How to choose the right SEO keywords?

Today, more than ever, the choice of keywords is crucial to get a positive ROI in SEO. There is no one-size-fits-all miracle recipe that applies to all companies and sectors. However, with some good habits, constructive and clear thinking about your business and industry, and the help of a powerful SEO tool like Cocolyze, success is entirely possible. To assist you, you can find hereafter a list of aspects to consider when defining your SEO strategy. By following the recommendations below diligently, you will have little chance of choosing irrelevant keywords. Then, it will be up to you to optimize your site and obtain links... but that is not today's topic.

So, how do you avoid mistakes and choose your SEO keywords wisely?

Clarity and Objectivity in Keyword Selection

There's no magic formula for choosing SEO keywords because every industry, geographical area, company, marketing team, and website is unique. While not necessary to conduct a complete SWOT analysis, a "Business" approach, not just SEO, will help you attract qualified traffic in line with your goals.

Know who you are before focusing on User Queries !

Business aspects must be taken into account:

• Your industry (B2B technical or B2C).
  It will impact search volumes and competition difficulty. It might be easier to attract the "right" type of user in a niche sector than in a highly competitive mass-market sector. However, the volume will always be limited, and this must be considered when choosing keywords.
   
• Your target audience's vocabulary.
  Have you ever encountered a salesperson or product manager who uses highly technical language or references where the audience prefers usage-oriented language? It's crucial to match your "Buyer persona" way of thinking and searching with your offer.
   
• Your market position.
  If your company is a leader in your industry, then you can more easily target generic keywords than if you've just started and entered a competitive sector. Depending on your position and tenure, you may prefer to focus on long-tail keywords rather than highly competitive keywords... at least at the beggining.
   
• Your market positioning.
  If you stand out based on price, your strategy will likely differ from when your products are known for quality. You will be ble to use long tail keywords in order to match specific users queries. Studying competitors' strategies is always beneficial, provided you have the right tools and focus on the right criteria.
   
• Your cathment area.
  Does your site aim to attract and find customers locally, regionally, nationally, or globally? If your activity is local, your keyword strategy will differ significantly from an e-commerce site shipping worldwide. Asking the right questions when choosing your location is crucial. Should I focus on a nearby major city or my small town? Should I use international English or localized English (American, Australian)?
   
• Your resources.
  Be objective and realistic when choosing SEO keywords. Generic keywords can be highly competitive. To succeed, you need a fast website with a good user experience, rich and relevant content, and a strong reputation (quality backlinks). Optimizing a site, creating content, or acquiring good backlinks takes time or money if outsourced.
  While reaching the top spot in SEO is never impossible, if your competitors are giants and you lack the time, team, or financial means (yes, time is money), it's better to adopt, at least in the short term, a niche or long-tail strategy. In this regard, Cocolyze is immensely helpful as it indicates each keyword's potential and the difficulty level of reaching the top position in Google searches.

Keyword Strategy Based on Site or Web Page Type

The type of website and page main goals must be considered. Lexical and semantic fields will differ for sites dealing with the same topic but having different objectives. Blogs typically use less commercial language than product pages on an e-commerce site.

An e-commerce store aims to make sales, while an institutional site is more informational. Therefore, if you operate in e-commerce, you can use action verbs related to buying and selling, which would not be suitable for a showcase or lead generation site. If you manage a tutorial blog, you can opt for long-tail keywords oriented towards questions/answers to align with voice or technical search trends.

A keyword strategy must be consistent across a site. By working with a semantic cocoon system, lexical field, and linking it with the page type, you can have the right primary keyword and secondary keywords on each page of your site! Take the example of an online store. Start with a question keyword for a blog page to inform prospects about your product or product range. The category page should focus on generic or range keywords, while you should use more specific keywords on a product page.

Consider Time, Yours and Google's

SEO takes time, twice in fact. Time to define your strategy and work on it, and then time for Google to reward your efforts. If you have a seasonal business, choose your keywords accordingly. If you prioritize "bikinis" while it's late June (in northern Emisphere)... it's too late; Google will take several months before significantly improving your rankings in SERPS.

Opportunities and Long-Term Strategy

Similarly, you can prioritize and plan your work short, medium, and long term. You are likely already positioned on non-priority keywords but with potential for quick results. It might be wise to spend some time, without spreading yourself too thin, working on them to get quicker traffic than with highly competitive keywords. Don't hesitate to consult the opportunities tool.

The Almost Mandatory Help of an SEO Tool!

Answering all the questions above is extremely challenging, if not impossible, without a tool's help. How do you observe competitors' strategies, get all possible keyword ideas, or know the competition or potential of a keyword? It's almost impossible without SEO software. Cocolyze was designed with this business approach and provides various tools to help you make the right decision. The tool suggests, and you, as the expert, decide!

• The keyword planner is quite impressive. Enter a keyword idea, and you get the search volume, average CPC if you were using Ads, the difficulty and suggestions classified dependive of their type (questions, competitive, high potential and long tail). 
• The opportunities tool. You may not have thought about it, but Cocolyze finds keywords you're already ranking for. Ideal for quick wins or secondary keywords you hadn't considered. The opportunity tab also suggests keywords from competitors that Cocolyze, after analyzing your site and theirs, has selected for you!
• The keyword position tracking tool allows you to know the monthly search volume, search volume evolution, potential, competition level, number of searches, and your position for each of your selected keywords in Cocolyze. We've also created an "SEO value" index for a keyword, which is the amount you'd need to spend in Google Ads to get equivalent traffic to the top SEO site in Google results. This helps you easily see if a keyword is worth working on. By exporting the list, you can even work on an Excel sheet based on your personal weights.
• The competitor analysis tool allows you to see the keywords your competitors are ranking for... and where you stand compared to them, considering your position and benefiting from Cocolyze's page analysis.
• The writing tool will not only help you write ideal content but also work on your long-tail keywords and secondary keywords, allowing you to choose and work on keywords from the same semantic cocoon to optimize your qualified traffic.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions, however, the best you can do is always to use the tools as you will get the answers by working on your project!