, SEO stands for search engine optimization.
You can learn more about the basics of SEO here, but in simple terms, it’s the process of making your website Google friendly so you can appear in the top search results.
As a Squarespace SEO strategist, keyword research is a large portion of the work I do with my clients. Typically, there is misalignment between the types of words and phrases people are using in their blog content and the keywords they want to appear for.
So what exactly are keywords?
Understanding keywords
A keyword is simply a word or phrase that you want to rank for.
Here are examples of keywords:
“Online business coach”
“Social media strategy”
“Adventure photography”
By identifying these keywords, you can then use them in your website copy and inside blog posts to give you a better chance of showing up for those words and phrases.
Although a keyword can be one word like “photography,” it’s nearly impossible for an online business owner to rank for a keyword with such a high search volume and competition.
That’s why it’s best to use long tail keywords...which brings me to my next point.
Why you want to focus on long-tail keywords
The problem with choosing a keyword that only contains one word like “fitness” for example is that it has a very high search volume and most likely will be very difficult to rank for.
This is known as the keyword difficulty or competition.
High authority websites like the New York Times, Wikipedia, or a niche website like Health.com will most likely be the top players.
Therefore, trying to rank for this type of keyword is next to impossible as a small business owner.
That’s why you want to focus on a long tail keyword, which is a string of 3 or more words.
For reference, the keyword examples in the above section are all long tail keywords.
But to give you another example, instead of the keyword “fitness” with a search volume of 1.5 million a month, a much better keyword would be “fitness coach online” with 8,000 searches/month.
I know you may be thinking...
“Wait Lauren, I thought it was better to go after keywords that have a really high search volume?”
That’s what many of my clients and students think, so you’re not alone! But in reality, it’s better to start small when you’re in the beginning stages of building your blog.
I always recommend a minimum of 100 searches a month for any keyword that you want to use.
So why are keywords so important?
Keywords are important for SEO because without identifying the exact words and phrases people are searching for in Google, then you’re just winging it.
Most of my SEO clients come to be with a blog that has 10 to 20 posts that haven’t increased their traffic at all.
Who wants to dump their precious time and energy into a marketing strategy that isn’t yielding any results?
I’m pretty sure no one.
The reason they’re not seeing any results is because they’ve never done keyword research before.
You can do some market research and note how people are talking about your industry. What language are they using? What are they saying? How do they speak? What are they struggling with? What solutions are they looking for?
However, it’s important to take it a step further with keyword research.
With keyword research, you’re validating your blog post ideas by ensuring that people are actually looking for solutions and educational resources on these topics.
Makes sense, right?
This is why most of my clients come to me because they’re not sure how exactly to find these keywords and which ones they should focus on.
This is a huge component of my 1:1 SEO package because I take all of the guesswork out of the process.
Where do you find keywords?
When looking for keywords, it’s best to look at both the search volume and search difficulty.
Search volume refers to the number of searches each month for a specific keyword. I always recommend keywords that have more than 100 searches a month.
Search difficulty is also known as competition. This refers to how hard it is to rank for a keyword on a scale of 0-100. Typically, keywords that have a competition of 20 and lower and easiest to start with.
Here are my top places:
Google
Answer the Public
Keywords Everywhere
Moz Keyword Explorer
Ubersuggest
Google Search Console
Pinterest
YouTube
For more information about each keyword research tool and how I use them, check out this blog post.
How do you use these keywords on Squarespace?
Once you find the keywords you want to use, it’s time to incorporate them onto your website.
Where to put keywords on your main websites pages
When it comes to incorporating keywords into your website, you want it to look natural.
You’ll want to put keywords in your:
Website copy
Title tags
Meta descriptions (Only include keywords in a natural way since these don’t actually directly impact ranking. They’re for the user, so be clear and descriptive.)
Where to put keywords in your blog posts
Think of each keyword as a blog post idea. Once you identify the keyword you want to use, it’s time to optimize your blog post to give it the best possible chance of ranking on page 1 of Google.
Specifically for your blog posts, here’s where you want to include the keywords:
Blog post title
First sentence or paragraph
Heading 2 tag (only if it looks natural)
Blog post content
Image file name and alt text
Pro tip - avoid spammy SEO
When people hear they need to add keywords to their website, many clients end up engaging in spammy SEO tactics by keyword stuffing.
This looks like adding a keyword every sentence or every other sentence. If you were to read the content, it would read like a robot or seem unnatural.
This is commonly seen on photographer websites, where the footer will read:
Dallas wedding photographer | Dallas weddings | Dallas, TX wedding photography | Dallas engagement photos | [and so on]
This is not how you optimize your website - I want to make that super clear.
When you’re infusing keywords onto your website and blog, the goal is to include them in a natural way that makes sense.
The focus is always on the user, not Google.
I hope this post was helpful in identifying what keywords are and how you can use them to increase the Google search ranking of your Squarespace website!
If you’re looking for more hands-on support with this, I’d love to chat! I help coaches and creatives improve their SEO, and keyword research is a main component of my package since it can be very time intensive. Click below to learn more about how I can help you get more clients through Google.
Looking for more Squarespace SEO tips? Check out these blog posts: