Understanding Keywords For Your Outdoor Business

Every website is vying for that number one spot on Google Search. It could be the main website, a blog post, or a landing page but each and every one of us wants to be the first thing people see. While search engine optimization (SEO) rules on Google are constantly changing, keywords have stayed fairly consistent. Understanding keywords for your outdoor business can lead to impressive results on Google Search.

Today I want to dive into what keywords are, why you need them, and how to make them work for your outdoor business.

What Are Keywords?

Keywords are how people find you on the internet. Rarely do people type in the exact URL when they are searching on the internet. Most consumers type a word or phrase into Google Search to see what pops up. From there, they might adjust what they’re searching for or immediately click on one of the top links. Or maybe they’ll read the meta description and decide the content is not right for them.

Why Do You Need Keywords?

If you haven’t figured it out already, keywords play a huge role in where you appear in Google Search. Google will crawl each page of a website searching for keywords to help it determine its purpose. This way, when a user searches a keyword, Google can provide the most relevant results.

Keywords not only help search engines understand the purpose of your page but it also helps consumers. If someone clicks on your blog post, they might skim through it to make sure the information provided is relevant.

Lastly, keywords are the foundation of your website. All the content on that page should tie back to your keyword(s). If your website is about hiking boots, it’s important to include “hiking boot” on the page. As well as specific keywords to your brand of hiking boot.

Types Of Keywords

Depending on what people enter in the search bar, they could be using a broad keyword or long-tail keyword. Knowing the difference between these keywords is important to understanding how people search for your business.

Broad Keyword

A broad keyword is exactly what it sounds like. It’s typically one word and it can relate to a number of things. Let’s say a consumer is looking for new hiking boots. If they are just starting their search, they might type in, “Hiking boot.” This is an example of a broad keyword. It is not specific and thousands of companies sell hiking boots so thousands of results will appear.

Consumers that type a broad keyword into Google Search are most likely at the top of the funnel and are just browsing the web. These consumers rarely turn into leads since they are just beginning the sales journey. Broad keywords also have a high search volume so there is a lot of competition for these words.

Long-Tail Keyword

Long-tail keywords are more specific to your company and brand. Let’s use the same hiking boot example. A consumer who uses a long-tail keyword might search for, “comfortable and lightweight hiking boot” or “women’s waterproof hiking boot.”

Unlike broad keywords, long-tail keywords have less competition. Also, consumers using these keywords tend to be further down the sales funnel and are more likely to be a lead or a sale. If they typed in, “women’s brown waterproof hiking boot size 8,” then they are probably ready to make a purchase the second they find the right brand.

Keyword Research

Understanding keywords are very important when writing content for your outdoor business. As I mentioned earlier, keywords are the infrastructure of every blog post or landing page. Let’s use, Sage Lion Media, for our example of keyword research.

Step 1

The first step is brainstorming general topics about your business. Think about what a potential customer would be searching for. Sage Lion Media’s general topics could be, inbound marketing, outdoor marketing agency, content marketing, marketing automation.

Step 2

It’s time to start turning those buckets into keywords. What will your ideal customer be searching for in Google search? As I mentioned earlier, broad keywords can be difficult to rank for so think of specific and long-tail keywords. If we start turning, content marketing, into keywords, our ideal customer would search:

  • Is blogging still relevant? (answer, yes.)
  • Content marketing strategy
  • What is content marketing?
  • What makes the best website content?
  • Is social media content marketing?
  • Blog post ideas

This brain dump can include as many keywords as you like. Another way to come up with more keywords is to check out Google. Type in, content marketing, into the search bar and see what they prefill. Also, scroll to the bottom of the search page after you’ve typed, content marketing, and see the searches related to it.

Step 3

Moz has a great keyword research tool that will help you narrow down your list. It’s also free! You can narrow down your list of keywords using these tools as they rank the keywords against the competition. Moz will provide suggestions, how difficult it is to rank for, and more.

Finished!

Now that you’ve narrowed down your list, you can start creating content. Don’t go overboard on landing pages, blog posts, and other digital media with keywords. You still want to create quality content so use the keywords wisely.

Every quarter or so, we like to go back to the keywords we chose for our clients to see if they’re still relevant. We also want to see if there are better keywords to help us rank higher in Google. This is something we recommend you do as well. So save this post on your desktop so you can come back to our simple, 3-step keyword research guide.