Choosing the right keywords requires intensive research, which ensures decisions are made from a place of knowledge and understanding. Here’s how keyword research can benefit your online presence, as well as your business.

What Is Keyword Research?

The keywords you choose determine what type of searches your website appears in. They also provide an indication of what sort of goods and services your business offers, which can provide information to new users instantly and help them make decisions regarding your brand.

Keyword research is the process of choosing the terms and phrases that will have the biggest positive impact on your marketing approach. For instance, the right research ensures that you’re using keywords that are relevant to your industry. It also makes certain that you’re ranking for the same types of keywords as your competitors, which ensures an even playing field. Finally, effective research helps you find the type of search terms your target audience is most likely to use.

Why Is It Important?

Visibility is a key aspect of success when it comes to business websites. The higher your website ranks in search results, the more visible it will be in user searches. By performing extensive keyword research, you can rest assured that your site will achieve a high rank in the most relevant user searches. Consider that very few people ever make it to the second page of search results when looking for information online. Now consider that most people only read the first few results on the first search page. This highlights the importance of choosing the keywords that best represent your business.

What Types of Keyword Methods Are Used?

Research can help you choose the most relevant keywords, but it also allows you to utilize different methods to achieve success. The following are a few different keyword formats, all of which can benefit your marketing strategy:

• Evergreen Search Terms – Evergreen terms remain relevant for weeks, months, and even years online. They can help grow your web presence over an extended period.

• New Search Terms – New search terms are extremely popular for a limited amount of time but tend to drop in relevancy quickly. This illustrates the importance of continuous keyword monitoring.

• Short-Tail Terms – These keywords usually consist of one to three terms. They have a general appeal that can bring different sorts of traffic to your website.

• Long-Tail Phrases – In addition to being longer, long-tail keywords are also a lot more conversational and descriptive. They’re ideal for homing in on specific segments of your target audience who express a distinct need or want.

The best keywords strategies utilize all the above methods, as a combination of methods can help you reach as many audience segments as possible.

When it comes to effective keyword research in 2023, you can trust in our team at SonicSEO.com. Along with getting to know our clients and their needs, we also perform extensive market research to ensure your website is sufficiently optimized. Feel free to reach out to our team today to discuss keyword selection and how it can benefit your business.

If you think you don’t need SEO anymore, think again. Your small business needs SEO as much today as it did when you opened your doors. It’s just how SEO is performed may be different for your small business now.

Why You Need SEO

Small businesses have always relied on public directories to help them get found by new customers. That still happens today; the difference is that potential customers are looking online, not in the Yellow Pages. So, your small business still needs to show up in the organic results for relevant searches…and you can’t rely on listings in other online directories like Angie’s List or Manta or Thumbtack.

To get found on Page 1 of organic search engine results, your website has to be engineered for optimal search engine performance. That still requires SEO.

How SEO Works

SEO is the engineering that makes your website search-engine friendly, and it’s gotten progressively more technical and sophisticated. It’s not enough to just have a website. Your website needs to feature:

• Quality content

Your website needs to provide relevant, value-added information for users. Of course, your content must continue to incorporate keywords (search terms) relevant to your products, services, industry, brand, etc. But now those keywords must also be tailored to different search methods—e.g., long-tail keyword phrases for optimal performance in voice-activated searches.

Quality content should also include original, customized images that both provide the visual appeal users want and boost your website’s image-driven search performance.

• Keyword-rich and structured meta data

Search engines “read” a lot more text than what is published for viewers to scan/read. All that text needs to be optimized for keyword searches and structured to render a more visually appealing presentation in the search results themselves, so your website is more enticing and likely to be clicked on.

• Search engine-preferred coding

The very architecture of your website needs to conform to coding practices favored by search engines.

SEO is both an art and a science that requires balancing both the highly technical, data-driven and purely human aspects of search marketing.

How to Make SEO Work for Your Small Business

There are hundreds of businesses vying to get found by the same terms you are. Typically, the companies/websites with the biggest budgets get the top spots on the results pages for highly competitive short keyword terms, like “auto body collision” or “divorce lawyer.”

But that does not mean that SEO won’t work for your small business or for a business with a small(ish) SEO budget. At SonicSEO.com, we make SEO work for you by:

• Optimizing your website for your geographic location in addition to competitive keywords
• Capturing traffic from much less competitive search terms—i.e., keyword phrases that are used less frequently but are much more specific. For instance: “collision repair shop in Goddard, Kansas” instead of “auto body collision”; “divorce attorney with experience working with military families” instead of “divorce lawyer.”

We also make sure that your small business’ SEO boosts visibility in other results presentations, like Google’s Local Pack—the top results (usually two to four) pinned to a Google map—and ecommerce listings.

If there are new phrases or platforms where you think your target market could find you, contact us to schedule a consultation. We are happy to explore new techniques and strategies to improve your small business’ SEO ROI.