In today’s digital landscape, having a website that stands out among millions is crucial for any business or personal brand. One of the key elements in achieving this is optimizing your website with the best keywords for SEO. Keywords act as the bridge between what people are searching for and the content you provide. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or a beginner, understanding how to search for keywords on a website effectively can significantly impact your website’s visibility and success. In this article, we’ll dive into how to find keywords on a website, the importance of using the most searched words, and how to uncover keyword opportunities that will help your website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Understanding the Importance of Keywords in SEO
Keywords are the main pillars that support each SEO strategy, words or phrases users write in the search engines to find what they need: information, products or services. Well chosen, they can direct a massive amount of traffic to your web; that’s why it is so essential to know some basic elements and constantly find new insights to be more visible online. However, keyword research is always more than just learning new definitions: an informed approach to keywords provides hints on how search algorithms work and how we, as users, interact with the web. An example? If you know the most searched words within your niche, you can guess what happens in the mind of your customer, choosing the right content to seduce her and then make her buy.
Additionally, keywords help search engines to understand the context and relevance of your content. If your site has the best keywords for a particular topic scattered throughout the appropriate content, this sends a clear signal to search engines that you produce useful and relevant content. That’s very important if you want to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). But using the best SEO keywords too often will get you penalised by search engines, so it’s better to focus on creating informative and well-done content organically. High-quality content will naturally use the best SEO keywords in a strategic way that will drive organic traffic to your website for the long-term.
How to Search for Keywords on a Website
Sometimes it takes specific investigation, sometimes a little cunning, but mainly it is just a case of picking apart what you already know and have available to you on your website. There’s no magic bullet, but your journey towards finding the best keywords your website needs to target starts here. The simplest way to get a head start on figuring out which terms and phrases present on your website are repeating themselves the most, is to simply do a manual scan through all the content on your website’s key pages — the Home page, the Service page and the Blog posts. Doing this will give you a decent indication of what top keywords your site already ranks or targets. Another quick task is to use your web browser’s ‘Find’ functionality (Ctrl + F function) to search for specific keywords or phrases on a page to help locate instances of them more rapidly. This is a fast way of doing a quicker assessment of your website’s content against the top keywords in your niche.
With some keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs or SEMrush, you can also gain access to valuable information far beyond the list of keywords on a website. Examples include search volume, competition and keyword opportunities on how to attract new readers and activate more of your existing visitors. Such data frequently lets you draw some additional conclusions when it comes to analysing user behaviour and putting together a targeted SEO strategy. Which elements on your web pages do deliver the lion’s share of your traffic? Well, if a keyword in an H2 tag is simply one of those items, then you might want to sprinkle it around a little more, right? Alternatively, the opposite could be true: the volume and/or competition could be so high that the resulting ranking penalty will keep you from making it into the top search results. Either way, a clever user could then implement the data to their advantage. The core message, however, remains the same: if you fulfil the right conditions, your content could appear in the search results for users who might actually be interested in what you have to say because they’ve actually searched for it.
Identifying the Most Searched Words in Your Niche
If you want to optimise your website effectively, knowing the most relevant keywords to your niche is the best way to start.
These keywords will have the highest search volume and, consequently, the highest competition as they mark the most popular subjects or queries people are searching for within your niche. This exercise will help you gain insights on the topics or queries to focus on when developing your content.
The best way to identify your most relevant keywords is by generating a list of key topics for your type of business or content.
Then, use a keyword search tool to help you brainstorm for more keywords and consider their search volume. There are tools that help you identify trending searches, for example, such as Google Trends, which gives you insight into the most popular or trending queries people are searching.
But these most used words are not always the best words to focus on. Although that may produce a significant amount of traffic, they are also the most competitive keywords, which means that they’re pretty difficult to get your website to rank on the first page of the search results through organic traffic. Instead, try and target long-tail keywords. These are more specific keywords phrases that might not be too high up on the top volume keywords list but are less competitive, meaning that conversion from using those specific keywords is going to be much higher because that searcher had a solid intent. If you can find a good balance between ranking for some of the top keywords and some long-tail keywords, then you will be able to improve your SEO performance, reaching both the masses as well as those who are more niche avenues.
Analyzing Keyword Opportunities
Keyword opportunities are the keywords that you aren’t using (yet) and that, with some form of effort, can help you improve the visibility and traffic of your website. Finding and acting on keyword opportunities comes from recognising where your keyword strategy is lacking – either because you’re doing a poor job of executing your strategy, or because the landscape of your niche has changed and the top terms have been depleted. Looking at your competitors’ websites is a good place to find keyword opportunities. Tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush help you see the keywords that your competitors are ranking for – but that you aren’t. Often this will force you to recognise keywords that you might not have thought of, but that can be easier to rank for than your main keywords due to lower competition.
Here’s another way to go about finding keyword opportunities: focus on user-generated content such as review sites or forums, or social media discussions. They’re treasure troves of new keyword opportunities simply because they reflect the language your audience are using in the present-tense, and the things they’re querying when the mood hits. Focus on rolling out content that addresses the lingering questions we didn’t think to answer Another great way to tap keyword opportunities is to use Google’s ‘People Also Ask’ feature and related searches at the bottom of search engine result pages. These suggestions are fertile ground for questions or topics related to your niche that are either partially or wholly unaddressed within your content.
Implementing the Best Keywords for SEO on Your Website
After finding robust keywords for SEO, the next step is to take those keywords and place them properly in all the necessary areas such as the title tag, title headings, meta descriptions and elsewhere within the content. The title tag is one of the most important places you should include your primary keyword given that it is near the top of most lists of elements for a webpage, and people look for them in the search results. If a user scrolls through the results on a search engine results page (also known as a SERP), they usually scan the first few titles tag headings, usually the first three listings to see if any of them are what they are looking for. And likewise, if they hover over the link of the third listing, the meta description, which plays a crucial part in SEO, will appear in the link in the search results if the information is applicable to what the user may be looking for.
However, you must optimise where to include the keywords and how to insert them, so not only you must include the best keywords in the context where they fit technically, but also in a way that the content flows naturally. In addition, you must use images with alt texts (invisible descriptions associated with the photos) that include the best keywords in order to boost your visitors’ user experience and SEO performance. Overall, best keywords for SEO result from finding the right balance between the technicalities of optimisation and providing the best experience to your visitors – readable content that ranks higher.
Monitoring and Refining Your Keyword Strategy
SEO isn’t an all-in-one activity. Once your keywords are in place, you need to track and analyse them to understand their impact on your site traffic and search engine rankings. Google Analytics and Google Search Console can both provide data about which keyword phrases are generating most traffic and which are causing users to spend longer on your website. Using this information, you can then assess whether the keywords are doing well – or whether they need tweaking.
Enhancing your keyword strategy can also be an ongoing project that requires being aware of changes related to search engine algorithms and user behaviour. What works well today might not have the same impact tomorrow, so make a point of reviewing your keyword research periodically and making necessary adjustments (perhaps focusing on newly discovered keywords or adjusting your keyword strategy to better suit seasonal trends). Likewise, conducting regular competitor analysis can help you see if you’re maintaining a solid keyword position compared with your competitors, and where you can gain an advantage.
Conclusion:
Finding the right keywords for your site is a key element of any SEO strategy, whether you’re building a website from the ground up or looking to improve your ranking in search engines. The right keywords will make your site more visible to the right people. If you haven’t already, it’s important to first understand why keywords are important for optimising your content. You should also learn how to they scan your site to find the words that you use most often. You should also learn how to identify which keywords appear most frequently in searches related to your marketing niche. Once you’ve done this, you can delve deeper into keyword opportunity research related to your target market or question. By now, you should have enough information to find the keywords you’re most likely to use on your new website. The next step is to implement your keyword strategy across your website. Adding just one relevant search term to your homepage or website copy will not only improve its ranking, but it will make your content more visible to the people who are most likely to convert to paying customers. By consistently following the steps outlined above, over time, you’ll adapt your keyword research strategy based on changes in your market.
