Keyword Research for Small Business Explained

Keyword Research for Small Business

Keyword Research for
Small Business Explained

[Small Business Digital Marketing]

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If you are trying to grow your business in the digital world, SEO (search engine optimization) is the key to your success. Keywords are the most vital component of SEO. If your audience is not searching for what you are advertising (i.e., they are not searching for the keywords you use on your site), you will not see business traffic from Google or other search engines. SEO can be challenging if you are new to the online business market or if you are a busy CEO trying to grow your business and manage your online marketing at the same time. The team at MGMT Digital is here to help. Contact us to learn more about our full-service programs.

What Is Keyword Research for Small Businesses?

Keywords are the words or phrases Internet users put into their devices to find the things they want online. But it is important to note that not only users use keywords. Internet search engines such as Google read the content on your site to find keywords. They then rank you for your terms. If you are building a new site or need help finding the best keywords for your product or services, consider contacting a professional like the team at MGMT Digital for assistance.

Keyword research is the process of learning more and understanding the words or phrases your current or potential customers use when searching for products or services online. Then, you must analyze those words and phrases to determine which keywords work best for your site and content. It is essential to ensure your blog, and website content caters to the ideas and information people are searching for; otherwise, you have put a lot of time, effort, and (likely) resources into something that may not help to meet your advertising goals.

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The Importance of Keyword Research for Small Business Growth

Keyword research helps you answer many questions about how effective specific words or phrases will be on your site. For example, how much traffic might I get with this keyword? Or what kind of content should I create to rank with this keyword? Even, are potential customers searching for this keyword?

Keyword research is vital for small business growth and should be at the forefront of any digital marketing campaign. Having a clear understanding of your keywords helps you better understand your brand and what your brand is selling on the digital market. Also, careful keyword research can help you as a business owner or marketing professional better understand where you rank in terms of your keywords.

Another important aspect of keyword research for small businesses is how the process helps businesses understand what people are searching for. Not to be confused with what businesses think people are searching for. If your keywords are targeted in the wrong direction, your site and, inevitably, business traffic will struggle. This is because search engines only rank your website (present your site as part of someone’s search results) if they understand what your business is and what it is selling. Without proper keywords, this is impossible. It is also beneficial to target different keywords on different pages to increase ranking opportunities.

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Initial keyword research is only the first step and not a single point process. Keyword research for small businesses should be consistent and ongoing. It is important to frequently check your keywords to see how you are ranking against your competition and to determine if your keywords are performing as you anticipated. The idea of keyword research can feel daunting. Contact us today if you would like to learn more about how MGMT Digital can help your business reach its digital marketing goals with SEO and keyword research. 

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Existing Content Optimization: Boost Your Blog’s Traffic

existing content optimization

Existing Content Optimization:
Boost Your Blog's Traffic

Consistently producing new content is necessary for a good SEO content marketing strategy. However, as you know, not every content piece is successful. So, do all of your older, unsuccessful blogs just have to sit there and collect dust?

No! Take advantage of your existing content!

Transforming your failed content into gold is possible with the right keyword research and re-optimization. 

What is Content Optimization? A Short Overview

Content optimization ensures that your content reaches as many users as possible. It is the continuous process that helps your blogs become discoverable in your target search engine results pages.

At content optimization’s core is keywords. A blog should be focused on a target keyword and a small set of related keywords. For example, “Do I need rehab?”. This keyword should be in your content, metadata, alt text, and internal links in places where it makes sense.

But remember: Google is smart.

It knows if you are ‘keyword stuffing’, or in other words, fitting in your target keyword anywhere and everywhere you can, even where it doesn’t make sense. Ensure that your blog is first and foremost readable. The user’s experience always comes before optimization.

There are many other aspects of keyword optimization, so let’s dive into how you can apply those to your older blogs and increase your Organic traffic.

How Do I Optimize Older Content?

There are several ways to improve your site via Healthcare content marketing and SEO. However, the first step of optimizing your older blogs is evaluating your posts’ value.

Evaluating Your Content Collection

First, in order to take advantage of low-hanging fruit, identify the content pieces that are ranking on the second or third page. These pieces will be easier to give a quick boost to since they already are ranking for their target keyword.

Next, to make this easier for ourselves, find your longest content pieces.

Your piece of content is far more likely to rank if its word count is over 1,000 words. So, narrow down the longest content pieces that aren’t ranking well so that you don’t have to write additional content.

For example, our blog titled Mental Illness in Today’s Society is ranking on the third page for our target keyword. This blog has a word count of 1,016 words, which is enough length for us to work with without adding to it. Since it was written in 2018, it needs some updating!

existing content optimization

Let’s Get to Optimizing This Existing Content!

To start, let’s focus on target keywords. In some cases your target keyword will be clear right off the bat, like in our previously mentioned example. Other times, your older blogs are targeting the wrong keyword, or are not targeting any keywords at all.

Choosing the Right Keywords to Target

We want to choose a keyword based on (in this order):

  1. The relevance of the keyword to your blog’s topic.
  2. If it is a long-tail keyword, and not too broad in meaning.
  3. How competitive the keyword is
  4. Search volume, how many people search this keyword per month

It is crucial that you choose a keyword that is obtainable. If we were to target the keyword “mental health”, we would have a very low chance of ranking well. This keyword has a very high keyword difficulty, and is much too short-tail.

keyword research for existing content re-optimization

Long-tail keywords, like “mental health in today’s society”, help narrow down your audience to the right users that will have a low bounce rate. In addition, they are much easier to rank for and allow you to target more related keywords. 

Search volume is important, of course, but don’t get stuck on only using high-volume keywords despite their difficulty. Targeting low-volume keywords can increase conversions by bringing in more relevant users, as well as bringing down the difficulty, just like long-tail keywords.

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Existing Content Optimization Techniques

Now that we know what our main keyword is, let’s start optimizing your existing content and targeting that keyword correctly.

Content

The content itself should include its target keyword several times. Do a ‘command F’ search to ensure that your keyword is mentioned. In our example blog, it was only mentioned once, in the H1 heading.

existing content: mental health in today's society

As a result, we added this keyword into the content about 3-4 more times. It is important that the keyword and its related keywords show up at least a couple of times in the headings, especially H2 headings.

Metadata

Next, we move on to metadata. Metadata is the title and description of your page within the search engine results page. Both the meta title and the meta description should include the keyword, as well as a call-to-action. The call-to-action is important because it invites the user to click on the link, and gives them that extra push.

In our case, Google is choosing to not display our meta description. This happens often, and there is not really another choice other than changing your meta description, and optimizing it differently.

optimizing content

We edited our meta description to include our keyword, as well as a call-to-action. A meta title should not be longer than 50 characters, and a meta description should never be longer than 160 characters.

It also always helps when your slug, or the last part of your URL, includes your keyword. Please ensure that you have a redirection in place, however, if you are going to do this step. 

meta data optimizations for existing content

Links

Let’s evaluate links. Our post links out to external sources three times, which is exactly where it should be, given that it is an informational article. Make sure your posts link out to a credible external source at least once.

However, our blog does not have any internal links. Linking to other relevant pages on your site is a great way to boost keyword ranking on your blog, those pages, and increase traffic to those pages.

Images

Finally, let’s take a look at images and the user experience of your blog. Your blog should always have a featured image. Every image has something called ‘alt text’, which is the text that visually imparied users get read to them that describes the image. It is best practice to include alt text, and to try to include your keyword in this alt text. 

It is also important to try to include an additional image or graphic in order to keep the user engaged. SEO for drug rehabs, and all Healthcare centers, is focused on providing peace of mind to the user, and including more images helps provide more visuals and information.

MGMT Digital Can Help with Content Optimization - And Beyond!

Content optimization not only takes skill, but it is extremely time-consuming. We understand that you want to focus on your business, and not worry about implementing existing content optimization techniques. That’s where we come in!

MGMT Digital is a boutique digital marketing agency that is well-experienced and passionate about all things marketing and helping others. While we primarily focus on addiction treatment marketing, our clients span across Healthcare and beyond. Get in touch with us today for a free audit of your website!

How Personal Stories & Video Testimonials Can Increase Your Calls

benefits of customer testimonials

The Benefits of Customer Testimonial Videos & Stories

Over the past five years, the pros at MGMT have found a secret weapon when it comes to immediately increasing calls and admissions for a drug rehab. It’s the personal connection that is missing from many rehab’s websites.

Why Are Testimonials Effective?

We didn’t really have to look far for why a personal connection was so important to the rehab marketing process. In our own recovery, it was another recovering addict who helped us find our path to recovery. With this new knowledge, we create detailed and complex strategies for utilizing personal stories of recovery from both staff and alumni to guide people to get the help they need whenever they are online.

How to Collect Customer Testimonials Videos from Alumni

For drug treatment centers, the alumni of the program who have remained successfully in recovery can assist in contributing to the content needed for marketing the personal stories. When asking alumni for their stories be clear of your intended use. If it is a video or written content, it’s always good to get written consent to use the content in your marketing efforts for your facility.

Once you have received consent, typically we have one of our professional editors go through and edit the content for grammar and spelling errors, especially for self-written submissions. If we are doing something like a video testimonial, typically we would set up a production day, gather all who are participating, and film the testimonials in one shoot. The videos would then be edited by our expert team and prepared for its intended use.

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We Have Content, Now How Do We Use It?

So now that we have our personal story we want to ensure its proper placement online. Sometimes we may use video testimonials in paid advertising efforts including YouTube advertising, and Facebook advertising.

Other pieces of content, such as written submission will be published and shared across all social media platforms encouraging people to read this person’s story of overcoming addiction. We have put together targeted strategies on social media and through natural link building that can increase the traffic to your website and in turn increase the number of phone calls your facility is receiving.

One piece of content can have multiple purposes, but it is important to always have a strategy when promoting a piece like a personal story or video.

Almost 45% of treatment center patients who watched an online video, watched on YouTube, while 36% watched videos on treatment center websites, according to a 2012 Google study on the journey from treatment to recovery. Since that study, traffic from YouTube to treatment center websites has increased by 202% year over year.

How to Keep Growing User-Submitted Content

There are many agencies that will help you create a great video, or put together a collection of stories to be used for promotion and lead generation. But many times that’s all that happens. Here at MGMT we use each piece of content uniquely and monitor the success. We make sure that your videos are marked up with structured data, transcribed, and used as a growing piece of content.

There are many ways that addiction treatment digital marketing influences a person’s decision to get help for addiction. MGMT knows exactly where your audience is and how to reach them, so don’t worry about doing the heavy lifting. We treat each client as if we were their in-house marketing team, without the hassle and expenses.

Contact us today at reachus@mgmtdigital.com or call us at 1-866-248-4857 to learn more about how we can help your rehab increase your census and maximize your potential through behavioral health marketing.