Keyword Conundrum: What Keywords are You Ranking for?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a term you have probably heard countless times as soon as you decided to build a website for your business. Whatever you may have heard, the reality is you definitely need SEO, and your website could definitely benefit from organic search rankings.

There is no overnight way to make your website climb the search ladder, though. That’s why you need organic results for search. What matters with organic search is that your website gains an honest ranking through time and hold on to that good ranking.

One of the most important factors in SEO is the use of keywords. Keyword selection is the cornerstone around which good content is made. Content that is useful is in itself the prize that will keep users coming back to your website. For your content to become easier to find in search results, keywords matter a great deal.

How do you know whether your keyword selection is right? How do you check keyword ranking? Here’s a quick explanation from Matt Cutts:

Source: Google Webmasters YouTube Channel

In this post, we go deeper into keyword selection so you can understand whether the keywords you have chosen are helping your website climb the search ladder.

Understanding the kind of keywords you use

You must understand how to use keywords based on the purpose they serve. Mastering keyword selection goes a long way in making sure your SEO journey is closer to success.

1. Navigational keywords: Company, brand, or domain queries are navigational in nature. Yourwebsite.com, for example, can use the navigational keyword “yourwebsite” or “your website”. Adidas.com would use “adidas”.
2. Informational keywords: These are generic terms. For example, “shoes”, “computer mice”, “headphones”. People use informational keywords out of curiosity, or perhaps they’re doing some research on a certain topic. They may or may not be interested in buying, but for now they just want to learn about those things.
3. Commercial keywords: These are also informational in nature, but there is a higher possibility of business in the future. For example, “restaurants LA”, “restaurants los angeles”, “steakhouse in vegas”, etc.
4. Transactional keywords: These are further down in your sales funnel, because they are purchasing keywords. You know that the user is looking to buy something. “Discount adidas shoe stores” is an example, and so is “Las Vegas hotel packages”.

When you segregate your keywords based on purpose, it will be easier to identify which keywords are best for your business.

Keyword rank checker

You can find free keyword ranking tools online, and you can use some of them for a limited time until you start getting billed. Siteoscope provides you with a free 30-day trial and allows you access to different features to view your overall website performance.

1. Daily Rank Tracking
2. Competitor Tracking and Analysis
3. Analytics and Traffic Insights
4. Social Media Analysis
5. Scheduled Instant Reports
6. Site Monitoring
7. SEO Alerts
8. Optimization

It is perhaps impossible to find all the keywords you’re ranking for. By Google’s own admission, a fourth of the searches that happen every day are unique and have never been seen or used before. This does not mean that you are fighting a losing battle, though. It just goes to show that even in this age of machine learning, the human factor still lords it over all marketing efforts.

Even while you are looking for the best keywords to rank for and unearthing analytics to help you out in the process, you are still marketing to people. And your priority should be the quality of your products and services. Everything else, particularly your tech, is designed to help you with that. Master both, and win the market.