Once you understand that everything online is searched for by using words and phrases you have unlocked the path to your online success .. Vishay Singh
One fine mid-summers day I walked into a local coffee shop at the town's end with a client. It was a cozy little space, and we wanted to grab a bite after long hours of traveling. As we entered, the sweet aroma of fresh coffee wafted in the air, and we made our way to the counter immediately to place an order.
The barista at the counter was kind enough to also introduce herself as the coffee shop owner. After the exchange of greetings, she asked us how we came about the shop. We simply answered, "Oh, we were in the town for a business meeting and searched on Google for a nearby coffee shop and your place popped up."
You see, the internet largely functions as a search engine tool! Even if you go to your banking website or favorite amazon store, you either enter the domain directly or you search for it on your search engine. Ultimately, what you are doing is searching for what you want using ‘keywords’.
Welcome to an introduction to how your business can be found online. How often do you either type in or ask Siri to find a coffee shop near you? This is how people are searching for your business using their devices.
Keywords
Keywords are ideas and topics that define your content. If we talk in terms of Search Engine Optimization, then keywords are the words and the phrases that searchers enter into a search engine. It is also known as "search queries."
If you sift through everything on your page, such as images, videos, copy, and more to more simple words and phrases, that becomes your primary keywords. For example, if you are looking to buy a jacket, you may type in words like "men's leather jacket" on your search engine. Even though that phrase has more than one word, it is still a keyword.
Nobody outside the SEO industry uses these terminologies. Ordinary people will refer to them as Google searches or queries.
Why Are Keywords Important?
Keywords are important because they connect what people are searching for and the content you provide to fulfill their needs. Your goal is to rank on search engines and drive organic traffic to your site through the search engine result pages (SERPs).
Also, the keywords that you choose will determine the kind of traffic you will attract. For example, if you own a golf shop, you will want to rank for "new clubs." But if you are not careful with your choice of words, you may attract traffic that is looking for a place to dance after dark!
Keywords are as much about your audience as they are about your content. That is why you will need to describe what you offer in a much different way compared to how some people ask for it.
To create content that ranks well organically and brings visitors to your site, you will need to understand your visitors' needs. You need to understand the language they use and the type of content they seek. You can do this by talking to your customers, frequently visiting forums and community groups, and doing your own research.
Keywords help owners with:
· Identifying and speaking the language that the target market speaks.
· Creating content specifically for the target market.
· Trying and bringing content to the right people at the right time.
· Communicating to Google that a webpage is a match for a query.
· Improving search engine rankings by helping Google understand the webpage content.
· Driving more traffic to the right webpages.
· Increasing time on site by directing more traffic to webpages.
· Increasing conversions by helping consumers find you instead of your competitors.
This is all-important for SEO. Researching keywords helps in understanding how your target market describes your products as well as your services. It also shows you how people will ask for more information about your topics while using the search engine.
With all the knowledge about words and phrases, you can come up with ideas about new content. You can also optimize your webpages so you can match the questions of the searcher.
Keyword research and optimization can improve your chances of showing up on page 1 of the search results. As a matter of fact, the data from 2020 depicts that most of the title tags on Google's first page had keywords that were an exact match or a partial match of the search query.[1]
Besides rankings, keyword research has many other benefits that can help you better serve your consumers. For example, you are a bread company searching for the keyword phrase, "organic bread." While searching, you find that there is a lot of information for the term "organic bread flour." Could this be a new product opportunity for you?
Keyword Linguistics
In corpus linguistics, a keyword is a word that occurs in a text more than we would expect to occur by chance. Keywords are calculated by computing a statistical test (log-linear or chi-squared), which helps compare the frequency of words in a text and their expected frequencies. This acts as a reference for general language use.
"Keyness" is referred to as the quality of a word or a phrase of being "key" in its context. Keyness can be computed for words that occur in a target corpus by comparing their frequencies to the frequencies of the reference corpus.
In simple words, the idea of "keyness" is to evaluate whether or not the word occurs more frequently in the target corpus or in the reference corpus. If it does, then the word may be a key term of the target corpus.
We can quantify the relative attraction of each word to the target corpus through a statistical association metric. This idea can also be used for key phrases. Therefore, keyword analysis can assume that there is a reference corpus through which the keyness of the words is computed and evaluated.
Keyword lingo is very important. It is more important to pay attention to the jargon your customers use to find your service or product. Sometimes they may not be looking for just coffee; they may be looking for a particular brand of coffee, perhaps Nescafe or Starbucks coffee.
Now, this does not mean that your little coffee shop won't stand a chance against Starbucks. You can optimize your shop to be found as an alternative option to Starbucks on local search. You will be surprised at how many of the giant brands are sleeping when it comes to local search.
I can bet a pretty handsome amount that if they focused on their local brand awareness using local search techniques, they would increase the bottom line by 5% or more, which in their situation, is millions of dollars. Fortunately, we are not focusing on them. We are focusing on you – the small business in the local area that wants to maximize getting found online.
Transcendent SEO
Transcendent SEO is a term that I created when I was an employee at a marketing agency that focused on Customer EQ. Brands like Nike and Coca Cola have created brand stories to evoke a connection to how you feel.
"Just Do It" is a statement that does not care about how old or how overweight or out of shape you are. You are inspired to wear Nike because they give you a feeling of an athlete. Coke's "Open Happiness" campaign was designed with the idea of family, fun, togetherness, and how you feel when you share a coke.
With the Covid-19 situation today, it may give a different feeling.
[1] Bruce Clay (2020). What are Keywords? Why are Keywords Important to SEO? And How Do You Do Keyword Research? Retrieved from https://www.bruceclay.com/blog/what-are-keywords/
