One main element of your search engine optimization / SEO strategy is to drive more qualified leads to your site by using keywords in your content. Excellent keyword research reveals the most common terms, phrases, and questions your users and customers search for. 

Read on to learn about keyword optimization, its benefits, and how to use it for long-term website rankings and traffic.

What Is Keyword Optimization?

Keyword optimization is using the best keywords effectively to improve visibility in search engines. In order to drive the right traffic to your site and increase its organic ranking. 

Good keyword optimization involves researching, analyzing, and selecting the keywords you will use for each page on your site. 

In simpler terms, keyword optimization helps the search engines to understand better what your site is about; this way, your pages are easier to find for people who search for those key phrases.

Benefits of Keyword Optimization

Keyword optimization plays a major role in digital content marketing, from content strategy, to how your site content is organized. Basically, it is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization and pay-per-click/ PPC.

Here are specific benefits of keyword optimization:

1. Increases Organic Discovery: Keyword optimization will help deliver your site pages to a relevant audience through pertinent search queries.
2. Measure and drive potential traffic flow to your site: Optimization helps you measure and understand your potential online market size.
3. Write captivating content: Using optimized keywords in your website’s content, you can instantly link with potential customers and address their needs.
4. Understand client’s behavior: By analyzing the best keywords, you get an idea of what your clients need and how to service those needs.
5.  Credibility and Trust: As a result of ranking first for a specific keyword, your credibility is endorsed helping clients trust you more 

How Do You Optimize Keywords?

1. Find the Right Keywords for Optimization

Keyword optimization begins with finding the right keywords and phrases associated with your site, product, or services. 

However, figuring out which words to use is a daunting task. 

Therefore, using the best keyword optimization tools will help you analyze the popularity of the keywords and improve your SEO. 

There are several effective keyword optimization tools and SEO analytics tools that will help you choose the right keywords.

Some that offer free trials include Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, Keyword Hero, Jaaxy, and Soovle. 

Ideally, you should aim to find keywords with high search volumes but lower competition. This way, your content will easily rank high on google’s search result pages.

2. Map The Keywords to Each Page on your Site

Now that you have the relevant keywords you’re going to be working with, the next step is mapping them to your website. This is the process of assigning keywords to specific pages on your site based on keyword research to avoid duplicating keywords on more than one page.

You should focus on having one main keyword per page while still including at least two or three SEO keyword variations. Each page should focus on a single topic, with the most important SEO keywords included. 

3. Check Your Current On-Page SEO and Do Keyword Optimization

You will audit your current on-page SEO strategy if you have existing content on your site.

However, if you are creating new content, ensure it is optimized.

Here are things to look for during content optimization:

a. Title tags

 The title tags will show what your page is about. You need to ensure they contain the right length of 56 to 60 characters and that they are unique.

b. Header tags

 Your page should have properly formatted headings and subheadings in HTML instead of headers in bold.

c. Meta descriptions

This is a short description that is usually below your web page in search results. Basically, the description should be 100 to 155 characters and should set out a clear picture of what your page is about.

d. URL structure

 The URL should be short, simple, and include your main keyword.

e. Images

You should have more than one image on the page. Ensure that the image has the image file names for each keyword and alt text.

f. Content

Ensure that your content is optimized by using the main keyword and a few secondary keywords within the first 100 word on your page. Content should be at least 300 words.

g. Internal Links

If you have links to other content, ensure those links still work. 

4. Submit your Content to Google Search Console

 Submitting your content to Google Search Console will help your pages get indexed in the search engine results page (SERPs). It will also potentially speed up the discovery process.

5. Track Your Keyword Rankings

After your content is indexed and ranked in Google, you need to track and see how those keywords rank. 

You should give it at least 2 months for new content before making any keyword search optimization changes.

For existing content, you can track rankings daily for 14 days before making any changes.

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