What Is Keyword Optimization?

Keyword optimization (also known as keyword research is the act of researching, analyzing and selecting the best keywords to target to drive qualified traffic from search engines to your website.

Keyword search optimization is a critical step in initial stages of search engine marketing, for both paid and organic search. If you do a bad job at selecting your target keywords, all your subsequent efforts will be in vain. So it’s vital to get keyword optimization right.

But optimizing keywords isn’t something you do ONLY at the outset of a search marketing campaign. Ongoing keyword optimization is necessary to keep uncovering new keyword opportunities and to expand your reach into various keyword verticals. So keyword optimization isn’t a set it and forget it process. By continuously performing keyword analysis and expanding your database of keywords, your site traffic, leads and sales will continue to grow.The goal of keyword optimization is to ensure that chosen keywords are effective for driving the right traffic to your site and ranking your site high enough that the right traffic can find it easily.

The keywords should make it clear to search engine algorithms what your content is about and which search queries should yield it as a top result.

Keyword optimization may also be an ongoing process for some content. As the usage of search terms evolves and other articles and content appear on the scene, the combination of keywords that optimized your search status before can change accordingly. You may need to use different keywords than you did before.