Keyword Research is one of the most important steps for any search engine optimization campaign. The process of keyword research determines which keywords you should optimize to rank your website in the best possible way for your customers to find you. Hence, this process is a big factor in the overall success of your website as well as your online business.
Therefore, it’s important to know what can go wrong if you do it incorrectly. You should consider the following 5 massive mistakes before you dive into keyword research.
Through Keyword Research Are You Picking Irrelevant Keywords?
Generally, many people tend to pick up keywords with high search volumes. SEO experts consider picking keywords just on search volume as a massive mistake. Just because a keyword has a high search volume doesn’t mean that the customers you want to target are using it. You need to pick keywords that match your customer’s needs and values. This is what gets them to click. Additional, competing for top rank on high-volume terms is very difficult and not necessarily lucrative.
Why Your Avoid Using Too Many Keywords:
Targeting too many keywords is another bad SEO mistake. The more keywords you target, the harder it will be to optimize your content. Trying to cram every keyword you can into your pages will make your language seem stilted and turn off customers. Additionally, each page can only contribute so much to each keyword. Diluting your page with a lot of keywords will reduce the effects of all of them. Do proper keyword research and select those keywords that will drive your ideal customers to your website and are relevant to the topic of each page.
Why You Should Avoid Stuffing The Same Keyword Into All Your Pages:
On the other hand, it’s possible to select too few keywords. Done too blatantly on a single page and it can look like you’re trying to do something called keyword stuffing. It’s pretty easy to tell when someone is doing this because the copy will read very unnaturally. Google considers this a bad practice and will punish you for it. Getting punished by Google for SEO mistakes is quite costly. Fortunately, keyword stuffing is easy to avoid. Write natural-sounding content and vary your keywords between pages.
Are You Only Using Keywords Based on Your Existing Site Structure?
Through keyword research we get a variety of keywords, many people start by looking at what each page is about, then optimize based on the topic. This is a great start, but there is a flaw that could bite you. If your customers aren’t searching for the terms you’re optimizing for, then that extra optimization is a waste of time.
Sometimes a page is so specific that it requires the use of a keyword customers might not search for right off. An example is a specific product page. But if your keyword research finds that your customers aren’t finding you for some of the keywords your site design suggests you should have, it’s time to make a change.
Are You Putting in Irrelevant Keywords?
Finally, you should never try to stuff in a keyword that is irrelevant to the topic of the page. Search engines have the ability to read the links between different categories of keywords. If there’s a word or phrase that truly doesn’t fit, like say a plumbing keyword in an article about fashion, that’s a signal that there might be something fishy.
Granted, we don’t know all of these keyword category links. But if you find yourself trying to shoehorn a keyword into a page where it doesn’t quite fit, maybe you need a different keyword or a different topic.
These are the five massive mistakes in the arena of keyword research, which can be the cause of your SEO to suffer or fail. You should try your best to avoid these mistakes if you don’t want to see your website doomed to the lower pages of Google.
