Keyword research is the first (and arguably one of the most important) steps in your SEO journey. Sadly, keyword research isn’t always obvious, and tracking/targeting the wrong keywords is more common than you might think. Start your SEO strategy off right, and make sure you avoid these common research mistakes! Not comfortable performing your own digital marketing plan? Have an SEO specialist in Markham do the nitty gritty for you!
- Improper Execution
If you own a business, it’s easy to assume that you know better than anyone what search terms are most relevant to your industry. Don’t fall into this trap! While you may know the ins-and-outs to your business, your potential clients and customers might not. Because of this, their search terms are likely to be very different from yours.
Extensive keyword research is important for really understanding how people search for you. Make sure to update your targeted keywords regularly; your audience and your business might change, and your SEO plan needs to follow suit.
- Bigger Isn’t Always Better
It’s easy to assume that targeting a keyword with the most monthly searches is your best bet for highest yields, but this could be detrimental to your SEO plan. If you are a small or new business, tackling very competitive keywords may not be realistic or feasible for you. Even those in small niche businesses will need to follow this advice.
Instead, to start out, you should target and focus on long tail keywords, as they typically have much less competition, and have a higher chance for conversions.
Once you have a more established business with a solid background of well ranking keywords, you might be able to start targeting higher traffic keywords, at the discretion of your SEO consultant.
- Smaller Isn’t Always Better, Either
To backtrack a little, just because you are a new or small business, does not mean you should target extremely long tail keywords with no monthly traffic. Yes, you might be able to quickly rank for these terms, but they serve no purpose and will not offer you any meaningful traffic. Instead, target less popular search terms that still have some traffic and a fair amount of competition on Google.