Ep 044-Keyword Basics
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Welcome to SEO Day Studio with your hosts, the Findability Queen Denise Millet, and the entrepreneur Whisper Kim White. This is a space to hear the questions that fellow entrepreneurs have about SEO and get them answered. So many discussions involving techie topics like SEO are loaded with jargon and unnecessary complexity.
So much so that anyone outside the tech industry has difficulty getting to the real meeting inside the information. Denise believes that every entrepreneur can benefit from search engines. Once they hear how they work in a clear and straightforward way. She's on a mission to help entrepreneurs get the content and they spend hours creating included in search engines.
So when their customers search online, they're findable because she believes if they can't find you, they can't do business with you. So stay tuned. The fun starts now.
Welcome to the SEO Day Podcast Studio. I am the official mailbag keeper around here, Kim White, and I am joined by the lovely hostess with the mostess, the SEO day Queen herself, Denise, Millet.
Denise, I'm so glad to be with you today.
I am so appreciative of you being here with me every week. You have no idea. It makes us so much more fun when we do this together. Thank you.
Fun and serious results. How's that?
Absolutely.
So, you know, I want to just quickly frame something, Denise, that I feel like we need to address for those sending in their questions.
I dove into the mailbag and I pulled out, you know, some questions for this week, but sometimes. When we get a letter sent that's longer than the five questions, we will get to those other questions on a different podcast, but we, I just go through and choose the top five so that. We can keep the podcast episode, episode short and implementable, so this particular person anonymously wanted to remain anonymous, which is fine around here.
Ask more questions than the five. But I want to assure them when they hear their questions, we'll still get to those other ones, just not today.
That's right. That's right. And we want Tuesday to be your SEO day. So we want you to listen to this very short podcast every Tuesday and implement a few things in that space of time and get some things done so that you can feel like you're moving forward.
That's right. Well, question number one is a brilliant one right out of the gate. What is a keyword?
Yes. A keyword is the words. Your customer, client, or follower is going to enter or speak into a search engine to find something they're looking for. And those are the words.
Those key words are the ones that you're gonna use in your content so you can make that connection with them. That's what a key word is.
Love that answer. So question number two is, how do I find my keywords?
Great question because everybody's keywords are different. It's based on who you want to work with, what, where they are in their life, what their kind of language is, what their gender is, how old they are, because, you know, language changes depending on how old you are or young you are.
And also, What your service or your product is, because some industries, some products and services have many different names. Mm-hmm. And some have very specific names. So I think the way that I find keywords is I sit down and think about who I want to talk to on the other side of the keyboard, who is sitting there.
That is the person that I would work best with. Try to brainstorm what I think their language might be, and it's trial and error. It's a long game. It's not something you find overnight, but I think that's the best way to find keywords is to think it through as if you were sitting in the other chair.
Great answer. Question number three. If I choose a keyword, do I use it everywhere to get searched to show my pages?
Ooh, no. Let's put it this way. There was a uh, well. Search is no longer just matching the words you put in to find exact matches that are out there in the catalog. It does that, but it also now knows that.
Taxes is the same as accounting. It's the same as the IRS is the same as, so it has all these connections to whatever word you put in, and it's gonna serve you up a whole plate full of things, right? So you don't have to be repetitive. To get credit for using that word to be more valuable to the search engines anymore.
They don't do it that way. And if you do it that way, you're actually at risk because that used to be called keyword stuffing where you put them everywhere and multiply and repeat them and repeat them and repeat them, and that. That's ancient tactics, so you don't want to do it 'cause it can actually get you in trouble where they won't show your website anymore.
So you just want to use natural language, make it valuable to your person. Use the keywords or use synonyms for them in the right places, but don't go overboard.
Let's head over to a word from our sponsor today.
This episode is brought to you by the findability Queen Denise Millet. Visit her YouTube channel youtube.com/at findability queen for her collection of short videos, answering questions about findability and SEO for entrepreneurs every day.
Well, welcome back to the studio, and we're here talking keywords today with the findability queen herself. So Denise, question number four is a keyword only one word
for our purposes. No. What we are looking for as business owners and content creators is a phrase, a word or a word with descriptors or a phrase or a sentence or a question.
That is our keywords, the things we think are people are going to put in, and the more specific you are. The more chance that they're going to get your content. Did I answer that well enough?
So, one thing I did want to say that it used to be way back when, that it was thought that three words was what most searches were being done. But more recently it's shown that 70% of searches are done with four or more words. So people are getting more specific, they're getting more comfortable, and they're using voice search a lot more.
You don't want to know how long my voice searches are.
I don't like typing.
Question number five, and our final question today are the most popular keywords, the best ones to use.
I am gonna say no because that means you're fighting a lot of competition. If you use those easy keywords that are like, Nike sneakers, right?
Like those things, there are so many people selling those things. So to get your listing to show up, it'll probably be in competing with thousands of other people. Whereas if you use a phrase or a question, specific question, or a sentence that speaks more to your people, that gives more descriptors, where it's four or more words, you are gonna speak to a smaller subset of people, and there aren't gonna be as many people using that, those keywords.
So there's, there is a study out there that said 95% of keywords are searched for less than 10 times a month. On this one, on SEM rush. So if you have a very specific keyword, you're not competing with as many people. There may not be as many people looking for it, but they're gonna know what they want more if they're very descriptive.
So I think we do better as entrepreneurs by using very specific key.
Well, thank you so much, Denise, for answering these questions today. We're gonna close the mailbag for today. We will jump back in next week. You did a great job of making it clear about keywords today, and I think that you helped clarify a lot around SEO for.
Entrepreneurs and business owners alike.
Well, thanks Kim. Thanks again for joining this with me. And I want to help everybody with their keywords. So I've created a guide called Quickly Find Your Perfect Keywords, the Simple and Easy Guide to Being Findable. There's a link in the show notes where you can get your free copy today, and it'll help you along as you're building your keyword library.
Right? And thanks so much for joining us, and I can't wait to see you again next time.
Thank you for joining Denise and Kim in the SEO Day studio for today's discussion. If you would like one of your SEO questions answered in the future episode, head on over to denise Millet.com/questions to let us know. The link is also in the show notes. We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode of the SEO Day podcast.
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