posted bydopweb22/05/2020
In 2020, SEO experts and marketers are redefining their content marketing strategy by integrating new ways to use keywords. Keywords play more than ever a central role for online visibility and SEO performance. And using the right keywords effectively will make a difference for your website.
In this article, you will learn everything you should know about keywords for SEO in 2020!
Our guide to using SEO keywords includes best practices for 2020 and our exclusive advice on how to include keywords in your website content.
Let’s get started with the following points:
Keywords refer to words, topics, and ideas that define your content. They indicate to web users and search engine crawlers what your content is about.
For example, if you are mostly writing on your website about personal finance, your top keywords might be: personal finance, saving, investing, budget, financial advice.
Another way that keywords for SEO are used is search queries on search engines. To get back to our example, it would be a web user researching on Google for “personal finance advice”.
In that case, you would want the search engine to match the search query with your content, that uses the same keywords. And this is exactly why keywords are so important!
They allow search engines to bridge the gap between the user and your content.
They are several types of keywords for SEO and here we’ll briefly look at short-tail keywords vs long-tail keywords.
Short-tail keywords are search phrases containing 1 to 3 words. For example “silver ring”, “home assistant”, and “pizza delivery”.
Long-tail keywords are search phrases containing 3 words and more. They are more precise and targeted, compared to short-tail keywords that are much broader.
For example “sterling silver rings for women”, “Google mini home assistant Bluetooth”, and “vegetarian pizza delivery Los Angeles”.
Keywords have always played an important role in SEO, but what are the key benefits that you get from using them?
- Help to reference your pages: Because keywords give a great indication to web crawlers on how to read and understand your content. They are like clues that give you a more accurate guess of what a page is about.
It is easier for search engine crawlers to reference your pages for the topics you cover. Then, they can match your content to web users’ search queries for these topics.
The best way to get your page referenced better is to use relevant keywords for SEO that represent well your content, and of course to write high-quality content for your users.
A combination of using keywords smartly and great content is definitely the key to better referencing!
- Increase web traffic: As mentioned, using keywords can help make your website more discoverable online to web users.
If you improve your online visibility and continue using keywords effectively, your web traffic will ultimately increase as well.
Blog articles provide a fantastic opportunity to improve your web traffic. Including your top keywords in your blog articles can help to reference these pages better and draw more traffic to them.
- Boost digital marketing campaigns: Keywords serve an important role in digital marketing and particularly in social media campaigns.
In fact, they can help to make your content more discoverable when they are used as relevant hashtags on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin...etc.
Keywords can also be used in your digital content for video titles, and in your text in general.
Because using your top keywords for SEO is a great way to have your content suggested to users who are already looking or reading this type of content on social media.
Learn our best tips for using keywords effectively for better SEO performance in 2020. These are easy and actionable steps you can start implementing today on your website!
- Write content that answers search queries questions: If you know that one of the topics you are writing about is widely researched in the form of a question, try to write content that answers it.
For example, let’s say that you are writing about artificial grass. If you know that artificial grass price is a topic that will interest users, you could create an article titled: “How much does artificial grass installation costs?”.
This technique might give you a better chance to appear higher in search results when users type in this question in their search bars.
And with the rise of voice search, answering search queries directly in your content can be a great way to optimize your rankings for voice search results.
- Use keywords in your H1 tag: An H1 tag at the top of your page will get the most attention from users and web crawlers.
Using your top keywords for SEO in your H1 title tag can allow users and web crawlers to better understand what your page content is about and the context of your content. For web crawlers specifically, it makes it easier to reference your page according to the main topic you cover.
Having an H1 tag on every page of your website, that includes relevant keywords is definitely an SEO best practice to follow!
- Use keywords in your page URL: Search engines like Google pay attention to your pages URL to understand your content and to rank your pages.
A user or a web crawler should be able to guess what the content of your page is about simply by looking at the URL.
Keywords can help in that manner because they easily describe the main topic of your page. An SEO best practice is to include your top keywords at the beginning of your URL and to try to keep it short.
- Use keywords in your meta title tag and meta description tag: Your title and description tags refer to the title and description of a web page that you see on search results.
It is what will catch the users’ attention first when they look through their search query results. Therefore, you want to make sure to include relevant keywords in your title tag and description tag.
This does not only help users understand what your page content is about but it also encourages them to click on your page.
Using keywords for SEO in your title and description tags can be a great way to improve your click-through rate!
- Include keywords in your images alt text: The alt text is a short description of your image. It is utilized by web crawlers to read your image. It also helps people with visual impairments that use a screen reader that will read the text and image.
Including keywords for SEO in your alt text makes it easier for screen reader devices and web crawlers to understand your image in its context.
- Use keywords for internal page linking: Include keywords in the anchor text (the clickable text) of links pointing to your page helps crawlers know what your page is about.
The content that links to your page will be observed by web crawlers and it signals that your page is relevant for a certain topic. Therefore, it can help your page rank better for that topic.
What are the essential steps that you need to take to get started with the SEO keywords process?
Every SEO keywords process starts with asking yourself two questions:
- Who is my audience?
- And what are the most important words to describe my content to them?
Once you know more about your audience and what you want to communicate with them, you can start researching the best keywords.
Keywords research can be a strenuous process but it is worth spending a little extra time researching your keywords for SEO. They are many available (free and paid) tools that can help you start the process of keywords research.
There are many extra steps that can be taken in this process, but we simplified it to make it easier to start with.
Then, we recommend organizing your keywords into groups by category. For example, if you have a marketing agency, you will have slightly different keywords groups for each of the services you offer: advertising, public relations, social media management..etc.
Another important step is keyword mapping for your content. In other words, you will be assigning keywords to specific pages depending on their content. This will help you organize your keywords by pages, and know which keywords you want to optimize on each page.
Finally, keywords implementation for SEO is an important step. From this step, you can learn how to further optimize your keywords and make your content more SEO-friendly every time. Of course, keywords implementation keeps getting updated as SEO best practices are themselves constantly evolving.
At dopweb, we will be happy to help you accomplish the full SEO keywords process. Our SEO professionals have extensive experience with keywords research tools and in-depth knowledge of keywords optimization.
We always make sure that the keywords for SEO you use and optimize are the best for your website, your activities, and your brand.
We’ll be happy to work with you on your project and to help you rank higher on search engine results!
Keywords act like important clues for web users and web crawlers on what your page content is about. They signal the most important information about your content, and what readers will learn from it.
In terms of SEO performance, using keywords for SEO effectively helps to reference your pages better, to increase web traffic, and to boost digital marketing campaigns.
Now that you know how to use keywords for SEO in 2020, and what are the essential steps of the keywords SEO process, you are ready to get started!
At dopweb, we'll be happy to help you find the best keywords for your website, and to optimize them for improved SEO results in 2020!
Request a free quote with us today to get started!
