Getting your website to rank in Google for the keywords you want is a lot easier than you might think. All you need is a plan, the right tools, and of course, some patience.
In this article, we’ll run down the basics of how to get started with SEO so you can begin ranking your keywords on Google today.
How to Rank Your Keywords In Google
If you’re just starting out, it can be a little tricky to understand how to get your website to rank for specific keywords. The most straightforward approach is to simply try out a few different techniques and see which one gives you the best results. Once you’ve found that technique, you can apply it to all of your key phrases.
A quicker way to get started is to use Google Keyword Planner. With this free tool from Google, you can enter one or more keywords and get an instant dashboard showing you the popularity of each keyword. You can click through to the competition analysis for each keyword so you can see how well you’re doing against your rivals. Using Keyword Planner is a must for any beginner who wants to rank their website quickly and easily for competitive terms.
Choose Your Keywords Carefully
Before you begin your SEO campaign, the first thing you need to do is to choose your keywords carefully. Since you’ll be using them throughout your content, it’s essential that you choose terms that are both popular and relevant to your target audience. Once you’ve found these keywords, try to group them in alphabetical order and use them frequently throughout your content. If you want, you can also perform a quick check to see how many times each keyword appears in the search results for your target audience. Once you’ve established some content with these keywords in mind, it’s time to move on to the next step.
Create a List of Keywords
If you’re using Keyword Planner for the first time, the next step is to create a list of keywords. You can do this by either entering your chosen keywords into the search bar or by clicking on the small + ADD button next to the search bar. Once you’ve entered a few keywords, you can use the auto-complete feature to quickly create a list of every combination of words and phrases you can think of. Simply enter a keyword and press enter to see a list of every possible combination of words that could be used for that search term.
After you have your keyword list, you can export it in a csv file so you can input it into your content’s meta data or you can use the import tool in Keyword Planner to instantly populate your keywords in the tool with data from a csv or txt file. The choice is yours.
Decide on the Structure of Your Content
Once you’ve got your list of keywords, the next step is to decide on the structure of your content. Do you want articles written for SEO purposes? Or do you want to use content to generate organic traffic and increase your social media presence? There are many considerations to make here so let’s examine each option in turn.
SEO-Friendly Content
One of the things that makes Google so great is that it can return the results you’re looking for quickly and easily without a lot of garbage coming up around the edges. When a user performs a search query on Google, the results should be relevant and high quality content that will engage the reader. If your content is relevant and good, it will naturally attract the right audience and encourage them to action – in this case, to click through to your website or purchase your product.
To ensure that your content is useful and interesting to your target audience, you can apply the following four steps to create content for SEO:
- Research the Trends Set to Take Over Commerce
- Gather Expert Opinion
- Write the First Draft
- Check Spelling and Grammar
The first step is to do your research. In this step, you’ll want to examine the kind of content that is performing well in the market and begin to build on top of that. Once you’ve found the trends that are rising fast, you can begin to write content that is hopefully going to be as successful as those trends.
Whether you end up choosing to write an article on the subject or create a whitepaper, do your research first to make sure that you’re on the right track. The next step is to get some expert opinion. If you don’t have any expertise in the subject matter, you can turn to your friends, family, and colleagues for help. Simply ask them to give you an opinion on whether or not the subject matter is worth exploring.
Once you’ve gathered enough opinions, it’s time to sit down and write the first draft of your content. This is a rough draft that will be scrutinized by your audience, so take the time to make sure that everything is perfect. When finished, get another set of eyes to look it over carefully before you publish. When everything is done, it’s time to upload your content to the server and begin promoting your content on social media.
Traditional vs. Digital Marketing
As noted above, one of the great things about Google is that it can deliver relevant and high-quality content to its users. But this content is competing for space with a lot of other content on the internet. To ensure that your content stands out, you can determine whether or not to make a digital or a traditional marketing push. For instance, if you’re writing an e-book on the subject matter, you might want to consider making a digital marketing push as this will be easier to discover and engage with your target audience. If, however, you’re creating a set of online courses, you might want to consider a traditional marketing push to ensure that your content is found and consumed by the right audience.
The key takeaway from this is to write content that is going to be useful to your target audience. If you do this, Google and other search engines will return your content when someone is searching for information on your chosen topic. In today’s ever-changing digital world, content is what is going to keep your website or brand alive.
The Importance Of Keyword Density
Even if you write the perfect content for SEO, it’s all in vain if you don’t employ the right keywords throughout the text. When someone performs a search on Google, they’re going to see the results they get back depending on how they phrase their query. If you want your content to rank for certain keywords, you’re going to have to ensure that these keywords are scattered throughout the text. Never put keyword stuffing in your content. Some SEOs will tell you that high-density keywords in the text is an indication that the content is not high quality.
In addition to this, you don’t want to stuff your content full of synonyms either. When someone performs a search on Google, they’re going to see results that are relevant to the query they typed. If you want to optimize content for SEO, make sure that the keywords are both relevant and unique to the topic. Once you’ve got this down, you can start to build on your content’s back-links to increase your SEO.
If your content is good, it will naturally attract the right audience and encourage them to action – in this case, to click through to your website or purchase your product.