|SEO| How to choose your keywords intelligently?

When establishing an SEO strategy, we already made the point in the article on SEO that you need to make a keyword choice for your content. It is impossible to start working on your SEO if you don’t create a good keyword base. So, when you are about to launch a service marketplace, producing good content to increase its visibility is one of the essential elements to consider.

What are the different keywords?

The keyword represents the main topic of your content page. When you start writing it, you need to choose a keyword that you will use throughout your writing, so that your text is referenced on it. Your keyword must correspond to the search that a user can make, that is, the few words he could enter on the search bar.

There are different types of keywords:

• Branded keywords, which consists of directly using the name of your brand, product or service. There is very little chance that you will not be first on this keyword knowing that your name is in principle unique.

• Information keywords, i.e. those that are in the form of a question or accompanied by the word “definition”. This type of word allows you to access a more qualified traffic because the person in question will try to find out more about your service or product, which suggests a possible acquisition.

• General keywords, mainly composed of one word, such as in our case “marketplace” for example. The only disadvantage of this type of words is that they are subject to great competition, because all your competitors will also be associated with them.

• The intention keywords, which are characterized by the presence of an action verb in the expression. They are interesting and can bring traffic from qualified customers to your site. The only problem is that they are highly competitive and are used for paid ads, which means that the “normal” results appear much lower on the page.

• Short and long tail keywords, judging on the size of the keywords. Short tail keywords are the best Google queries, those that generate the most traffic. They are called short because they are mainly composed of one or two words and are very general. Regarding the long tail, they generate less traffic but correspond to more precise searches, composed of several words. And since there are more words, it is easier to position yourself in several places. If you are just starting your SEO strategy, this is the type of keyword we recommend.

How to choose the right keywords and establish a successful SEO strategy?

To get an idea of the best keywords to choose and how to implement them, many techniques can be explored.

For example, thanks to a tool such as Semrush, you can see which keywords your competitors are ranking on: you will then know which ones to rank on but also see which ones they are not and where you can try to rank. With these proposals and your basic ideas, it is then possible to create a whole base of keywords that you can keep and use on your different contents. Moreover, once you have chosen them, you can integrate them to Semrush directly via the “Position Tracking” section: you will be able to easily observe your place on the search results for each keyword you have integrated.

However, this is not enough and you need to integrate other steps in your strategy to select the best keywords and manage your project well. Several criteria are to be taken into account to define if a keyword is good or not:

• its difficulty to be referenced, which is generally defined by the volume and popularity of the word used by other sites.

• its traffic, i.e. the volume of searches it generates, which defines the size of the market.

• the search trend on this word, i.e. its popularity and how often people can be led to search it. It is interesting to use Google Trends for this part, which will allow you to analyze more precisely this aspect.

To find the answers to these criteria, you can also use Google Ads and its keyword planning tool, which will allow you to know for each word its search volume and forecasts their performance.

We also advise you to establish a score for each word according to the purchase intention of the volume and the difficulty of positioning on the word. To help you, we can also talk about the “top and bottom of the conversion tunnel”:

• The keywords at the bottom of the tunnel are those that will result in a strong or even immediate purchase intention. This includes words that are very explicit about the product or service you are looking for, in our case “create a marketplace of services” would be one of them.

• The middle of the tunnel is composed of keywords intended to inform before proceeding with a purchase. The potential customer will then try to find out exactly what the service he is looking for and will certainly want to compare the choices offered to him. Words such as “best marketplace creator” will be found.

• The top of the tunnel, which includes all the terms that do not really define a purchase intention. This concerns the keywords that could bring the user to you, but which do not concern you directly. For the marketplaces sector, we could find “selling on the internet” or “how to offer services online”.

If the keywords you have selected among these different typologies are obviously the best in terms of trends, traffic and referencing, then it is smart to select them.

By correctly classifying the keywords you have selected with the tool of your choice, you will be able to choose the best performing words and optimize your SEO in the best possible way. For a good strategy, we advise you to select a maximum of 50 keywords: keep in mind that it is not possible to be on all fronts.

In conclusion, when establishing your SEO strategy, keywords are the first element to consider, as they represent the essence of SEO. However, there are many strategies to improve it and one is not enough: netlinking is also a way to increase your traffic and your position in searches. If you implement all these elements, you should see your SEO improve in no time!