Simple SEO Tips | Don’t Overcomplicate Your Keywords

Confession: I procrastinate from all the urgent pending tasks I have to do, by scouring “Girls in Business” type Facebook pages and giving out free advice. I like to think that I am fully embracing the “make generosity part of your strategy” philosophy, but really, I’m just wasting time!

One cry for help that appears almost daily in these groups, is people who need help with SEO. We all know that search engine optimisation is a complex beast, that "content is king", you should be blogging and linking and updating, but you also need to ensure you are using the keywords that your target market is searching for.



Example one | Keeping it too classy

One poster was selling natural, vegan skincare via her Shopify online store. The ecommerce site was well done, nice images, easy to navigate, she was ticking all the boxes, but a quick SEO report showed that her page titles and meta descriptions were optimised for words like "ecoluxe" and "artisan".

I let her know that these were the words she was using (via private message, not in a public forum - I'm not that guy), and she was quite happy with that...until I explained that I am her target market, and "ecoluxe" and "artisan" are not words that I would use when looking for natural, vegan skincare.

Another poster was selling reusable, eco-friendly nappies via her Shopify online store. Her ecommerce site was functional, colourful and chock-a-block full of content, but she referred to the nappies as "MCN" the whole way through the site. MCN stands for Modern Cloth Nappies...

Again, I am her target market (I know! Who am I? What have I become?) and when I am on my phone at 3am (this is not the recommended solution for insomnia BTW), and I am trying to find a way to not fill the dump with disposable nappies, I am definitely not typing MCN into the search bar.

Even (self-titled) SEO experts don't get it right all of the time. I optimised HEART from HAZEL beautifully...for "super chunky yarn". You better believe I was feeling smug and confident of my keyword capabilities, they site was converting, it was an ecommerce success story...

Then I exhibited at Fieldays and had person after person after person walk into my stand and say "I have been searching everywhere for this giant fat wool!" All these potential customers that I had been missing, because absolutely nowhere on the site had I used the term "giant fat wool".

So what now? Run a quick SEO site check up on your site and see which words and phrases are appearing most often in your site. If you're feeling cheeky, run one for your competitors too, see what they are using on their site. Test out your search terms by typing them into Google and then scrolling to the bottom to see the related search terms - should you be optimising for these instead or also?

Teach yourself how to use Google tools such as AdWords Keyword Planner, or get some professional help from someone who understands your brand and speaks your language. There are plenty of affordable freelancers around who, like me, gave up their office jobs for the luxury of all day PJ wearing and extended meal breaks. No? Just me then?

If you want to chat to someone about your SEO, and how you could optimise your site better (or delegate to someone to do it for you), please get in touch and we can book in a 15 minute chat to discuss your options.