The Importance of a Keyword Strategy
A well-planned keyword strategy should be a major consideration for any business looking to build their brand online and increase traffic, awareness, enquiries, and sales.
Good use of keywords underpins digital marketing success. However, planning and implementing a keyword strategy is something that is too often overlooked or done badly! Business owners and marketing departments spend lots of money and vast amounts of time on all sorts of digital marketing and social media activity. They do this because they know it can generate good results. The surprising thing is, that a lot of them will be wasting time and money, by failing to incorporate a well thought out and well-planned keyword strategy!
Integrating Strategy into Digital Development
We believe that having a good keyword strategy should be one of the first things that is looked at, before embarking on digital marketing activity. Ideally, the keyword strategy should be looked at in detail at three different periods of digital development:
- Prior to website development.
- As a fundamental element of the overall digital marketing strategy.
- For each of the primary digital marketing channels—i.e., PPC, SEO, social media, video, blogging, etc.
To take it a step further, keyword planning should be an ongoing activity. For example, the individual social media channels being used are likely to all need bespoke keyword (hashtag) planning to be done on a monthly basis, alongside the main strategy, due to things such as seasonality and special events. Also, the website should always be an ongoing work in progress as far as keywords are concerned.
The Need for Specialist Expertise
Keyword planning is an area where there should really be specialist people dedicated to the job, but a lot of the time it would appear that this is not the case. In SMEs, this is probably generally due to a lack of knowledge, time, resources, and similar factors. With bigger companies, it is most likely to be because the role of a keyword strategist is thought to sit as part and parcel of other digital marketing, social media, or perhaps most frequently, "SEO" positions.
Good keyword research and planning is, however, a specialist area and it requires experience, knowledge, and expertise to be done well. It should never be assumed that the SEO department are experts at keyword research, or that they are undertaking this job well, as this may not be the case! For example, if the SEO department is small and the employees are more technically orientated, the time given to keyword planning could be minimal. In addition, they’ll be unlikely to be approaching it with a marketer’s mindset, which can be a fatal flaw in terms of traffic flow and conversion rates.
The Consequences of Poor Planning
There are various reasons for companies not employing keyword specialists, but one thing is for sure: if keyword research and keyword strategy work is not being done well, then much of the time and money that is being poured into digital development and cross-channel digital activity will be like pouring water into a bucket that has holes in the bottom!
This is surely not something any business owner or head of marketing would voluntarily choose to do! We think that it’s because many business owners and people in senior-level marketing roles do not realise the importance of keywords and/or they think that their teams have this area covered, when in fact they often don’t!
Taking Action
We are firm believers that good use of keywords is one of the most important factors leading to digital marketing success. In our opinion, a keyword strategy is a vital part of good brand planning and if you can get this right, then you have a far higher chance of generating good results from digital activity.
Our first blog in our new series will be entitled 12 reasons keywords are key, where we outline the importance of good keyword use as part of your overall brand planning strategy.
To find out more about the keyword planning services we offer, please contact us.
