Keywords are essential for your website’s SEO strategy if you want to climb up SERP rankings on Google and increase your future sales. The right keywords help search engines understand your website’s content, attract interested visitors, improve traffic, and ultimately lead to higher conversion rates.  In this article, you’ll be exposed to three main benefits of using the right keywords.  We’ll also review how to find them, and how much money you can expect to make by implementing our keywords strategy.

Specific benefits of using keywords on your website:

1. Increased organic traffic: When you target the right keywords, your website is more likely to show up in search results, leading to more visitors.
2. Improved brand awareness: Seeing your website in search results helps people remember your brand.
3. Higher conversion rates: Visitors from search engines are more likely to convert into leads or customers because they’re already interested in what you have to offer.

Tips for using keywords effectively:

• Use keywords in your page titles, meta descriptions, and throughout your content.
• Use long-tail keywords, which are more specific and less competitive than seed keywords.
• Consider your target audience and what keywords they’re likely to use.
• Analyze your competitors and see what keywords they’re targeting.
• Track your results over time to see what’s working and make adjustments as needed.

By following these tips, you can use keywords to improve your website’s SEO and reach more potential customers.

How to Find the Right Keywords

The best method for finding keywords will vary depending on your specific niche and goals. However, there are a few general tips that can help you get started:

1. Start by brainstorming a list of seed keywords. These are the broad, general keywords that are most relevant to your business or niche. For example, if you sell shoes, your seed keywords might include “shoes”, “sneakers”, “boots”, and “sandals”.
2. Use keyword research tools to find related keywords and long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are more specific and less competitive than seed keywords. They can be a great way to target potential customers who are further along in the buying process.
3. Consider your target audience. What keywords are they likely to use when searching for products or services like yours?
4. Analyze your competitors. What keywords are they targeting? What keywords are they ranking for?
5. Track your results over time. Once you’ve implemented your keyword strategy, it’s important to track your results to see what’s working and what’s not. This will help you to refine your strategy over time.

Online Keyword Tools to Help Your Research

Here are some specific keyword research tools that you can use:

• Google Keyword Planner
• Ahrefs Keyword Explorer
• SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool
• Ubersuggest
• AnswerThePublic

Once you have a list of keywords, you can start to incorporate them into your website’s content and other SEO elements. Be sure to use them naturally and avoid keyword stuffing.

How to Utilize Keywords

Once you find the keywords that are the best fit for your audience and content, you need a plan to implement them.  Here are some of the best tips for using keywords effectively:

• Use keywords in your page titles and meta descriptions. This will help your website to show up in the search results for relevant keywords.
• Include keywords throughout your website’s content, but don’t keyword stuff. Make sure that your content is still readable and informative.
• Use keywords in your image alt text. This will help search engines to understand what your images are about.
• Build backlinks to your website from other high-quality websites. This will help to improve your website’s authority and ranking in the search results.

What Happens if You Use the Wrong Keywords on Your Website?

Using the wrong keywords on your website can have a number of negative consequences, including:

• Lower search engine rankings. If you’re not targeting the right keywords, your website is less likely to show up in search results. This can lead to a significant decrease in organic traffic.
• Attract the wrong visitors. If you’re targeting irrelevant keywords, you’re likely to attract visitors who aren’t interested in what you have to offer. This can lead to a high bounce rate and low conversion rates.
• Waste time and money. Keyword research and SEO can be time-consuming and expensive. If you’re targeting the wrong keywords, you’re essentially wasting your time and money.

Here are some specific examples of the negative consequences of using the wrong keywords:

• If you’re a shoe store and you’re targeting the keyword “shoes,” you’re competing against some of the biggest brands in the world. It’s unlikely that your website will rank well for this keyword, and you’re likely to attract a lot of visitors who are just looking for general information about shoes.
• If you’re a dentist and you’re targeting the keyword “teeth whitening,” you’re competing against other dentists, teeth whitening clinics and a variety of toothpaste products. You’re also likely to attract visitors who are just looking for information about teeth whitening, and not necessarily people who are looking to schedule an appointment.
• If you’re a plumber and you’re targeting the keyword “plumber,” you’re competing against other plumbers in your area. You’re also likely to attract visitors who are just looking for information about plumbers, and not necessarily people who are having a plumbing emergency.

In all of these cases, it would be more effective to target more specific keywords. For example, the shoe store could target keywords like “men’s running shoes” or “women’s dress shoes.” The dentist could target keywords like “teeth whitening in San Francisco” or “cost of teeth whitening.” The plumber could target keywords like “emergency plumber near me” or “24-hour plumbing service.”

By targeting more specific keywords, these businesses can improve their chances of ranking well in search results and attracting visitors who are more likely to convert into customers.

Overall, it’s important to choose the right keywords for your website. If you use the wrong keywords, you could end up wasting your time and money, and even damaging your brand.

How Much Are Keywords Worth?

Keywords can vary greatly in value, depending on several factors, including:

• Competition: The more competitive a keyword is, the more it will cost to rank for it.
• Search volume: The more people search for a keyword, the more valuable it is.
• Intent: The intent of a keyword is also important. For example, a keyword like “buy shoes” is more valuable than a keyword like “what are shoes?”
• Industry: Some industries, such as insurance and finance, have higher keyword values than others.

According to a study by WordStream, the average cost per click (CPC) for keywords in Google Ads is between $2 and $4. However, some keywords can cost much more. For example, the CPC for the keyword “insurance” is over $50.

The value of a keyword to your business will also depend on your specific goals. For example, if you’re an e-commerce business, keywords that lead to sales are more valuable to you than keywords that simply drive traffic to your website.

Here are some tips for estimating the value of a keyword to your business:

• Consider your conversion rate. What percentage of visitors to your website convert into customers?
• Consider your average customer lifetime value (CLTV). How much money does a typical customer spend with your business over time?
• Consider your advertising costs. How much does it cost you to acquire a new customer?

Once you have considered these factors, you can use a simple formula to estimate the value of a keyword to your business:

Keyword value = (Conversion rate * CLTV) – Advertising costs

This formula will give you a rough estimate of how much money you can expect to make for every click on that keyword.

It’s important to note that this is just a rough estimate. The actual value of a keyword to your business may vary depending on several factors, such as the quality of your landing page, your website’s overall SEO, and the current market conditions.

Do You Want to Bottom-Line Revenue Opportunity with a Keyword?

To fully understand how much a keyword can be to your business, you have to know the overall traffic the keyword can generate to your website, your anticipated conversion rate, and the running average you expect new clients to spend in a transaction or on a monthly recurring basis.

Let’s say you are focused on a Keyword that has a monthly search volume of 1,000 people per month according to any of the keyword tools mentioned above.  If you look up that word on Google, you can look and see what website is in the first position for that word (remember to search in incognito mode to get the best results) and then use another tool like Moz or SEMrush to find out how much traffic they get from being the top-ranked SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for that keyword. 

Let’s just say they get 30% or so of the 1,000 overall search traffic for that word (individual results can vary up or down) but this is a good rule of thumb number.  Once we know the overall traffic that comes with being the top-rated SERP position, we can do some easy math.  For our example, let’s say a new client on average is worth $1,500 per month and we expect about 10% of our website visitors to convert into clients (results may vary) and we pay $2,000 per month on SEO services.  With this information in hand, we can build out our equation easily.

Keyword Bottom-Line Value = Keyword Traffic * SERP Percentage of Traffic * Conversion rate * Sales Average – Advertising costs

So in our example, we would plug in the following numbers:

1,000 (keyword traffic) * .30 (SERP Percentage) * .10 (Conversion Rate) * $1500 (Average Profit) – $2,000 (SEO Costs)  leaving us an additional $43,000. 

If the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is a 50% margin then you’d have an additional profit of $21,500 generated from the SEO work you did by focusing on the right keywords.  Of course, the money generated, the cost to do it, and the overall profitability all depend on the competition for the keywords and the overall volume that the keywords are searched each month.  Some keywords are not worth chasing at all for one of two reasons.  First, they might not have any search volume to speak of.  If no one is searching for the term, it isn’t worth chasing.  Second, the keywords (typical with short keywords) might have extremely high volume, but a very high rate of competition, making them virtually impossible for small and medium-sized businesses a hope of ranking first on the page on Google to get the volume they desire.  So learn how to pick your battles, and find sweet spots where there is some good volume but lower competition rates.

Remember to Revisit Keyword Research Often

Keyword research is an ongoing process. It’s important to regularly review your keywords and make adjustments as needed. New competition could have stepped in and started fighting for new SERP rankings.  Consumer trends could change.  By reviewing the keywords volumes, you will be less likely to suffer reductions in traffic.  It will also help to ensure that you’re targeting the right keywords so that your website stays ahead of the competition.

If you are overwhelmed by all of this, and not interested in becoming a keyword master, never fear.  The team at Bowman Digital Media is here to help.  We offer turnkey SEO solutions that include keyword research and implementation, so you can benefit from all the perks discussed in this article, without any of the headaches to achieve them. Contact Ira Bowman to schedule a free SEO Consultation.