What Are Three Key Considerations When Evaluating Keywords For SEO

In all honesty, there are more than three key considerations when evaluating keywords for SEO, but in this article, we'll focus on three key considerations. We will also give you two key bonus considerations, so stay tuned because you'll learn a lot in this article! As an SEO agency, we use paid tools like Semrush, so many of the metrics we discuss will be using Semrush. However, we will also give you free alternatives to use as well.

The Three Key Considerations When Evaluating Keywords For SEO

Consideration #1 - Evaluating Keyword Relevancy

Google is looking at all of the content on your website and using it to determine your niche. Once it determines what your website is about, it expects to see content relevant to that. If you are an Attorney, and your website represents your law firm, if you shift your SEO strategy to start talking about baking, Google will not be fond of this transition. You may experience manual and algorithmic penalties, and you very well will be punished. You'll be pushed down in the rankings, fewer people will find your pages, and ultimately Google can even begin to deindex (take down) your pages. 

The most important thing to consider when evaluating SEO keywords or topics is that they are 100% relevant to your website. So, before building any website page - be it a blog, landing page, or service page - always make sure the keywords and following content are 100% relevant to your business. Otherwise, not only will it not rank, waste your time, and hurt your reputation in Google's eyes, but it could also cause your website to be penalized.

The best way to avoid being penalized would be to eliminate all risks and hire a professional SEO agency like Spirra Digital to take care of all digital marketing needs. You can also shorten your learning curve by checking out our comprehensive keyword research guide. In this guide we'll cover everything you need to get up and running to ensure that you find keywords that help you reach your goals, while at the same time guaranteeing you won't waste your time by creating content that isn't going to get search volume.

Consideration #2 - Evaluating Keyword Difficulty

Once you have followed the #1 key consideration when evaluating keywords for SEO and are sure your targeted keywords/topics are relevant to your brand, next comes keyword difficulty. We will be using Semrush for this example. You can determine keyword difficulty manually by using Google alone, but a much easier and far more accurate way would be to use a tool like Semrush. We will write an article showing you how to determine keyword difficulty with just Google, so look out for that in the future.

But for now, if you look at the photo, the box in red shows the keyword difficulty. Keyword difficulty refers to many different metrics. Some of these metrics refer to the quality of websites ranking on the first page. The number of websites all trying to rank for that specific phrase/keyword. Even how many backlinks the highest-ranking websites have on the pages you'll be faced against in the SERPs. You'll also have to determine what level of keyword difficulty you can compete with based on your authority score, which is another metric you can find and gauge in Semrush.

You generally want to avoid making pages that are out of your level of competition because you aren't going to rank for them. When you target keywords/phrases out of your league, instead of being on the first page, you'll be on the 5th, 8th, or even 15th page, and no one will ever find you. When you evaluate the keyword difficulty, it makes the most sense - in most cases - to stick to keywords you can easily rank for, given your current AS (Authority Score). When you take the time to determine which keywords your current AS will allow you to rank for, you can show up on the first page and gain traffic immediately. 

However, because you are investing in SEO, your AS will steadily rise over time, meaning if there is a keyword you know you need to be ranking for eventually, even if there is no way you can compete for it right now, you can still make the page. In time, as you improve the quality of your website by creating optimized, quality content, and your AS increases, your pages will all be climbing up in the SERPs together. Meaning even though when you made a page you had no chance to rank for at the time, because of your efforts, you can watch it slowly climb to the first page and watch as it gets you traffic and business.

Consideration #3 - Evaluating Keyword Traffic

Consideration #3 is arguably the most important, but it all depends on how you want to look at it. Regardless, once you are sure your target keyword/phrase is relevant and that you can rank for it, it comes to determining whether or not there is enough potential traffic. In evaluating a keyword, you want to ensure that people search for it monthly. Otherwise, you're making a page that might rank but receive no traffic. Using Semrush, or Google keyword planner (as a free option), you can quickly gauge how much potential traffic you stand to gain by creating the page.

Understand that the first result for any keyword/phrase gets 30% of all traffic. So if you see that a specific keyword/phrase gets 1,000 monthly searches, if you rank #1, you will receive roughly 300 monthly visitors for creating that page. However, because of the large amount of traffic, you can generally expect the level of competition to be relatively high, so finding great keywords does take time. It's a process, and you must be willing to work to ensure your potential keywords adequately satisfy all of the five considerations in this article. There are more than these five, but these five are essential to your success.

Bonus Consideration #4 - Evaluating Keyword Competition

Before you create your page, you'll want to evaluate the first five pages ranked for your target keyword/phrase. You'll want to reverse engineer their success to determine what structure your page should also have. If the average word count is 1500, it would be wise to have 2000 words. If the average keyword density is 5%, then it would be wise to meet that 5% too. If they have five images, it would be wise to have 10, so on and so forth. You want to build a resource that is better than anything that is already ranking, and that includes having better website copy than anyone else.

You'll want to understand what your competition has done that has allowed them to rank. In doing so, you can go into the process of creating your page knowing what you need to do to out perform them. We will be creating a video and a blog going into more detail about this in the future, so stay tuned for that!

Bonus Consideration #5 - Situational Relevance Of Your Keyword

In some instances, even if a keyword/phrase doesn't meet all or any of the four points we've discussed above, it may still make sense to create a page for it. In those instances, it makes sense because it will help your business somehow. 

For example, say you or your team members constantly have to answer the same exact questions. It may help you to create a blog page to answer those questions. This way, you can have your team refer to that page to ensure a uniform answer is given for the question, and you can even refer your clients to the page as well, meaning you don't have to keep answering it over and over.

Or, you could create a page as part of your sales funnel that is used as an educational tool to help mitigate objections. You could use the page to outline the benefits of your products/services while walking your potential customers through it, serving as a sales aid. There are many situations where a page like this would make sense, but this is the fifth and final consideration we will discuss in this article. All of these will help to ensure that your website is completely in alignment with all search engine requirements.

What Are Key Considerations For SEO Keyword Analysis?

When you set out to build a page, the main thing you want to consider is the intended purpose of the page. Is it a page you are hoping to rank for immediately? Will it help a system/process in your business, or do you want to rank for it months down the road? Once you have that figured out, you must keep three things in mind. Is the keyword relevant to your business? Is the level of competition something you can win against? And finally, is there traffic you can gain from making the page? 

As long as you keep these three things in mind, you can guarantee the page you create will not only allow Google to trust you more, but you'll also rank for a relevant keyword/phrase that will get potential customers to your website each month.

What's The First Step In The Search Engine Optimisation Process For Your Website?

Really, the first step depends and is entirely situational. If your website is brand new, you should be building for a list of 150-200 keywords you can create your website around. Your best bet would be determined by the amount of time you have for your website. If you have the time to learn about SEO, we would suggest taking the time to read our article that teaches you the most rookie mistakes in SEO, and how to avoid them. However, if you have little time, and aren't wanting to improve your SEO on your own, we recommend booking a strategy call with us to determine the best steps forward.

When Optimizing A Website For Search, What Impact Do Meta And Title Tags Have On The Search Engine?

Title tags have a lot to do with how well your pages are ranking. In fact, title tags are one of the most important pieces of text in any SEO campaign, so you need to ensure these are optimized properly or you will not rank. Plain and simple. 

Meta descriptions, on the other hand, are much less critical. You still want to have your target keywords/phrases in the meta description, but you can still very easily rank #1 without having this optimized at all. As long as your meta description captivates your audience's attention, you'll do just fine even without having your keyword listed. More often than not, Google will take random text from your website and replace your meta description with it anyway. However, it is still best practice to include your target keyword/phrase inside the meta description, but you can rank without doing this.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for reading this article! Hopefully, it answered your questions, and as always, if you have any other questions or think we've left something out, feel free to reach out to us, and we'd be happy to help however we can!