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By Farzin Andrew Espahani | Solution21 | VP of Growth and Marketing |
You may assume the content on any page of your website should be optimized for a single specific keyword. However, it’s possible to optimize a content page for multiple keywords, allowing you to be concise and direct, and eliminate unnecessary pages on your website. Incorporating multiple related keywords provides more opportunity for your content to rank on Google search results. First you should understand why optimizing for multiple keywords is the way to go.
Benefits of Optimizing for Multiple Keywords vs. Single Keywords
In short, Google uses a variety of algorithms to evaluate the quality of your content and determine whether you are an authority, and if your content is relevant to the search engine inquiry. When your content is optimized for a single specific keyword, creating content around that one keyword can be difficult as the topic may be limited. When the writer is restricted, the content produced can be less interesting or read as repetitive. If you are simply trying to fill pages with content, your website will be less enticing, interesting, or unique. With the use of multiple keywords and phrases, each page will have richer, more relevant content, improving page ranking. Also, variants of keywords will improve your ranking for closely related topics or alternative phrasing of search engine inquiries.
Incorporating Multiple Keywords into Your Website Optimization
The most effective way to discover the most commonly searched phrases or questions regarding your industry, product, or service, is to do some searching of your own. The key to this exercise is getting into the mind of your clients or potential clients and imagining the types of information they are most likely to search, and what questions they will type into the search bar when looking for answers. It’s also important to consider the slight jargon or phrasing errors that someone might make when they are just learning about your product or service. Checking out what your competitors have written and how they rank in various search results can help you develop the right type of content for your website.
Identifying Your Ideal Keywords
When researching potential keywords, it is best to perform your search in the form of a question. Google has a feature that will pull one to three sentences from the resource that it thinks is most relevant to your question and display that answer in a box at the top of the results page in what’s called a “featured snippet.” The snippet also provides a link back to the original content, so your goal should be to have content optimized to appear as a featured snippet at the top of search results.
Beneath the snippet is another box with related questions called “people also ask.” The related questions can be helpful in discovering other questions users are asking about your product, service, or industry. The other questions may even be similar in nature to your initial inquiry, but with slightly different wording or intent. As you go deeper into related “people also ask” content, be aware of any instances where the snippet at the top of the results page is incorrect or provides an unsatisfactory answer to the question posed. Insufficient information could be an opportunity for you to develop more relevant, accurate content on the subject with a well-suited answer to user questions, boosting the chances of your written content appearing as the featured snippet.
Once you understand key questions and phrases related to your inquiry, you can compile them into a list of potential keywords. Using your preferred keyword research tool, analyze the list you came up with to determine the best group of keywords to weave into your content.
Using Multiple Keywords in Your Content
Once your list is narrowed down to a few of the best keywords, you can start incorporating them into your content. Remember to maintain a hierarchy of information, starting with the broadest information at the top and moving into specific points and details. While incorporating keywords, it is imperative that you keep in mind the user experience on your website as well as the structure, organization, and readability. Be sure to incorporate your keywords into your subheadings throughout your content to increase rankings or possibly end up as a featured snippet, as Google algorithms analyze headings for potential search engine results.
Measuring Your Website’s Success
After you alter or add content to your website, tracking your success will be vital to understanding what is working and what isn’t. Use an analytics program to analyze traffic to your website, which pages are most landed on and read, for how long, your overall bounce rate, and bounce rates on specific pages. Your bounce rate may be indicative of insufficient content or optimization. Keep track of your rankings to see if your optimized content improves your positioning on relevant searches.
Although search engine optimization is an evolving field and Google often modifies algorithms to strive for better search results, the simple fact remains that search engines are looking for relevant, quality content. If you produce genuine content rich in keywords used by your target audience in search inquiries, you will likely improve your rankings and website traffic. Using multiple keywords in your content allows you to create relevant, authentic content that helps to establish your brand as an authority in your industry.
