You may have heard that search engine optimization (SEO) can help you gain more exposure online. There are several strategies that help improve your SEO ranking such as including keywords in the content of your website, blog, and URL. Including the incorrect or too many keywords can actually be detrimental to your SEO ranking efforts

Keywords are an integral part of a business getting found. Let’s get to it with the long and short (tail) of it by highlighting the basics.

Do Your Own Keyword Research

Keyword research should not just be a one-time commitment, but rather a process that you constantly try to improve! This is because it is linked to what you know about your industry and business. Including your business and industry-specific keywords to help you get found online by the customers that are looking for your specific products and services. We would love to increase the size of our customer base, but we don’t want to target people that may not find any value in what we offer.

Using the Right Keywords

Short-tail keywords might seem more appealing because they are searched for more often, but they are also much more competitive. If you are not a large, well-known company, then it is best for you not to compete with the bigger brands that have even more money backing them.

Long-tail keywords get lower traffic and may not be as frequently used in searches – think “Egg” vs. “Fried Egg Sandwich Avocado and Cheese”. Including long-tail keywords in your content will attract customers who might be looking for any combination of these words.

Location-based keywords are keywords that directly relate to your business’s physical location by including location information such as the City. These can be useful for ranking for specific local search keywords, too. As an example, if your business is a pizza restaurant in a popular neighborhood in Cape Coral, FL you’ll want to include not only Cape Coral, but also the name of that specific neighborhood where the pizza restaurant is. Having a good location can increase the likelihood of more visitors to your business. By building a location in your neighborhood, you can target local people who live nearby and may be in need of what you have to offer.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing

One more thing I want to mention is overstuffing with keywords. It’s not just frowned upon in the digital marketing world; it also confuses who will read your content or leads. While digital marketing is full of general rules that should be followed, one important rule is it’s better to focus on producing quality content than producing a large quantity of lower-quality content. It shouldn’t be too hard to include keywords in your content. But if you have something that is not appropriate for an article, and need it to rank for a specific keyword, there are SEO tools available that can generate the text on your behalf with the desired keywords being used properly. Even if they’re good keywords, overuse is still too much.

We hope you found these tips useful in your journey to become a better website marketer. Of course, if you are in need of an SEO expert, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us!