Content Marketing: Don’t Stop at Keywords!

People often equate SEO with keywords, and keywords are definitely an important ranking factor. Choosing the right keywords will help your website pages and blog entries achieve high rankings in search engine queries. But SEO has gotten a lot more sophisticated in recent years, and there are several additional strategies required to earn a strong page rank.

Keywords are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what SEO can do for you. And it’s important to remember that ranking at the top of Google searches shouldn’t be your ultimate goal. It’s more essential to have content that will generate leads.

What Are Keywords?

SEO keywords are the words and phrases people type into search engines when they’re looking for services provided by your business. Examples of common keywords people use when searching for legal services include:

• Injury lawyer
• Slip and fall
• Dog bite
• Motorcycle accidents
• Estate planning
• Criminal defense lawyer
• DUI
• Chapter 7
• Divorce attorney

A few years ago, the search bots that Google uses had difficulty recognizing synonyms. But that’s no longer true, so you don’t need to provide various synonyms in your content to enhance your search rankings.

Sometimes you’ll see search terms categorized as long-tail or short-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords have higher search volume than long-tail keywords. It’s good to include both types of keywords because search engines receive a wide variety of terms. In fact, 15 percent of the search queries Google receives on a given day are a unique collection of words that they have never seen before.

Creating a Comprehensive Marketing Strategy

You can improve your ranking by placing the right keywords in the right places, especially near the beginning of a page and in title tags and headings. But Google has made some updates designed to discourage keyword stuffing, so it’s better to sprinkle your keywords around instead of overusing them. And having keywords in your domain name is still a good idea, but it won’t impact your rankings as much as it used to.

An effective content marketing plan includes these elements:

1. Identify the practice areas you’ll be targeting.
2. Identify related long- and short-tail keywords, and group these according to topic; remember that your users may find your page through any number of related searches.
3. Build pages to target these keyword groups: include the topics that make sense and create internal links to other pages that provide additional information.
4. Install a call tracking system to ensure ROI can be tracked.
5. Continue to build out related content as you wait for Google to respond to your SEO (this may take 6-9 months in competitive markets).
6. Assess performance and update accordingly. You’ll probably need to take a few passes at the text, update conversion elements, or build more supporting content to really make your pages sing!

Choosing the Most Effective Keywords

Most of the effective keywords in your industry will already be familiar to you. But there are tools and techniques you can use to pinpoint the most effective ones, including:

• Generate a list of topics that are relevant to your business.
• Use a keyword-generating tool.
• Use Google Suggest to find long-tail keywords.
• Use Google Console to discover which terms people are using to find your pages.
• Check out Related Searches on Google.
• Review the monthly search volume (MSV) for the keywords you have chosen.
• Use a program such as Ahrefs or SEMrush to see which keywords your competitors are using.

SLS Consulting—The Tools You Need to Stay on Top

SEO is a remarkably dynamic field, and marketers who don’t know which way the wind is blowing will end up giving their clients the wrong advice.

Our team at SLS Consulting, Inc. stays ahead of the latest trends, so we never get caught off guard. Call (323) 745-1806 to schedule a FREE consultation today.