The secrets of Google unraveled! Strong keywords for high scoring web pages
Web pages that do well in Google are fueled by keywords.
Strong keywords are words or word combinations that are entered for searches in Google in order to find (information on) your products and/or services. The Google Ads Keyword Planner allows you to identify which keywords are important for you and how many people search for them through Google on a monthly basis. These are all potential customers for your company.
A quick refresher: Click here for a (short) manual on how to validate keywords with the Google Ads Keyword Planner.
Other tools for finding strong keywords:
Google Analytics: The visitor statistics of your website allow you to (usually) determine through which searches people landed on which page of your website. This does not help to select strong keywords, but you can use it to check whether a certain keyword is effective or not. If you are not yet collecting visitor statistics for your website, it is certainly a good idea to start doing so. Google Analytics provides useful visitor statistics and is free of charge. https://marketingplatform.google.com/
Google Webmasters: for searches, roughly the same information as provided by Google Analytics, but you do not have to make any changes to your website. https://developers.google.com/search
Google Trends: a Google service offering insight into when and how frequent a specific word is used for a search. Search behaviour can be compared according to city, country and language. Google Trends primarily provides information on general search terms. https://trends.google.com/
From strong keywords to optimising web pages
Is your company mainly regionally active? Combine the most important keywords with the names of your province, town and/or other towns in the area.
Start by composing a list of strong keywords that can be used to optimise existing webpages – or create new webpages, that will generate an increase in visitors. The end result: a list of webpages to be optimised, including the keywords to be used.
One webpage can be optimised for more than one keyword:
- For the same keyword – comprising various words, but in a different sequence. F.i., a page optimised for keyword ‘website optimisation’ ([AMS] Average Monthly Searches]: 2,400) can also be used for keyword ‘optimisation website’ (AMS: 20).
- For an important keyword, in combination with one or two less important keywords. A bonus is combining these keywords in a short sentence, preferably a call-to-action*, which in turn can be used as the title-tag for the optimised page. Example: dishwasher (AMS: 14,800), washing machine (AMS: 3,600), washer (AMS: 480) => ‘Buy your dishwasher, washing machine or washer at the White Goods Store.’*Call-to-action: a short and powerful incentive aimed at visitors to immediately do ‘something’. You call upon the reader to do the very thing for which you created the web page.
Next blog post: How important are layout and structure for an optimised web page?
