Many companies are operating on a tight budget. This means that every effort must be made to maximise the impact of any digital marketing efforts. This in turn is why building the right foundations is crucial, ensuring that you’re not only operating from a firm base but are also more likely to succeed and maximise your marketing spend.

One area that businesses tend to overlook or not really understand, is keyword analysis. If your aim is to reach potential customers online, understanding how they are searching online is vital.

What is Keyword Analysis?

When users search for a product, service or information online, they will use certain search terms which they will input on a platform like Google. In marketing jargon, these are keywords.

If a user is looking for somewhere to eat they might type ‘local restaurants’ or more specifically ‘local curry restaurants’. Each sector, business type, product or service has its own set of search terms associated with it. Keyword analysis is the cornerstone for identifying the words and phrases that people are likely to use to find a business similar to yours, so that you can include them in your marketing strategy to optimise your content.

Services like Google AdWords feature a keyword planner that allows you to do research into the most successful words and phrases for your business. It will reveal how many people are searching for a particular term. You can also search competitor sites and see which keywords they are using and how popular these are.

Why is Keyword Analysis Important?

Including the right keywords in your website structure, content and blogs should greatly increase your online visibility. Website digital marketing is built around creating content that is likely to show up on search engines such as Google.

At its heart, this is very simple: keywords found in the website content match what people are typing into a search engine. Google logs this and ranks your website accordingly. Of course, it doesn’t mean that your website will rush to the top of the rankings if you add a few words here and there.

SEO with keywords will depend on many factors such as competition in the market place and the location of your business. Getting it right involves a good deal of work and experimentation.

How Keywords Impact the Build of Your Website

Identifying certain keywords to focusing on should influence your website design. It might dictate what text you use for title pages, subheadings, the text you lay down on each page and where it is positioned. Keywords should also be included in the HTML or coding of your site with meta titles and descriptions.

You could also include blogs to focus on certain keywords or combinations of keywords to improve your visibility online.

Google has advanced its algorithms in recent years which has put more emphasis on good quality content. This means that you can’t just stuff your chosen keyword in every available space. Your website needs to focus on user experience and flow to make sense to your visitor as well as show up on search engines.

Competitor Keyword Analysis

One good place to start when you’re trying to find the right words and phrases to focus on for your business is to take a look at what your competitors are doing. Pick the businesses that always seem to be ranking highly for standard searches and do a competitor keyword analysis on them.

This should reveal what they rank highly for and show what customers related to your sector are actually searching for.

Keyword analysis reveals a lot more than the standard words and phrases associated with your business. Carrying this research out before you begin running marketing campaigns and developing your website is important. Once you have this base keyword foundation in place, you should expect to see greater levels of relevant traffic and more conversions on your site.