Keyword Targeting for Maximum Conversion

Universally speaking, attracting the right leads and converting them into loyal customers is the holy grail of business success. Within the digital ecosystem, the key to successfully attracting your ideal customer is finding out what keywords they are using to search for your product or service and then creating content, lead generation strategies, and brand messaging around those keywords and associated ideas. This is known as keyword targeting.

We’ll explore the framework of a successful keyword strategy.

SEO and keyword basics
The anatomy of an excellent keyword
Ranking strategies for keywords
Improving keyword search results

Keyword 101

Keywords, or search terms, are phrases and words users type into search engines to discover relevant content. Keywords power search engines help users find websites that match their search criteria and intention.

When website owners focus their content on relevant keywords, their content achieves a higher ranking in the search engines. This is known as SEO or Search Engine Optimization.

However, successful SEO optimization involves more than just keywords. It requires quality content. In the form of blog posts, pillar pages, product and service pages. Well-conceived helpful posts tailored to your target customer’s needs help make your website “sticky,” which means visitors stay longer, engage with your content, and your SEO scores improve.

Steps of a Keyword Ranking Strategy

Discover keyword search volume or the average number of searches per month
Find keyword relevance by using terms aligned with your target market
Understand search intent or the reason for the search
Establish your keyword ranking difficulty or level of competition with existing rankings
Use a combination of short-tail and long-tail keywords
Optimize for unique keywords on every page

Understanding these key components allows you to generate the best content strategy for your brand.

Search Volume

Simply put, search volume is the number of unique users that search for your target keyword each month. As a result, many businesses choose simple, broad-based keywords because of the search volume associated with that word or phrase.

For example, if you built your strategy on the keyword “dairy,” which has a high monthly search volume, you might assume that volume would lead to increased traffic and conversion. Yet, competition for that keyword is steep, making it unlikely that your business would ever rank high enough in the search engines to make an impact.

Websites at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs) have often earned that placement because of their domain authority (DA). As a result, they rank higher in relevance and have received robust backlinks from other authoritative websites aligned on the subject matter.

However, if you were to target a lower volume, lower competition key phrase such as “anhydrous milk fat,” you will most likely attract a much more specific buyer or end user. As a result, the visitors to your site will be much more qualified, resulting in higher conversion and website metrics.

Search Intent

One of the most significant innovations in content marketing and keyword research is understanding search intent, the reason the user is searching, and what they hope to find. Search intent falls within three main categories:

Informational: Searches to answer a question
Navigational: Searches to locate something
Transactional: Searches to make a purchase or take a particular action

Ranking Difficulty

Programs such as SEMrush offer users insight into the “ranking difficulty” of a keyword or key phrase. The higher the volume, the more difficult it is to compete for visibility in the search engines using that chosen keyword. Choosing less competitive keywords with substantial volume helps businesses gain visibility and generate organic traffic.

To Be Terrific, You Must Be Specific

Keywords are typically divided into two categories: short-tail and long-tail. Knowing the difference between the two can help you create more strategic content marketing.

Short-Tail Keywords

Short-tail keywords are comprised of one or two keywords. They are broad and favor information and navigational intent — rarely transactional. Short-tail keywords are often high volume but also very high competition.

Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords utilize three or more keywords. Long-tail keywords lend themselves to specificity and more narrowly defined search criteria. For example, if “red shoe” is short-tail, a long-tail variation would be “men’s red tennis shoe” Long-tail keywords lead to search satisfaction, or the user finding what they are looking for, more than short-tail, which tends to be broad-based and often vague.

As a result, conversion is often the result of long-tail keyword strategies.

Add Unique Keywords to Every Page

Using unique keywords on each page of your website will help improve your chances of ranking in search results for relevant terms. Use keywords in:

Title tags
Content body
Post URLs
Subheadings
Meta descriptions
Image ALT text descriptions

Keywords are a critical component of your SEO strategy. Keep in mind that the goal of optimization isn’t simply to get as many visitors to your site as possible but rather to attract qualified traffic that lead to conversion.

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