Why SEO Keywords Aren’t The Holy Grail of Ranking in Google (+What To Do Instead)

IMPORTANCE OF KEYWORDS IN SEO

One of the biggest mistakes we’ve discovered after implementing SEO for years and years, is how much emphasis business owners place on keywords without any regard for the other critical elements of this marketing channel.

To grow your traffic and sales using this channel to a level that is congruent with your target revenue, it’s imperative to not lose sight of the big picture and how each SEO element works together to drive up your position in Google and deliver you those life-changing results (more sales for less work and cost).

When considering SEO implementation within their business, many business owners will first of all flippantly pick keywords that they believe will attract their ideal audience. Unfortunately, selecting keywords particularly when you’re at the beginning of your business journey requires more strategy.

Factors like keyword volume, the type of keyword and the search intent (the reason a user makes a search) all need to be considered in keyword selection otherwise it’s very likely you’ll fail to rank, let alone be able to compete with a brand who is well established in the marketplace (and in Google).

Furthermore, even if you were to add keywords to your website correctly, there is a crucial step that you need to take to ensure your position is elevated in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). That crucial step is Backlinks.

WHAT DRIVES YOUR POSITION HIGHER IN SEARCH ENGINES

Backlinks are what drive your position up in search engines like Google. If you aren’t implementing them, it is very unlikely that you will see movement in your ranking for your chosen keywords.

Backlinks are links from other websites to yours. They are trust factors from Google. The more links you have from well established sites or highly visited sites like the media, the more likely your position will move towards first place.

There is absolutely no point adding your keywords to your website if you aren’t going to implement backlinks.

It is imperative to put time and effort into gaining these backlinks if you want to start scoring traffic from Google.

The benefit: your dream buyers finding you for free with very little ongoing maintenance required on your side.

We usually recommend that if you have a well established site, then you should start by getting backlinks and then going back and implementing the other parts of SEO. That way you are building up your online domain authority in the background with Google whilst getting the other work done.

N.B. Backlinks build your domain authority. More on this below.

THREE MAIN SEO COMPONENTS

Collectively, there are three main components that make up SEO. Each component works together to boost your ranking in Google.

Remember: search engines want to deliver the best possible result for a user’s search query. To do this, it has ranking factors that it uses to determine whether your website is worthy of position one for your chosen keywords.

To help you prove yourself to Google so that they trust you enough to give you their coveted first position, there are certain signals that you need to send. To make it extremely simple for you to achieve, we have broken these signals down into our 3-Step Signature SEO Framework so that you can start growing your traffic (and sales) consistently and sustainably.

WEBSITE SET UP

Step one is getting your website set up right technically. Even if you’re a complete technophobe, it’s not as difficult as you may imagine.

Crawlability

Firstly, you need to ensure that Google can find you and index you in their big library so they can match you with your dream buyers the moment they make a search (position one gets approximately 30% of all Google visits).

Mobile Responsive

Then, you need to make sure your website renders well on mobile devices. Google ranks you based on your mobile site now as most people access the internet via their phones.

Speed

Finally, you need to make sure your website loads in under three seconds. Slow websites encourage people to bounce out, so get you ranked down by the Google powers to be.

CONTENT AND KEYWORD

Once you’ve set up your website to impress Google, next it’s time to create quality content for humans and for Google. Your content includes all the information users can see and consume on a website page. This includes:

• The words, graphics and video content that should be relevant, engaging and up-to-date.
• Finding, selecting and adding the keywords your dream buyers are searching to find you in all the right places of your website. You need to ensure you pick the right type of keywords, with the right search intent and volume you can compete with.
• Linking one page of your website to another to make it easier for users to move through your website and of course stay longer. 

BUILDING LINKS THAT BOOST

Lastly, as mentioned above, backlinks are a critical step that so many brands fail to implement and wonder why they don’t see results from their SEO efforts. Make this step a priority.

The way you know if you can beat a competitor in the search results for the same keyword if all other things are equal, is your domain authority. 

Domain authority is a score developed by Moz to determine how trustworthy you are to Google. You need your score to be higher than your competition in Google for the keyword you are going after.

The score is determined by the number of quality sites you have linking from another site to yours, reinforcing the importance of this step. You can find your (and your competitors domain authority score using Semrush. They offer a free seven day trial. Head to Domain Overview on the left-hand side, add your URL up top and hit search. The straight under the search bar, it will tell you your authority score.

GETTING YOUR SEO DONE ONCE AND FOR ALL

Implementing SEO isn’t as challenging as you may have previously thought. You just need the roadmap to get it done. Once it’s implemented, you should see a steady flow of traffic and sales to your website with very little maintenance required. Best of all, you won't have to actively go out looking for them. They'll come to you.

If you are looking for a little extra support to hold your hand while you do your Search Engine Optimisation, the doors to SEO Made Easy—our signature SEO program following this exact 3-Step Framework will be be opening shortly.

In this program we provide all the tutorials, templates and technical support you need to be able to reach more people, drive traffic to your website and make more sales with SEO—all without spending a cent or having to constantly show up on social media. Find out more here.