Many things have changed in the world of search engine optimization over the past 15 years. Even when search engines were relatively simple dynamics, there were a few common concepts that helped sites be found and indexed. Proper link structure has always been important. Another important factor throughout the entire history of the internet is keywords. While much more refined in terms of the algorithms that find them, keywords remain important elements in the creation of websites, blogs and brands. Many people spend copious amounts of time trying to determine how best to select keywords. Today, we’ll discuss the basics of selecting the proper keywords and groups to target when building your next ad campaign, search engine optimization effort or social media plan.

Understanding Keyword Groupings

It’s important to understand that a variety of keywords and phrases relate to one another in many ways. Your blog or website may be designed to cover one specific topic at first, but further investigation into relevant keywords may reveal a wide web of relevant keywords that are connected to one another. This can provide bloggers and webmasters with additional ideas for content creation. Furthermore, tapping into these new keyword possibilities can make it easier to rank for the original keywords targeted, depending on who you ask. Pinging search engines with just a couple of keywords – without understanding how potentially dozens more connect and are relevant to those – can leave a lot of potential untapped.

Investigating Trending Topics

Social media is an excellent source of new ideas and inspiration. It can also be a great place through which to find new keyword possibilities. Targeting a variety of keywords on social media through trending topics can help promote visibility for social media-based brands in many different ways. It can also be used to drum up new ideas for website content. Once created, webmasters and bloggers can target these keywords through SEO efforts and through hashtags on social media. This creates a two-pronged effect in which visibility is maximized on search engines and on social media. Regardless of the type of content being created or the medium through which it is being distributed, the ability to use trending topics to mine new keywords is one that must be consistently considered in order to maximize content marketing and creation efforts.

Assessing Difficulty Levels

Not all keywords have an equal amount of competition. In today’s highly-competitive world, it is likely that nearly every main keyword considered will have someone pinging search engines in the pursuit of ranking well within it. Not all search-related keywords have comparable numbers of people targeting them, though, which is why it is very important to dig through the data in order to find the best combination of potential keywords that fit your specific niche(s). Long-tail keywords in particular have become increasingly popular over the past few years due to this phenomenon: with all of the two and three-word keywords and phrases being very contested, many blogs and websites now focus on four, five, six and even seven-word key phrases when targeting search engines.