How you can Use Keywords in a Smart Way

Table of Contents

Keywords (semantic core): a list of search queries that are used to promote your site in search engines. On the query selection depends not only the speed of acquisition of new target visitors but also advertising effectiveness across the company through search engine promotion channel.

Keywords are generally divided into three categories:

low frequency (demand up to 1000 people per month);
midrange (demand from 1000 to 10 000 per month);
high frequency( demand of more than 10 000 people per month).

For the successful promotion in the selection of keywords, the subject matter of the website is very important as well as its technical readiness for promotion and business opportunities.

If the website is not technically ready for a large number of visitors, the selection of high-frequency keywords to promote it will not bring the desired effect. It will be too expensive and not effective. For example, for beauty salon near the some metro station in NY “Colorful life” such requests as “Beauty” and “Beauty Salon NY” will be very expensive and will not bring the desired customers, since the main traffic will be represented by people from other areas who will leave this website, in search of the Beauty salon closer to their home. The target request “Beauty salon on the XXX street” in this case is much cheaper and more efficient.

Selection of keywords for website promotion consists of the following steps:

1. You must select “mask queries” – queries consisting of one or two words that reflect the main activity area of the company. This usually includes mid-range requests or high-frequency ones. For example, for “Loans” the following “mask requests” could be opted:

For the selection of “mask queries,” it is enough to read the description of the company on the website or infer some information from the conversation with their representatives and with the help of some services than are able to determine the frequency of these keywords.

Let’s observe a few simple rules concerning the selection of the main keywords for your website:

Exclude mask queries that do not conform to the business promotion. For example, if the company operates in the field of car sales, it is not necessary to use “car rental” mask query. It’s not just a meaningless money expenditure, but also the futility in attracting the target audience, as the site does not offer the services that these visitors are looking for. Also, it is not profitable for website promotion. The search engine analyzes the behavior of users and with the increase of the number of failures it is likely to come to a conclusion about the futility of the website for the audience and, ultimately, it can lead to a drop in search position of the website in search engines.

Do not use too general keywords for your site as it is likely to attract unwanted traffic. For example, the company sells office space in NY, and a masked query “offices in NY” will attract visitors, most of whom are looking for an office in NY to rent, not buy.

2. Get the tail of keywords chosen according to the mask queries. The tail is a group of low- and mid-frequency requests, each of which contains all the words of the masked query.

With few exceptions, each mask query will have a tail. Specifying masks, tail makes the semantic core more relevant towards the sense and content that the website has got and promotes, which contributes to the promotion of keywords of the masks.

When searching for the keywords for the tail, it is also useful o use services like this, for example, wordstat.yandex.ru. When you enter a request mask on a search line, the system will display the entire tail for it. In this service, you can use geographic filters and additional operators, which specify the keywords from the website. With Google, this service is called “Insights for Search or Google Trends“.

Useful tips when selecting keywords for a site in wordstat.yandex.ru:

To eliminate unwanted keywords used in the selection of queries use “-“;
Before conjunction and prepositions “+” is used for their compulsory registration in queries;
To fix the entered word and to figure out its precise writing, put the sign “!” before the entered word;
To get the demand for a particular combination of words, we can conclude it in quotes;
If there is doubt as to the choice of the query, such as “cream” or “emulsion”, use brackets and the sign “/”.

Having collected a large list of keywords for your site, you need to choose the most productive from the standpoint of promotion purposes. To do this you need to determine the types of queries using the following classification:

General query is a keyword, which reflects user demand that is not obvious, and only the area of their interests. For example, “NY office.”
The request for information is the keyword, which specifies a common request. For example, “NY office agency”.
The navigation request specifies the virtual or real object. For example, “office lessee”.
The transactional request includes specific action plans that the user intends to fulfill. For example, “rent an office in NY”.
Precise request accurately expresses the needs of users. For example, “buy an office in NY”.

General inquiries increase the promotion budget but at the same time reduce the number of target visitors. In the case where the purpose of promoting is the conversion, it is necessary, first of all, to take into account precise and transaction requests. The informational and navigational queries are effective in the case when the essential purpose is traffic.

The following rules will also contribute to choosing the right keywords:

Do not use unnatural queries which would be difficult to write on the content of the site, for example, “buy the book price” or “office rent cheap”. Most of the services do not analyze the order of the words in your query, so you should bring requests to the natural sounding.
The tail does not contain queries that do not meet the company’s business. Otherwise, the competition will be twice as high, and the number of target visits – 2 times shorter.
Do not choose the low-frequency keywords consisting of several words, which include competitive high frequency and mid-frequency requests (with the exception of the mask requests). Such requests require expensive and long promotion. Real visitors do not use such requests. Finally, it is extremely difficult to write quality informative text, which could comprise all the words from this request.
Do not include requests with errors in the semantic core. Such queries are automatically corrected by search engines, and the whole issue turns out to be entirely different. For example, on-demand, “the agency of real estate” will be automatically corrected to the “real estate agency” variant. Because this request was not included in the promotion of the website, the money will be spent without the desired effect. The misspelled keywords should not be used when writing texts, as this may damage the company’s reputation.

This article is written by Karl Wittgenstein. He is Senior SEO specialist, blogger and freelance writer for EduBirdie. Karl graduated Freie Universität Berlin and nowadays he is inspired by everything related with technology.