Content is important for your website, no new information here, there is no site without it.
Is your website content full of what your potential customers search for? Having content which customer searches for is paramount, if you’re interested in being found. And of course, you want to be found, right?
There is one place to start then and that is to focus on your keywords as you create content for your website.
Search engines like Google want to provide the best content (serve up the best content) when queried…SO to you’ll need to focus your content (and therefore keywords) on what it is you want to be found for. Before content is created, what should be in that content? Keywords.
SEO expert Yoast says “you can’t be found for words you don’t use”. I’ll add, that you can’t be found for words your customers don’t use.
Ask these questions while planning your content:
what are my goals?
what do I want to be found for?
Businesses often think from the inside out vs the outside in.
Huh? Well unless you are Kimberly Clark and you make Kleenex you’ll want to discover how your customers describe your product – what do they search for – what questions do they ask –
People don’t search for Kimberly Clark when they are looking for Kleenex. People don’t search for facial tissue when they are looking for Kleenex.
The same can be said for things like Q-Tips, Coke, Whopper and Xerox.
So unless your company name is THE thing your customers know you by, it’s likely that people won’t search for the name of your company when they are searching for your product. And it’s also likely that people won’t search for the ‘marketing name’ of your product. (Unless you make Q-Tips, Whoppers or Kleenex.)
Let’s say your company name is Pearsonex and your product’s ‘marketing name’ is Wheex. Your product is cleaning solution for sinks. You’ll want to focus your keywords on phrases (long tail keywords) like ‘cleaning solution for sinks’, ‘sink cleaner’, ‘clean sinks’, etc.
You’ll want to talk to your current customers, how do they refer to your product? Use those words as keywords.
What questions do customers and potential customers have…those words may yield some keywords. Talk to your sales and customer service groups and ask the same questions. There’s a good chance Personex and Wheex aren’t mentioned often. Sorry about that.
Aspire to be Burger King with a Whopper but even they had to figure out what words their customers used when they first populated a website. (Interestingly, a search of ‘BK’ ranks number one with Burger King as a result. As does a search for ‘Burger King’ and ‘Whopper’.)
If you’re looking for better SEO results or just starting out, get to know how your customers talk about you and start building a relavent keyword list that you’ll use when creating website content.
Good search engine optimization takes time; grab the low hanging fruit first.
