An SEO strategy is always going to have a lot of ingredients. If you focus all your efforts on link outreach, for example, your results will suffer.
In addition to linking, there is answer box targeting, local packs, on-page optimization monitoring, content marketing ideation, creation, and publishing. An SEO services company in Long Beach, CA will mix these entities with care in order to get some flavor (i.e., conversions!) for your site, and the core ingredient to start with is always keyword research.
Keyword choice is like onions in a soup. It is the foundational flavor that you always start with and that binds all the other flavors together. A soup cannot be great without onions, and your SEO strategy will not see great conversion without well-researched keywords that bind together the content you publish across platforms to boost traffic and get conversions rolling in.
Mapping Keywords to Conversion Goals
Assuming you have already chosen target and secondary keywords to rank for, you might be wondering whether they have crafted a secret sauce on their own. Take a look at your conversion rates for an answer.
In order to put your keywords to good use, you need to have tangible goals for what you aim to achieve with them. That means picking keywords that make sense for the overall goal of the SEO campaign.
There are usually two types of overall goals with traffic generation for an SEO campaign. The first is to use organic search to boost brand awareness. This type of campaign is common for new companies looking to establish themselves, focusing less on targeting key personas and more on getting traffic to the home page. Conversion metrics to look at for this type of SEO campaign are:
- time on page
- % of new visitors
- # of pages per session
If boosting brand awareness is the focus of your SEO campaign, then you should try to rank for the branded terms you have set up for the core pages of your site—the home page or the service/products pages. In order to rank for these keywords, you will need to study competition in the SERP and optimize on-page content on a regular basis.
The second overall goal with an SEO campaign is to rank for a specific range of relevant keywords that your target persona is searching for. These keyword campaigns are common for established brands who have built up some solid domain authority and are now looking to connect with informed searchers who are already late in the buying cycle.
Uncovering the best keywords requires in-depth research for terms that relate to your product offering, appeal to searcher intent, and have an optimal mix of traffic vs difficulty to rank. There are some excellent guides out there to help you perform excellent keyword research.
These keywords then form the backbone of your content marketing plan and link building strategy. Conversion metrics to look for in this type of SEO campaign are:
- Organic traffic for strategic landing page
- % of referral traffic
- Exit pages
In tracking these metrics over a 6-month stretch, it’s important to note when keywords are not performing as planned and adjust. Keyword usage, like all SEO, is an iterative process that requires constant tweaking to be successful. It might be the case that a target page you created was pulling in great organic traffic for 3 months, but then all of a sudden it dropped off the ranking. Rather than move to another keyword, the most effective approach is to refresh the page with new content to revive its status on page 1. This is just one of the many ways you can use keywords to drive conversions consistently over time.
Focus on Keywords and Rankings Will Come
An astute focus on keywords over time will get you in great ranking positions. While conversion in SEO is always dependent on the overall goals of the campaign, there is no doubt that refined keyword research and implementation is the key ingredient in the secret sauce of a campaign that brings results.
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