How to Select the Best SEO Keywords for Your Brand

When doing research into SEO, whether you’re a business owner or someone trying to get involved in the field, you will inevitably come across various Denver SEO companies that promise “#1 GOOGLE RANKING IN 24 HOURS!!!!!”. What does this mean exactly? Do you just create a website and all of a sudden these companies will come in to just place you ahead of other businesses that have been working for years to get on the first page of google organic results? No…not really. You can pretty much guarantee that these promises are not quite what they’re made out to be.

Let me be specific.

When we’re talking about keywords what’s normally being talked about is one of two things, single-word keywords or multi-word keywords.

Single-word keyword examples: soda, website, food

Multi-word keyword examples: denver web design, gardening supplies, best computers

As you can probably assume here single-word keywords are pretty generic and from that you’ll get tons upon tons of answers. Generally, with this the results will be pretty much full of the biggest multi-billion dollar brands in the world for paid and organic results. This can be said for multi-word keywords but the difference that you’ll find, with more research, is that this is not always the case.

There’s multiple ways you can do research on keywords.

Google Ads Keyword Planner Tool

SEMRush Keyword Magic Tool

Ahrefs Keyword Explorer Tool

These are not all the options but some of the most frequently used ones out there. With SEMRush and Ahrefs, you’re going to have to sign up being that they don’t offer free versions anymore. The nice part is that they offer free trials so you can at least get your initial research taken care of before having to pay for their services (even though I definitely recommend considering one to use permanently to help with your efforts). It might also be a little bit confusing with Google Ad’s Keyword Planner Tool being that is used for Cost Per Click campaigns but the research still works for understanding what keywords will work best for you in your industry. You won’t get the same kind of breakdown as you would on SEMRush or Ahrefs (i.e. competitiveness) but it still works great for gathering the general idea of how a keyword has been performing which is a plus as long as you have any idea about how to move forward.

With the tools in mind, how is it then that we go about selecting our specific keywords? There’s a few things you’re going to want to consider when selecting keywords that will give you the picture as a whole. Depending on whether you have a small business or a slightly larger one, these key metrics will help you decide whether to pursue certain keywords or not.

KD / Difficulty / Competitiveness

I guess you could call this more of a personal stance but when I start looking at keywords I like to start with competitiveness being that you can get a lot out of a little when it comes to keyword difficulty. From this you can assume how many companies are using this keyword (the harder it is to rank, the more people are ranking in that). If you’re just starting out then the higher competitive words are not the best place to start because it’s going to take that much longer to start ranking in those and the more time it takes the more business you’ll lose out on.

Volume

The next stat you want to look at is the given volume (per month) on a keyword. Keep in mind that these are estimates, so don’t expect this kind of traffic immediately, think of it more as potential. Compared with a low difficulty score and high or fairly-high volume score, you can pick up on words that a lot of companies are not utilizing but can help you rank higher, quicker to bring in traffic faster.

CPC

Cost Per Click mostly applies to the cost of a keyword if you were going to set up paid ads on Google so it may not seem all that important to your keyword search. Don’t doubt the importance of the insights it provides. This is another window into seeing where that keyword ranks amongst paid ads. If companies are willing to pay a higher amount to bid on a particular keyword, then chances are that there’s some good competition on the market for it so it might not be the keyword for a smaller business. However, if you fall on the other end of the spectrum, maybe you can outbid other companies to gain an advantage, as long as you can afford it.

Tag Team Design

Next 3 Design Trends in 2019 You Need to Know About »

Previous « What You Need to Know About Inbound Marketing in 2019