Venturing into SEO for your business can feel overwhelming, but SEO is critical to your business's success in the online arena. Learning how to choose the right keywords will drive the right traffic to your business and make it successful. 

Determine The Competition

After selecting keywords you wish to pursue, the first thing you'll want to do is to get a feel for the competition for the keyword. Keyword competition takes a look at exactly how difficult it would be for you to rank on a specific keyword. 

To determine the competition for your desired keyword, first, you'll need to find a tool. There's a wide variety of keyword evaluation tools available. Once you've found the one you like, punch in your desired keyword to get information about how people search for that word.

Generally speaking, the more searches for a keyword, the more competition there will be to rank for that word. If your desired keyword has a high number of searches, it may not be worth pursuing it due to the amount of competition. 

When it's too difficult to rank for your desired keywords, look into longtail keywords. 

Choose Longtail Keywords

Longtail keywords are SEO phrases that are more specific than a single keyword. For example, if you sell cheese, there's going to be a lot of competition for that keyword. However, if you sell cheddar cheese, or even better, aged cheddar cheese, these phrases will target a more niche audience.

To get a feel for what longtail keywords would work best for your business, search for questions relating to your keyword as if you were one of your customers. This research will reveal how your customers are searching and what keywords will direct them toward your product. 

Study Search Intent

Search intent is the main reason why your audience was searching for the keyword in the first place. To analyze your audience's search intent, put the longtail keyphrase into your search engine, and look at the first page of results. Do you see a common thread? 

Take the example keyword "aged cheddar cheese." If you were to look it up and see many results for aged cheddar cheese spread, that might be an intent mismatch. 

Ask For Help

If your SEO campaign isn't reaching your intended audience, reach out to an SEO consultant. Sometimes, having an outside pair of eyes analyze your campaign is all you need to choose the right keywords and drive business to your site. 

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