Keywords can make or break your search engine optimization success. To boost traffic to your website, attract the right audience, and increase conversions and sales, finding the right keywords is the key.

Here are 5 helpful tips that will help you choose the right keywords.

Be your own customer

It is very important that you completely understand and know who your target audience is. When creating your initial list of keywords, you have to ‘be your own customer‘ which means you have to think like your customer.

If you are your target customer what do you think you will be searching for on the internet? What specific sentence, words or phrase would you use?

You can also do a quick survey to your family, friends, or your current customers on the words or phrase they use when searching for specific products or services online.

Check your competitors

Get to know your competition so you have a better idea of what keywords they are using that are actually doing well.

Create a list of your top competitors. Go to their website, check their contents and you’ll be able to have a better view of their keywords strategy.

Read their contents and their meta tags as this will give you ideas of the specific keywords they are targeting for.

You don’t necessarily have to copy everything. The reason here is that by checking your competitors, you will broaden your ideas on which keywords you should target.

Get yourself a tool

It is always a smart idea to use a third party tool when searching for keywords. Although gathering initial keywords and checking your competitors can already give you an ample number of keywords to start with, keyword research tools like SEMrush and Google Keyword Tool can give you even more ideas which include data on keyword volume and trends, keyword competition, related keywords and many more.

Use long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are keywords with a combination of three or more words or phrases. Although long-tail keywords have lower search volumes, they actually attract more relevant traffic since long-tail keywords are more specific. They are also less competitive and are easier to rank on.

So, make sure that you use long-tail keywords that specify your business, products, and services.

Apply and monitor results

When you have come up with the list of keywords you want to use, make sure that you use wherever possible; in your website contents, blogs, social media posts, and all digital content you create.

Then, make sure that you monitor the results so you would know which keywords work and which are not.

SEO is an ongoing process. You have to continue improving your efforts to stay relevant so you can continue to boost traffic to your website, attract the right audience, and increase conversions and sales.