Do you spend a lot of time working on your on-page SEO and keyword research, however don’t know how to find out if you’re using the right or wrong keywords? Here are three ways that you can measure how well your keywords are working and whether you’ve chosen and are using them correctly.

1. High bounce rate – If you find that you’re bounce rate is high then this can suggest that even though people are searching for your keywords, your content isn’t what they’re searching for therefore not quite targeting the correct keywords. If your bounce rate is high I would suggest making sure that your keywords aren’t too generic and that they’re more specific, also think about what you would search if you wanted someone to find your page.
2. High impressions but low click through rate – The reason why this suggests that you’re using the wrong keywords is because even though you’re showing up on search rankings and a lot of people have seen your title and description, not many are clicking through. In this case make sure that your content is in line with search results and matches the intent of other results with the same keywords.
3. Receiving either a small amount or no organic traffic – If you’re only receiving a small amount of organic traffic it’s probably because you’re not ranking highly enough, or you’re ranking highly but for keywords that aren’t searched often. You can use tools such as the Google Keyword Planner which is free and it tells you how many people are searching for your keyword, as well as how competitive it is.

If you’re not using the right keywords this can be fixed by researching more into the keywords you’re using as well as related keywords that might also be relevant. Here are 5 tips to help your keyword research:

• Search volume – Make sure the search volumes for the keywords are high enough to make the optimization worth it. You might be ranking on the first page of Google for your chosen keyword however you won’t have much success if there aren’t many people searching for it.

• Competition – You can use Google’s Keyword Planner which is free to use to find out if your keywords are going to be hard to rank for because they have a lot of competition, or if they will be slightly easier because the competition is lower. Google’s Keyword Planner ranks competitiveness as high, medium and low so it’s an easy tool to use and understand.

• Use keyword variations – You only want to use your targeted keywords 2-3 times on a page so it’s good to use variations of your keywords to avoid repeating your targeted keywords too many times.

• Analyze competitors keywords – Firstly you need to find out who your competitors are, then what keywords they’re targeting and ranking for. You can use the SEMrush position tracker to analyze your ranking for specific keywords in comparison to your competitors.

• Don’t use keywords where they don’t belong – Make sure the keywords you’re using are relevant, don’t just use keywords because you think you would be able to rank well for them when they’re not related to your content.

If you are interested in our digital marketing services, contact us at 01865 989899 or email hello@cleverbusinesswebsites.co.uk