What is a Keyword Strategy?

A keyword strategy for SEO uses data (often obtained through keyword research) to develop and implement tactics to improve keyword rankings. Those rankings can help websites reach relevant customers, generate more traffic, and reach their business goals.

How to Create a Keyword Strategy

Keyword strategies can look different across businesses and industries, but most websites will be able to apply our helpful guide to their own efforts at improving keyword rankings. Here are the most crucial steps to creating a useful strategy.

1. Understand Your Goals: As you begin to plan out your keyword strategy, it’s a good idea to refer to your overall marketing strategy for ideas. What are your goals as an organization? Who do you want to see your website? Are you targeting multiple audiences? What is the messaging that you are using to target those audiences? Also, make sure you’ve done proper keyword research. What are people searching for? What aren’t people searching for? And are there opportunities to rank for keywords that don’t have a lot of competition? Step 2 is where we find out!
2. Find Keyword Opportunities: This is the crux of what you will be building your strategy around. Use tools like Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool to find keywords that competitors rank for as inspiration for your own strategy, or Ahrefs’s Keywords Explorer to find keywords related to your website that you aren’t yet ranking for.
3. Optimize, Optimize, Optimize: Once you’ve narrowed a list of keywords and developed a strategy, it’s time to go to work. Update or create landing pages that are optimized for the keywords you’ve chosen. And note, good keyword strategies call for more than just inserting the keywords into a blog post. The information needs to be relevant, engaging, and unique, or it’s not going to rank well. Focus on creating meaningful content that is related to the keyword, but don’t worry about making sure the keyword appears 1,000 times in a single blog post. Google’s Search algorithms are getting better and better at parsing genuine content from keyword stuffing tactics, and besides that, it’s better for your users if you’re creating content that they’ll actually enjoy.
4. Continue to Monitor Performance: It’s hard to know what’s working and what’s not if you aren’t regularly analyzing your performance post-changes. Be sure to monitor important key metrics, like traffic, top organic searches, and CTR. These will help you understand the most effective strategies in your arsenal, so you can apply them again to other keyword targets in the future!

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Are you a business looking to develop or improve a keyword strategy? Our team of experts at Relevance Advisors is here to help. Reach out today to learn more about our services.