Tips for Keyword Discovery

Although the landscape of SEO changes regularly, there are definitely some things that not only stay the same, but absolutely must stay the same. Quality content is an obvious one; the other is judicious and proper use of keywords.

These elements are immutable because they go to the very heart of why search engines work in the first place – your waiting public has to be able to find what they’re looking for, and they do this by using keywords.

The Evolution of Keyword Importance

In the early days of the web, keywords were of tremendous importance. They still are today; but back then, you could rank on the first day using some elementary keyword discovery techniques – in fact, never mind the plural, it was possible to rank very high in some industries simply by making sure the URL of your website had the keyword within it.

Today, with the competition in every industry far greater than in the early days of Google, this isn’t feasible. Keyword discovery is a bonafide field unto itself now, and you need several on-page SEO techniques to show up in the search engines for the keywords you desire.

Essential Keyword Tips that Still Work

The first thing that’s necessary is to outline what your page is about. What service or product are you selling, or what message are you trying to convey to your public? Keyword research is all about behavioral profiling, in a sense; after you discover what it is you want to say, next you have to discern how your public would say it.

For this, it may be necessary to visit forums, check out relevant social networks, or even look at the websites of your competitors. Being discovered for the keywords you desire depends almost entirely on how someone who’s interested types them into the search engine. To bolster the chances your website comes up:

• make use of meta tag descriptions in your header
• do not flood your article or blog post with keywords; it’ll read as spam to the human reader and be flagged as such by the crawling spiders (search engine code that assesses pages)
• if your service is comprised of a keyword that is commonly misspelled, don’t be afraid to misspell it just once or twice in your copy – the search engines will pick up on it and your page will show up for both the correct and incorrect spellings
• check the Page Source code of the competition (if they’re more successful than you are) for ideas on their keyword combinations
• When you guest post, include hyperlinks that use your keyword string as the anchor text; but don’t do this too often

The Advanced Realm of Keyword Hunting

Most businesses that are competitive are using the above keyword discovery tips; they represent the tip of the iceberg. There are many more expert things you can do; these tend to be more time-consuming.

One of them is by making use of Analytics (whether the free platform provided by Google – or a more robust paid one). Understanding the dashboard can tell you many things about where your website visitors are coming from, and where they’re leaving from when they’re done with your content.

If you have even a hazy idea of what you’re targeting, a capable SEO company like can conduct lengthy keyword research for you. Ultimately, it’s important to understand that even if your Content is King, nobody will be able to find it if you’re not making proper use of the relevant keywords.

Carine is an avid watch connoisseur-type, and surfs around the Web providing her expertise. Occasionally, he writes for luxury watch websites such as this Invicta watches e-commerce store and others.