For many years now various search engines have
been reducing the significance of keyword relevance signals. However, it is a
fact that keywords are not necessarily needed in the title or heading tags for
them to be ranked in the top five of various search engines result pages. It is
not even important to use exact keyword phrases anymore. The question therefore
is, should people forget about keywords and focus more on content creation?
The answer is surprisingly no. The importance of keywords cannot be thrown under the bus. However, it should be applied in a
much different way than it has been used in the past years. For instance, the
different meaning of each phrase and the popularity of every meaning is also
very important.
Defining your goals
One of the questions you should ask yourself
before you even get started is, what I want to achieve with search traffic.
Most people make the mistake as defining their goals as more traffic. More
traffic should never be anyone’s goal.
Instead, the goal should always be to increase
sales. You should understand that traffic is just a way of solving a sales
problem. That is why it should never be viewed as the end goal. When coming up
with a keyword strategy for a business website, the first thing should be to define
the sales problem that a business is aiming to solve.
Types of typical E-commerce keyword goals
Add impressions and clicks
Sales
Building awareness of a website, products or
services
Feeding various parts of the sales funnel
Building awareness is one of the important goals
since it will help you rank in major keyword phrases apart from generating
direct sales. After defining keyword goals, the next step is to come up with
keyword categories in order to address those goals and start categorizing all
the keywords for the purpose of building content as well as a marketing strategy.
Money phrases
The sales category also concentrates on what is
known as “money phrases” in the SEO industry. These are phrases associated with
a high level of sales for example “where to buy popcorn” and “cheap popcorns”.
Money phrases are very important because they always result in sales. That is
why adverts with money phrases often have a higher cost per click, something
which generates a lot of revenue through advertising.
Top Five money phrases
The following are the most commonly used money
phrases
Discount price searches
Product review and ratings
Competitor comparison
Searches for sales
Coupon code searches
Advantages of being comprehensive
It is important to note that most money phrases
are always often given to the more authoritative websites. Despite the fact
that quality and quantity play a big role in SEO, content is a highly regarded
ingredient. However, it doesn’t mean just any content, rather it needs
comprehensive content.
An alternative strategy for money phrase ranking
There are several other methods that can be used
other than money phrases which can also generate sales sometimes even more than
the money phrase technique. They include the following
Building of goodwill
Cultivating awareness
Stimulating word of mouth referrals, links as
well as money phrase ranking.
The above techniques if used appropriately can
lead to more and more sales.
