Choosing good keywords for your website is an important step if you want to optimize your search engine ranking and attract targeted visitors. There are several factors to keep in mind when it comes to choosing good keywords, including the competition level and the search volume of your keyword. Choosing a keyword that is low in competition is often a good idea, and optimizing for variation of compound words can also help your SEO.
Relevance
Choosing the right keywords is crucial to attracting and retaining a targeted audience. The right keyword will not only drive more traffic to your website, it will also help you rank better in search engines. But, what should you be looking for?
First, you should use a good tool to figure out what your potential customers are looking for. In particular, you should pay attention to long tail keywords, which are combinations of three or more words. These may not be as competitive as shorter tail keywords, but they will yield more targeted traffic.
Another trick is to research your competitors. You should do this by reading their content and visiting their websites. Look at the meta tags on their pages, including their keywords. This will give you a more thorough understanding of what they’re targeting.
Search volume
Search volume is one of the most important metrics in keyword research. Knowing your keyword’s search volume will help you evaluate your SEO strategy. Using this information, you can assess the competitiveness of your keywords, as well as determine your product strategy.
The term “search volume” refers to the number of times a keyword is searched for in a specific time period. The term can also be used to measure the traffic-driving potential of a keyword.
However, a higher search volume does not always indicate a higher traffic potential. Besides, different industries will often produce varying results. If you are selling an instrument repair service, you may expect lower search volumes than if you are selling Christmas tree ornaments.
Keyword search volume is useful when assessing your overall SEO strategy, but it should not be your only metric. In fact, there are certain situations where it would make sense to ignore it.
Low competition
One of the best ways to increase traffic to your website is to use low competition keywords, especially with local SEO. However, it’s not that easy to find such keywords. This is why you need to do your homework. There are many tools that can help you find the perfect low competition keyword for your site.
There are two main tools you can use to do your research. First is the Google Search Console, which is free. It provides an accurate snapshot of the keywords your website ranks for on the popular search engine.
The other tool you may want to consider is the Semrush Keyword Tool. It’s not free, but it can find the right keywords quicker. And you can check out a handful of competitors at once.
Avoiding homonyms
Many search engines attempt to resolve the problem of homonyms, a kind of word that has more than one meaning. This is especially true when it comes to choosing a keyword. But while the semantic activation of homonyms is lower than polysemes, their representation in the mental lexicon is not necessarily the same. Several theoretical models have been proposed to understand how homonyms are processed. However, most of them lack considerations of the varying degrees of semantic similarity and frequency of use of different meanings.
One model, the Settling Dynamics Account, proposes that contextually appropriate meanings will increase over time while inappropriate ones will decrease. The theory also argues that context-specific meanings will be paired with more powerful inhibitory effects. These effects are believed to have a limiting effect on the processing speed of homonyms and polysemes. Another model, the Connectionist Model, suggests that homonyms are processed in a blend state at the semantic layer of the brain. For instance, the ambiguous homonym may activate the appropriate meaning, the inappropriate one, or both.