How to use Keyword Research for Page Optimization

Now that you have your keywords and your content strategy, let’s take a second to go more in-depth into page optimization. Don’t let the big word scare you, optimization is just a fancy way of saying “to make things better or best”. In this context, we’ll be looking at making your web pages better at attracting organic traffic and converting that traffic into paying customers.

Keywords and User Intent

Let’s look at user intent. For example, you’re working with the keywords “kid’s shoes”. But you don’t know what people are looking for when they search for “kid’s shoes”. Are they shopping online or looking for a local store? Do they know exactly what kind of kids shoes they want or are they browsing? We need to find their exact intent behind the keyword search query.

You can find out generally what people are searching for by entering your keywords or phrases into a search engine, like Google or Bing, and seeing what pops up at the top, middle and bottom. Also, check out the related searches at the bottom of the first page. This will give you even more information about what and why people are searching for with your keyword. Now that you know what people’s intentions are when searching for your keywords or phrases, you know how to frame your page’s content to line up with what people are searching for.

Now, let’s look at how to optimize your website with your keywords. There are several different applications you can use to optimize your web pages, but let’s start with two of the most popular, Google Analytics and SEMrush.

Optimizing Webpages with Google Analytics

You can use Google Analytics to help find what pages on your website are receiving the most organic traffic, and what keywords are driving that traffic. Then, you can edit these pages to help draw even more organic traffic. To use Google Analytics this way, go to Acquisition  All Traffic  Source/medium, then click on “google/organic”. This will display a table of your content. The pages with the most visitors will be at the top. Then, under Source/medium, click on Secondary dimension and add “landing page”, so you can see what the first page someone clicked on was. Now you know what your top pages are and can tweak the content with your list of keywords and phrases, coupled with your new knowledge of user intent.

Using SEMrush To Find Optimizable Pages

If you would prefer to use a different platform to find pages that would benefit from adding keywords and phrases, you can use SEMrush. Once you’ve logged into their site, go to SEO Toolkit  Organic Research   Positions, then type in your domain, or webpage, name. You’ll see results showing what keywords your site is ranking for, and where they’re landing on the search engine results page. Optinmonster recommends focusing on the pages ranking between the 4^th and 10^th positions. The top three pages are already working well at drawing in organic visitors, so these pages don’t need help. The pages between 4^th and 10^th are ranking well but have room for improvement. We don’t want to waste energy perfecting pages that are already performing well.

Next, in SEMrush, go to the Content Marketing Toolkit and select SEO Content Template. Type in your keywords into the tool and SEMrush will open the top ten Google results and will make helpful suggestions about which keywords to add to the content on pages you’re working to optimize.

How to Incorporate Keywords onto your Webpages

Starting with your primary keyword, decide what your secondary keywords are. Secondary keywords could come from what you learned about user intent. Going back to our kid’s shoes example, a secondary keyword could be “sale”, which was pulled from the related searches section. Third, list any related or supporting keywords, like “boy” or “toddler”, also from the related searches section. Fourth, list any keyword questions that came up on your test search. And, finally what is your user intent? The user intent will shape what kind of content you create, along with the solutions you offer now that you know why your potential customers are using your keywords in their searches.

According to moz.com, this is a basic layout for incorporating keywords into a webpage.

1. URL: primary keyword
2. Title tag: primary + secondary keywords
3. Meta description: primary +secondary + related/supporting keywords
4. Page title: primary + secondary keywords
5. Subheadings: secondary + question keywords
6. Body copy: primary + secondary + related/supporting keywords
7. Image alt text: primary + secondary + related/supporting keywords

CadenceSEO Knows Keywords and Optimization

At CadenceSEO, our team of SEO experts and consultants know how to find keywords and phrases specific to your business, and how to use them to make each of your web pages as attractive to Google and buying customers as possible. Let us help you bring in more organic traffic specifically targeting your keywords and phrases.

If you’re ready to optimize your website with keywords, contact us at CadenceSEO. We’re here to optimize each of your web pages with your keywords.