Every SEO strategy has several key factors that lead to success in ranking on search engines. One of the most important pieces of that strategy is your keywords. 

A keyword best describes the content on your page or blog post and is the search term you want to rank for on a specific page on your website. When a user goes to a search engine to find a specific product, service, or information, they type in the keywords they think best matches their query.

 

Why is keyword tracking important?

When choosing keywords for your SEO strategy, you want to choose the best and most relevant ones for your campaign. Search engines like Google crawl the content on your page when ranking sites on the SERP (search engine results page). Implementation of keywords in your content helps your website rank and when you choose keywords correctly in your content it will help bring in high intent traffic to your website for better conversion rates. As your content changes, you need to be updating your keywords to stay ahead of your competitors. As we often say, SEO is a long-term game.

Remember that when choosing keywords for your site you need to focus on the user. Your keywords need to match your user intent. If they are meaningless to the users coming to your website, they risk hurting your rankings. The better your keywords, the more trust and authority you build online. The more relevant and useful your content is, the more users will visit and stay on your site and interact with your content. 

Keyword tracking will help you not just increase your visibility, but implementing the right keywords can improve your revenue in the long run. With good content and more traffic, you can grab the attention of the right audience and increase your overall sales. Tracking can also help monitor your rankings movement, identify the opportunities for potential keywords, and monitor your competition on search engines. 

If you don’t know a ton about SEO, this can all feel overwhelming and you may be asking yourself where to start. The good news is that there are several great tools available for small businesses everywhere to add to your SEO tool belt. Let’s go over four different options to help you track and make sure your keywords are working.

 

4 Tools you can use for your Keyword Strategy

Google

Google has some great free tools for small businesses to use to help their keyword strategy. Two great options are the Google Search Console and Google Keyword Planner

Google states that “Search Console tools and reports help you measure your site’s Search traffic and performance, fix issues, and make your site shine in Google Search results.” Additionally, the Keyword Planner “helps you research keywords for your Search campaigns. You can use this free tool to discover new keywords related to your business and see estimates of the searches they receive and the cost to target them.” 

Google not only offers tools, but also tips and advice for business owners and webmasters to help them with the do’s and don’ts and best practices of keyword research. This can help you find new keywords that are relevant to your business, product, or service as well as help you avoid keywords that are less relevant.

While this approach may be more hands-on for a business owner and require more research for your SEO campaign, there are still a lot of great options for you to dive into on Google. And since you will want to target keywords on a search engine like Google, it’s in your best interest to consider and apply their advice to your campaign.

SEM Rush

A great all-in-one SEO tool is the SEM Rush toolkit. On their website, they say “One platform. Everything you need to dominate your niche online. Do SEO, content marketing, competitor research, PPC and social media marketing from just one platform.” Its many features are easy for business owners to use and comprehend for tracking keywords for optimization. They are SEO experts and their tool will analyze the data on your website and give you recommendations on SEO, content marketing, and advertising.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is another all-in-one SEO toolset with free learning materials. They state on their website: “With Ahrefs, you don’t have to be an SEO pro to rank higher and get more traffic.” Like any of the tools on this list, it helps to make your keyword planning easier. Many of its users say they prefer Ahrefs because it lets you track keyword rankings and take advantage of other helpful SEO tools. From keyword tagging and categorization, to SERP filter features, it’s one of the most popular tools. They also have different pricing and options available.

Moz

Moz toolset is another great option for business owners. With site audits, rank tracking, backlink analysis, and keyword research, it is “the proven, all-in-one toolset.” Moz’s website states that they “build best-in-class SEO software for every situation, from our all-in-one SEO platform to tools for local SEO, enterprise SERP analytics, and a powerful API.” With the several different packages and options with the Moz toolset, they give you access to their “best-in-class proprietary metrics including Keyword Difficulty, Spam Score, Page Authority, and Domain Authority” which they claim to be the most highly correlated metric with actual Google rankings available today.

 

Boostability Can Help

Keyword research can feel daunting and unknown, but there are great tools available for beginners no matter your budget. For any business owner with a website, keywords are extremely important for your SEO strategy.

Boostability offers a cost-effective method to get your website ranking and bring in conversions. Our dashboard and amazing team of SEO experts can help you choose, implement, and track the right keywords for your campaign. We can also get you ranking on search engines like Google. Get your free website analysis to attract new customers & beat your competitors today and let Boostability help your small business!

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Colton is the former Director of SEO Strategy at Boostability testing and defining the products and processes that make Boostability's customers successful. He was part of Boostability for over 8 years. Colton loves hanging out with his family and gaming. He runs a personal blog over at www.coltonjmiller.com where he discusses gaming, life, and SEO.