All About KeywordsHow to pick, monitor and boost your keyword rankings

ABOUT HOSTS

Customer Success ManagerNika Wojciechowska

nika@positionly.com@wmwojciechowska

What you will learn

Attending this webinar is your first step to mastering the art of keywords :)

• How to rank higher in the SERPs?• Which keywords should you target?• How to use keywords to make your content

SEO-friendly?• How should you look for keywords that will

work for you?• Why is monitoring important?

What is a SERP?(and how to interpret it?)

SERP is a Search Engine Results Page.

After typing a keyword in a search bar, you receive a list of results for that keyword. They appear on the SERPs.

It can look like this:

Types of organic results

Map results Video results

Image results

News box Knowledge graph

How to rank high for organic search results?

(and why should you bother?)

The higher you rank, the more people visit your site.

Positions:• 1-5 —> 67.60%• 6-10 —> 3.73%• The rest: 28.67%

• Other pages• Retyping a keyword• Instant answers• Paid ads

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#1 #2 #3 #4 #5

Google wants to give searchers the best results, so your content needs to meet their high standards.

• Pick the right keywords for your site • Become an authority/expert in your

niche • Provide high quality content to solve

people’s problems • Earn high quality backlinks• Follow Google’s rules

How to get to the top of Google?

Picking the right keywords for your site

Picking the right keywords is crucial for you to grow your business.

The right keywords Higher positions in SERPs Higher search

volume

Higher conversion rates and

sales

Greater brand awareness

Metrics to aim at:• Relevance to your business• Medium/Low competition• High search volume• Commercial customer intent• Medium/Low difficulty

(authority of the competition)

Branded keywords Non-branded keywords• Include the name of your brand• All variations and misspellings

Why?• To rank #1 for your brand name, especially if it’s not

uniqueWhy not?

• People already know your brand, so they’ll find you without your efforts to rank high

• Name of your business is not included

Why? • To gain visitors that do not know your brand• To measure the effectiveness of your SEO efforts

70% of all search traffic arrives through long-tail keywords.

Short-tail keywords Long-tail keywords• Short (1-2 words) and generic

Why?• Searched more often• High traffic

Why not? • Small conversion• High competition• Harder to rank for• Unknown intent of the user

• Longer (3 or more words)

Why? • Higher conversion• Low competition• Easier to rank for• Precise intent

Why not? • Searched less often• Bring a smaller amount of traffic

Navigation keywords Information keywords• Intent to go somewhere, to find the location of a known

place, e.g. “how to get to”

Why not? • Behave like branded keywords

• Intent to know something, e.g. “how to”, “I need to”

Why? • Users get educated on a specific topic, so they may

become buying users with time• High traffic

Why not?• Low conversion

Transactional keywords Commercial keywords• Intent to buy something, e.g. “where to buy”, “ship”

Why? • High macro conversion

• Intent to know more before buying something, e.g. “review”, “best”, “comparison”, “cheap”

Why? • High micro conversion

Why not?• Low macro conversion

Creating SEO-friendly content

Share interesting content to your audience they wouldn’t be able to find elsewhere.

• Written for both customers and search engines

• Rich in relevant keywords• Unique• Original• Easy to read• Easy to share• Updated regularly

Remember to not over optimize the site.

• Engaging• Images• Videos• Podcasts• Charts• Infographics• Games

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Title tag• 60 characters limit (including spaces)• Relevant• An answer to a question• Exact keyword at the beginning

Meta description• No more than 160 characters limit• Relevant• Tells a lot about the content• Contains keyword

Relevant and keyword-rich URL• use dashes instead of underscores

Use your keywords:

• Naturally• omit keyword stuffing!

• At the beginning of the article• first sentence• first paragraph

• In bolded text• In H1 tag (heading) and H2 tags

(subheadings)

• Optimize the pages for 1-2 keywords

• Use subheadings every 200 words

• Write articles with at least 600 characters

• Use short sentences• Use small blocks of text

Hint for e-commerce, when trying to target commercial intent keywords: • Optimize the title tag, meta descriptions and headings for the intent keywords• Provide the “BUY NOW” button with pricing - make it easy to find for the visitors• Enumerate the benefits of a product• Add customers’ reviews• Create an FAQ section, where your customers will be able to find more information on a

product• Make the content more engaging by adding videos, games, infographics etc.

Where to find the best keywords for your site?

• Google Suggestions

• Google Related Searches

Look for both plural and singular versions of one word. Search engines usually treat them differently.

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• Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools)Check which keywords you’re ranking for right now• Focus on those that are relevant • Focus on those that lead to conversions

• Keywords’ synonyms• Ideas gathered from your Sales Team and customers• Your comments section• Forums• Q&A websites

Do not limit yourself to only Google.

Soovle.com - suggestions from different browsers

Monitor the trends to know which keywords not to invest your time in.

• Focus on popular and trending topics

Competitors don’t have to be your enemies - learn from them and use the knowledge to your advantage. However do not mimic them, and come up with other ideas as well.

Look for the keywords they are ranking for• Crawl their site with Screaming Frog SEO Spider tool

• Metadata• Headings and subheadings• ALT attributes

• Read their articles• Set Google Alerts with their brand name

Google Keyword Planner is the best tool for keyword research, but do not stop there.

• Used by newbies and SEO professionals

• A mine of ideas• Most accurate data• For free (AdWords account)

The more information you provide, the more relevant the keyword ideas will be

• Words o r ph rases t ha t you associate with your business, or product

• Your domain• The category most relevant to your

business or product

Set targeting options• Language• Country• Search engine

GKP is the best tool for keyword research, but do not stop there.

• Go to Keyword Ideas• Sort by Average Monthly Searches

to see the keywords with high search volume

• Look at Competition and Suggested bid to see which keywords are popular and have commercial intent

• Use common sense and ask yourself which are relevant to your business

• Download the list

Most search engines look at the word order, so make sure you optimize your page for different variations of keywords.

How to monitor your selected keywords?

You can add keywords manually or using a CSV file. It’s faster that way!

Grouping keywords is super useful for monitoring purposes.

• Get organized

• Group keywords relevant to a certain campaign you’re running• Targeting specific groups of customers• Driving customers to specific product and pages

• Group similar keywords together

• Group same-type keywords together (branded/non-branded)

• Group keywords according to specific products, categories and product features

Grouping keywords is super useful for monitoring purposes.

How to measure the ROIfrom SEO campaigns?

Always juxtapose the rankings with your traffic data.

Is your strategy working?

• Check if the position of keywords correlates with volume traffic• Keywords ranking low and traffic is high? - you’re gaining traffic

elsewhere• Keywords ranking high and traffic is low? - wrong keywords

• Compare yourself to your competitors

Reevaluate the keywords every 3 months and expand the list.

Keywords’ rankings• Where are you located

• Close to no. 1• Close to top 3• Close to changing pages

Keywords’ performance• Keywords that bring you conversion

• Buy• Sign up for a newsletter

Keywords’ quality• User’s engagement

• Bounce rate• Amount of visited sub pages• Time spent on the page

Thanks for your attentionnika@positionly.com@wmwojciechowska

success@positionly.comEMAIL US AT:

•http://positionly.com/blog/post/43648044386/begin-your-seo-journey-10-simple-tips-to-optimize •http://positionly.com/blog/seo/eight-ways-to-find-long-tail-keywords •http://positionly.com/blog/post/48800795697/how-to-combine-content-with-keywords-that-will-boost •http://positionly.com/blog/post/45831542164/keyword-research-how-to-select-top-keywords-for-seo •http://positionly.com/blog/post/45262619709/website-rank-for-keywords-6-reasons-why-higher •http://positionly.com/blog/seo/google-keyword-planner •http://positionly.com/blog/seo/google-ranking-factors •http://positionly.com/blog/seo/create-findable-content-without-keyword-stuffing •http://positionly.com/blog/post/44704300914/from-keyword-rankings-to-revenue-how-to-measure-seo •https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091?hl=en&vid=1-635759973915337864-2422905814 •http://backlinko.com/keyword-research •http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-do-keyword-research-ht •http://www.mightybytes.com/blog/can-tell-keywords-competitors-rank •http://www.snapmunk.com/keys-to-the-seo-kingdom-keyword-research •http://www.quicksprout.com/university/how-to-find-long-tail-keyword-ideas •http://www.reddoor.biz/blog/2015/march/closing-the-gap-optimizing-your-content-with-search-intent •https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Google_Knowledge_Panel.png