When it comes to keywords, it pays to prioritize
Though all of your keywords are important in one way or another, unless you have a lot of spare cash and plenty of time on your hands, you won’t be able to optimize for all of them! In order to get the maximum benefit from the time and money you do have you will need to prioritize your keywords. With a little bit of know how and patience, anyone can put their keyword priorities in order and move forward towards business success!
Video: What Makes A Good Keyword – Amped Up Traffic
The video moves along fairly quickly; if you need more time to read, the author has included a handy transcript in the video description!
The 3 tiers of keyword priority
Tier 1 – Top priority keywords
Your top priority keywords need to be:
- related to your business / best selling products / most popular services – in short, they need to be breadwinners
- those with proven results, i.e. you are already ranking well for these keywords
Companies both large and small may already be aware of their top performing keywords, but many do not. The goal of a good SEO campaign will be to get your business website on the first page of the search results; if you can get into the top 5 spots, even better! The first step towards prioritizing your keywords should be some solid keyword research.
Tier 2 – Medium priority keywords
Medium priority keywords often have the following traits:
- They are already driving a little bit of traffic to your website, but not much.
- They are variations on your top priority keywords, i.e. long-tail keywords.
Just because a keyword isn’t a top performer doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement! While long-tail keyword variations aren’t always big-time money makers, they are certainly worth a second look! You are already bringing in traffic from these keywords, which makes them very valuable for your business. Sometimes you can see more obvious results in your rankings for these keywords sooner in your campaign; ranking for your top priority keywords can take some time and ranking well for medium priority keywords can help your efforts up that point seem more worthwhile. Everyone likes to see their hard work be rewarded! And you can always work with more than one medium priority keyword on a page…
Tier 3 – Low priority keywords
Low priority keywords can:
- become medium priority keywords over time
- be pursued to carve out a little bit more of your niche
- help you stay one step ahead of the competition
Because the way people search and the words they use are constantly changing it is more important than ever to be mindful of your low-priority keywords. In order to make the most of these keywords you will need to keep an eye on the direction trends are heading; if your marketing strategies and research indicates that things might be taking a turn towards a different set of keywords, now is the time to take advantage of them! If you can get your foot in the door before any of your competitors they will be the ones trying to keep up with you if the market shifts in your favor. And even if the trends do not develop quite the way you had hoped, you have still done a smart thing by tracking the trends and investigating new avenues.
One of the most important things to remember about any keyword is that ranking for it will take time. How much time depends on how popular the keyword is, how many other pages are trying to rank for it, and how large your niche is. A really popular (and therefore competitive) keyword is going to take much longer to rank for than a long-tail variation of said keyword, or a similar/relevant keyword that could be classified as a low priority keyword. The fact of the matter is that SEO is a long-term commitment, and any successes are going to have to be earned through the virtue of hard work! As much as we would like them to, the search engines will not automatically rank our sites well! In order to accomplish our SEO goals we need to buckle down, create great content, share our hearts out, and make our businesses the best that they can be. Everything else will come in its own time.
SEO FAQs Infographic – A picture is worth 1,000 (key)words by seo4anyone.com
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Comments:
What would you classify as a top, medium, and low priority keyword for your business?
