This is an essential part of SEO because the right keywords will make your website stand out to Google and other search engines and also easy to get to by consumers searching for information, products, or services in your niche. The wrong keyword on the other hand could see your website buried deep in the second and subsequent pages of search engines. When a potential consumer searches the web for ‘Vegan Restaurant, Kissimmee’ they are probably looking for it because they want to buy vegan food or eat out in a vegan restaurant.
Assuming you operate such a Restaurant in the same locality but have not effectively optimized your website to appear relevant to the search of the potential consumer, search engines will not easily match your restaurant to that search. Therefore, there is no way that particular consumer will find your business. Instead, that consumer will be directed to one your competitors who have efficiently enhanced their website for SEO.
Keyword research therefore enables you to know what consumers are searching for and to structure your keywords and content to target the consumers you want to find you. There are many ways to research keywords one of which is using Google’s keyword tool. If you specify your niche, this tool will give you information on the number of times certain keywords were searched for by consumers in a month. The best part about this tool is that it will cost you nothing to use except maybe the hours you may need to sift through the information to get relevant data from the tool.
Depending on the type of business you operate, the products or services you offer and your locality, you may need a variety of relevant keywords to enable search engines match your website or business to the many searches conducted by consumers in your various target groups. Once you have come up with the keywords you need, you can focus on using these keywords to optimize the links, words or paths that your potential consumers will use to get navigate your website.
Such links are also quite important to you as they could influence your ranking on search engine results pages. This is because Google and other search engines give more authority to website with backlinks from other relevant and credible websites. If Google sees that you have quality links linking back to a page on your website, that page will be more likely to rank better in the top page of Google compared to other pages( without backlinks) in your website.