The Breakdown: SEO, Keywords, and Bidding Explained

SEO-related content typically assumes a certain level of foundational knowledge…but what if you don’t have that knowledge? Since SEO has been around for some time now, we acknowledge the fact that current guides may seem confusing. You may end up with 15 different tabs open searching for definitions of words and processes when reading these guides. The topic of SEO shouldn’t be restricted to those who were around when it was first introduced, so we created a handy guide for beginners.

Below, we’re going to explain what SEO is, how it works, the importance of keywords, the bidding process, how to find the most valuable keywords, common mistakes that could prevent success, and some quick-fire tips for boosting SEO quickly.

The Basics of SEO

For the longest time, businesses and marketers have been fighting to include keywords in their content because it pushes web pages up the search rankings. Why is this the case? It all comes down to the Google algorithm.

In order to learn what you need to do with content, you need to first understand Google’s motives. It’s easy to get bogged down in detail, statistics, and algorithms. But, ultimately, Google’s main goal is to provide a reliable service for users, or in other words, a service that brings search results that directly answer the user’s questions. Google hopes that we search for something and find the answer in the very first suggestion.

Google has developed an algorithm that allows it to assess the content, quality, and value of every single web page on the internet in order to provide searchers with the most valuable links. It will index words across your website and judge the site against various criteria. Keywords are so important because they essentially tell Google what a web page is all about. If the phrase ‘swimming caps’ comes up five times on one page, Google knows that the page relates to swimming and swimming caps. Therefore, the page is more likely to do well in searches for ‘swimming caps’; this becomes a keyword in the content.

As businesses and marketers, our job is to make our content as simplistic as possible. By using keywords relating to the topic at hand, Google will make no mistake when scanning our websites and categorizing them for search results. The process of improving a website in this regard is, as you’ve probably guessed, called search engine optimization (SEO).

Keywords and Your Blog

Too often, we see businesses question why they need a blog; a blog is important because it allows you to create content relating to topics in your niche and insert keywords. The more content you have, the easier it is to become an authoritative source and credible service in your industry.

Without a blog, you’re relying on web copy to draw the right people towards your website. On the other hand, creating blog posts opens up dozens of potential landing pages for consumers. Each blog post utilizes another keyword and increases your chances of getting into the early pages of search results. Soon enough, you go from ranking for one keyword to a handful of different keywords. As long as they all pertain to your niche, there’s no reason why consumers won’t click on your link. If they enjoy the blog, they’ll stick around and, with any luck, spend their money or subscribe.

Organic vs Paid Search — Improving SEO

Everything we’ve spoken about so far with blog posts falls under the umbrella of organic SEO. Generally speaking, organic SEO is improvements you make to your website in order to climb the rankings naturally. Meanwhile, paid SEO is when you spend money on Google Ads to climb the rankings artificially. There are pros and cons to both, and a good marketing strategy will normally use a combination of the two.

For example, organic SEO allows for long-term success because your link is available to everyone searching a specific keyword. With paid SEO, the focus is more short-term because your link is only at the top of results when paying for the pleasure. With $100, you will only ever get $100 worth of leads.

The Importance of Bidding

On Google search, you may have noticed that there are always sponsored results at the top. Otherwise known as ads, these results reach this level because the company won a bid for this place. Don’t worry, we aren’t talking about extravagant online auctions where you need to be present to win.

When you create an ad campaign with Google, it will ask you to set up a bidding strategy. Essentially, this is the amount of money you’re willing to pay in order to appear in the search results of prospective leads. When a user types in a keyword that you identified in the campaign, your ad will compete with every other brand that chose this keyword for their own campaign. If you win the bid, your ad will appear.

In recent years, we’ve enjoyed the introduction of effective AI tools that take control of this bidding process automatically. When bidding too high, we’re wasting money unnecessarily. When bidding too low, the competition will always win, and our ad will never get exposure. You can control bidding manually, or you can use an AI tool that will consider both the market and your budget to optimize bids. This should reduce the amount you pay for clicks and utilize your budget more effectively.

We want to make two notes here before moving forward:

• Google will also consider the quality of your ad when choosing placement in search results. Winning a bid isn’t necessarily enough if your ad lacks quality and engagement is generally low.
• The success of your ad comes down to a number of different factors including targeting, creatives, message, and more. Even if you are winning bids, you might not get clicks if you’re targeting the wrong audience. With this in mind, you should pay attention to all aspects of the campaign.

Common Mistakes with SEO

1. Forgetting Meta Titles and Descriptions

If you want results, the meta title and description should basically be essential features of your strategy. When pitted against other websites, having a strong meta title and description could be the difference between getting a click and people blatantly ignoring your link.

2. Too Many Keywords

We mentioned earlier that you can rank well for several keywords, but you shouldn’t go crazy. We recommend sticking to a short list of effective keywords; otherwise, you’ll spread yourself too thin and won’t actually rank for any of your keywords.

3. Short Content

When trying to rank on Google, make sure there’s enough physical text for it to be marked as worthwhile. If you have fewer than 200 words, there’s a possibility Google will forgo scoring the content entirely.

Finding Valuable Keywords

You need to structure your website to optimize keywords in order to perform well and get organic traffic on Google, but where do you start? For us, it all begins with the four different types of keywords:

• Generic — Words and phrases that describe your product (like our swimming cap example!).
• Brand — Something related to your brand name.
• Related — These might not apply to the business directly, but they could catch people on the way to your product.
• Competitor — Something related to the brand name of your competitor.

You can perform keyword research using the many tools online and narrow down the list depending on traffic and cost…but this is where many marketers get confused. The best keywords often have a balance between cost and competition. Too much competition and you don’t rank, too little traffic and it’s a waste of resources.

High-quality tools for finding keywords include sites like Think With Google and Ubersuggest.

Boost Your SEO Today

Let’s finish on some quick-fire tips to get your SEO moving in the right direction today.

• Before creating new content, review existing content and make it easier to read. Rather than one block of text, consider subheadings, emojis, images, videos, numbered lists, bullet points, and bold text.
• Spend some time looking through your website with your ‘customer’ hat on; if you can’t do this, get a family member or friend to do it. Have them look for broken links, poor content, structural or navigational issues, and more.
• As enticing as it may be, don’t overdo it and frustrate people with pop-ads and promotional tools. People come to your content to find solutions to their problems, not get frustrated by new problems.
• Wherever possible, improve the page loading speed of your website. Not only will slow loading times affect SEO, but they will also annoy your visitors no end.

Good luck! Hopefully you now have the platform required to build upon with SEO, keywords, and bidding!

BONUS! Free Tool — Trapica Suggest