The REAL Value of Keywords for Online Businesses

Keywords plays a great role for representing your business online. For SEO and online marketing keywords are the main weapons for making your website visible in relevant search terms by search engines. An important question in SEO is how much essential value resides in a specific keyword and your SEO campaign really has the potential to give your business a unique representation.

Write your blog around specific keywords. Not just any keywords, but those for which people are looking. If your keyword is only searched by 12 people a month, it’s time to move on. You can use the Google Keyword Tool for your research. If the search value and competition is high, you will have found a good keyword that will interest people. Devise one main keyword and two or three variations for each post.

Tips: Don’t get hung up with this step. If you have an idea for a blog post and you are having a hard time fitting in an exact keyword, write the post anyways if you know your audience will love it. You can do more keyword research for your next post. Focus on value first.

Important: Make sure your keywords are aligned with your audience’s needs. Don’t write about selling to businesses if your audience sells goods to consumers.

When it comes to bigger companies, for instance, can a massive SEO investment in trying to achieve top ranking for almost-generic, ultra-competitive keywords be worth all the disappointment and soul-searching. Surely, in so many cases, there has to be a better way.

At the other end of the scale are smaller companies with a limited marketing budget, particularly in the business-to-business sphere. There is often a fine balance to achieve when it comes to investing in SEO for what can only be low-traffic keywords in niche sectors, even where higher gross margins per sale indicate otherwise.

Realizing this, many companies will skip the online sales dance, or resign themselves to having a website that is little more than an 'online brochure' presence or a support mechanism for Pay-Per-Click or social media activities. Others, however, will persist in their delusion, often encouraged by SEO companies who - out of business self-interest - will over-promise when it comes to levels of return on investment (ROI).

Whatever the type or size of business which embarks on SEO, a first page ranking would likely be the original aim. Raw keywords, by definition, are the online thread running through everything a company does. To achieve sales inquiries based on effective keyword selection will validate its SEO involvement. Whether it delivers on ROI or not depends on many factors outside of SEO on the one hand - but also within the scope of SEO on the other.

Despite the voices of so many SEO companies, the down-to-earth reality is that the online sales process is, in its essentials, no different from the bricks and mortar process - except of course in the false expectations whipped up by SEO hype.