SEO/Keywords

After listening to your session on Digital Visibility, you should familiarise yourself with SEO and keyword research.

What is a keyword

A keyword is a term used in digital marketing to describe a word or a group of words an Internet user uses to perform a search in a search engine or search bar.

In essence, it is the way in which you can get your content/website in front of your target audience. Without optimising your webpages, content and social media for keywords, search engines and social media platforms simply don’t know who to put you in front of.

As event/brand owners it is very simple to make assumptions about how someone is likely to search for us. You are in our business so it’s very easy to think that certain keywords are obvious. A lot of the time your audience is using very different language to what you might assume, therefore it is essential that you conduct thorough keyword research to give you the very best chance of being found online.

Short tail and Long tail

Short tail keywords (also known as seed words) are very broad terms usually made of less than 3 words. Although it is important to research your short tail keywords it is incredibly difficult to rank for them (be promoted) as they don’t always have a specific intention behind them, but they do give context to the field in which you are operating.

An example of this would be the word “Photography”

What does this word mean to you? What would you be looking to find if you typed this into the Google search bar? Wedding photography? Nature photography? Commercial? How to get started with photography? Photography tips?

There are too many possible variants to this term so you would need to be more specific. This is where long tail keywords come in. You can expand on you short tail phrase and try and give context for the search, i.e. “commercial photographer near me” or “sports photography courses Bournemouth” etc etc.

Long tail keywords are a lot more specific and may have a lot less search volume than “photography” but will generate a much more engaged viewer likely to want to view your website or content. It’s also a great way to get specific content, pages or posts seen as you will link each piece of content to each long tail phrase.

Keyword intention

Whenever anyone types anything into a search bar they will be typing with a specific intention in mind. It is essential when we create our keyword list based on this intention to give context to the search.

There are 3 main types of search intent…

• Informational: The user has a specific question in mind or would like to find out more information about a certain topic. I.e “What is the time in Brisbane?”
• Navigational: The user is trying to find a certain web page or app.. i.e “Facebook login”
• Transactional: The user is searching with the intention to buy goods or services.

How to research keywords for your business…

When getting started with keyword research we suggest creating a spreadsheet with three main columns.

• Column 1 – a list of the relevant short tail keywords that you will naturally weave into your website and content to give an understanding of the industry you are in.
• Column 2- A list of the main long tail keywords you would like to target for your website based on keyword intention and search volume.
• Column 3- An ongoing list of long tail key phrases that you can utilise for content writing purposes.

Google Search

Start typing a phrase into Google, a pre-populated list will drop down with popular search terms related to your query. These are already being utilised by the public. Do they fit your business?

Ask People…

Utilise your friends, family and current clients and customers. What language do they use? Ask them what they might type to find you.

Forums and Groups…

Sit in relevant groups and make a note of common questions that always get asked, if they are asking on a FB group chances are they have typed it into Google before. Check out Quora and Reddit for similar queries.

Google Ads Keyword Planner…

Our top advice is to use a dedicated keyword tool like the keyword planner on Google Ads. Yellow Tuxedo have a YouTube video on their channel showing you how to do this.  You do not necessarily need to start a paid ad straight away, create a free account and start in expert mode to access all of the free tools. Type your chosen key phrase and it will tell you the monthly search volume for that phrase and the competition to show you how many other websites are trying to rank for that word.

When starting out trying to rank for keywords look for those with a volume between 1k and 10k search volume with a low/medium competition. It’s much better to start with smaller volume keywords and then build up to larger ones as you build authority across the internet. Google will reward you for doing well with smaller terms and be more inclined to help rank you as you go for more competitive terms moving forward.

Answer the Public

Utilise the free version of this tool to explore all of the relevant questions being asked by the public in real-time based on your short tail keywords. This a great tool to help shape your optimised content strategy moving forward.

Ultimately, you should always optimise for obvious routes in, whatever you would think of in order to search your own event or brand. However, it’s so important you also optimise for navigation, transactional and unorthodox leads, someone may be searching for something similar to your event or brand, so optimise for that too.