What would you type into Google’s search engine to find products, services or content on your website?
Just google it has become a common term in our language. What kind of keywords or keyphrases would you type into a search engine?
Think about it, most likely a lot of other people would use the same terms to look for services, products or content on the internet. So just go ahead and search for things you are offering through your website.
Do you come up in on the first page of the search results or are you in the following pages or do you not show up at all? Here is where the fun starts and here is where you can start improving your Search Engine Results Page short SERP (see Wikipedia for more details) and get a lot more organic search traffic.
Here are some methods that might help you to determine what keywords and keyphrases to use on your webpage.
1. Spy on your competitors keywords
With a little detective work by spying on the competition you are able to redirect more traffic to your website. This is called competitive auditing and is a common practice in SEO. Do you know the top keywords your top three competitors are ranking for right now? It might be worth to invest some time to find out.
Finding out exactly which keywords are sending them the most business, then creating content that’s more attractive than theirs will certainly redirect some traffic over to you.
Helpful tools to spy on your competitors keywords
Do you know who your competitors are?
- UberSuggest is a great tool to determine how your competitors use keywords to achieve their ranking. Just enter your competitors website and let UberSuggest give you the results.
- Semrush is another service that you can use to spy on competitors website keywords. Click on Domain Analytics -> Organic Research and enter the domain, subdomain or URL, choose your specific country and get your insights. Please note: In the free version you are only able to get results for the domain not its subdomains or links.
Both of these services have some basic feature that you can use free of charge.
2. Find keywords that can deliver great results
The most used keywords are the ones you will have the most competition with. It might not be the smartest decision to try and beat your competitors by using them.
Google looks for content that people are searching for but is not so available on the internet. This is your opportunity to get great exposure for your website. Find keywords or phrases with less competition but still generates a decent amount of traffic!
Here is how you can find these keywords and keyphrases
- Keyword Surfer – an extension to Google Chrome shows local search volume estimates for countries. Simply install this extension on Google Chrome browser or Opera browser, watch their introductionary video and you are a step ahead in the game.
- The tool that is often used is Google’s Keyword Planner tool. It is quite powerful and you can use it to create Google ads campaigns.
- What about a very simple concept? Use the Google search engine and type your keywords in there. See what Google lists for you and you discover who your competition is. Right at the bottom you will find some of Google suggestions of other similar or related keywords or keyphrases that could be of interest to you to promote.
