The foundation of SEO is determining what terms, or “keywords,” your target customers are searching for. Start with an initial brainstorm based on what you already know. If you sell tile, you might go with “ceramic tile,” “porcelain tile,” “floor tile,” and “wall tile,” for example. And then use a keyword research tool to get a list of common search queries related to your inputs.

As part of your keyword research, make sure to pull a variety of “long-tail keywords,” typically made up of three or more words, from the list of recommendations. “How to install vinyl plank flooring” is one such example for a flooring company. These keywords make up the vast majority of searches on Google² and are typically easier to rank for.

Once you’ve identified the best keywords for your business, based on relevance to your products/services, it’s time to add them to your website. The best places for these keywords are the titles, descriptions, headings and content, image titles and alt text, and URLs of your most-visited pages, including your category pages and product pages.³

Blogs help you target more long-tail keywords and cover those topics in greater detail than you could on the more “transactional” sections of your website, making it easier to answer the different types of questions people are asking on search engines. Businesses with blogs have 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages — both of which are confirmed ranking factors — and 55% more visitors.⁴