The main task of SEO is to increase the traffic that reaches your website. The more visitors you get, the better it is for your business, as they become customers and bring you revenue.
There are several tasks that facilitate this
Identifying keywords (the words people search for on search engines like Google) related to a website or a web page
Optimizing titles and descriptions so search engines know what the web page is about
Inserting specific code in a website or a blog so that it can be easily index by search engines
Using social networks to generate backlinks from “trusted websites” pointing to our own web pages This post will talk specifically about identifying keywords. How do we identify relevant keywords? What’s the best method for doing it?

Let’s start by saying that if you are looking for keywords to create an SEO campaign, you should know what your goals are. There are two types of goals associated with this task:

1) You want visitors coming from search engines (SEO purposes).

2) You want people clicking on ads online (PPC purposes). The keywords associated with PPC campaigns have different criteria than the ones used in SEO. One difference is that they should be shorter and more “commercial” than organic keywords. For example, if I run an SEO campaign about dogs it makes no sense to focus on ‘dog food’ as a keyword because very few people would type these words in Google search bar. But since advertisers have the opportunity to include up to 7-8 words in their ads, ‘dog food’ can be a keyword choice for them.

The criteria for choosing SEO related keywords should be:
● Relevance with your business. That is, the more relevant they are with your line of work, the better.

● Volume – that is how many people search for these terms each month. The higher this number is, the more visitors you’ll get and vice versa.

● Difficulty – if it’s too hard to rank well on page one of Google results (or any other search engine) using a specific keyword or phrase, then it probably doesn’t make sense to use it as part of an SEO campaign unless you’re targeting low competition long tail keywords.
How do we find these keywords?
● Google Adwords Keyword Planner – this is the best tool on the market (for paid ads) to get such data. You can check keyword difficulty and how many people search for a specific term each month. These numbers, however, are not 100% reliable since advertisers pay to improve their click through rate and they may be artificially inflated. You should use these numbers as a guideline and conduct your own research using other tools and common sense.
● Competitor Research Tools: One of them is SEMrush. This really helps in identifying new SEO opportunities based on your competitors’ websites content and keywords they rank well for. For example if I aim at ranking my website on page one of Google for”plumber + near me” and I see that my competitors are ranking there for “plumbing”, “local plumbers”, “emergency plumber” etc., it makes sense for me to try to rank well on these keywords too. That way I’ll get more organic traffic.
● Google Trends: This is another great tool as it shows data directly from Google regarding how many people search for a specific term over time. This helps in understanding the seasonality of a keyword or phrase, if it’s seasonal then you should avoid using it unless this is part of your marketing strategy (e.g Christmas-related keywords).
● Keyword Analysis Tools: These websites include a list of relevant keywords related to each seed word you enter. These tools are mostly used by SEO agencies to find the best keywords for clients.

How many keywords should I choose? The number of keywords you need will vary depending on your aims. ● If you are looking for visitors then aim at least for 5-10 relevant long tail keywords that are not competitive, meaning few people are targeting them. Try to include these terms into your blog content, article titles and page meta description. Don’t go overboard though since Google usually detects if a website is using spammy tactics like stuffing its content with too many keywords in an unnatural way in order to manipulate their rankings – this leads to penalties…

● For PPC purposes it’s okay to target only 1 or 2 primary keyword(s) related to your business niche but make sure you include secondary keywords as well. Not all marketing channels are available for specific countries, e.g Google Shopping is only available in the United States and Canada. Some marketing channels may even be geo-targeted by city or radius search – this means that a customer who lives in London will see different ads than one who lives in Manchester with respect to location. Finding long tail keywords using Google’s “Searches related to” function.
● Visit Google Trends and type your seed keyword (e.g SEO). Click on NEXT until you reach SEARCH TERMS.
● You’ll get a list of similar searches based on the one you entered which with some research can become great SEO keywords too since they don’t have many advertisers targeting them.