So you've been reading our blog lately, and realized that content marketing is a valuable component to your financial web marketing strategy. But even more important is to have a fresh and interesting blog to improve your SEO (search engine optimization) rankings. But what's the next steps in optimizing your blog to rank high in search engine results? Finding the right keywords to target in your content.

Today we're going to be looking at the difference between traditional and long-tail keywords, and how you can choose keywords to optimize in your content.

Traditional Keywords

Traditional keywords are the search terms that are inputted into Google (or any other search engine) that searchers use to describe what they’re looking for.

An example of a traditional keyword would be - advisor

However studies have shown that the average number of search words a person puts into google has drastically increased to 6 - 8 words. So focusing on traditional keywords alone isn't enough.

Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are very targeted search phrase that contains at least three words. Long tail keywords are what searchers usually search for.

Here’s an example - financial advisors in Yaletown, Vancouver

Having strategically used long-tail keywords in your website and content will allow for more traffic to find you, and for better qualified traffic to find you.

Tools to Find Your Targeted Keywords

Google AdWords Tool allows you to understand what words searchers are using. For instance with this tool you can input a large keyword, such as advisor and see the most popular searches using that word. This information is helpful because you can fill the niche from the popular searches, tailoring your content for the audience that is already out there, in a sense looking for you!

Google Analytics, on the other hand, shows you the ways in which people, through organic searches, find you website. Sometimes people will look past the first or second page or results, and thats what will bring them to you. However, more often than not, people will stick to the first page of results. By looking at these search results, you can begin to create content or optimize pages based on these searches.

By using these two tools, you can create a list of the long-tail keywords you want to target. By having your long-tail keywords in mind when you create content, you can begin to naturally integrate these words into your posts. Be wary of stuffing your posts with too many of the same keyword. Google is very smart, much more clever than I could ever understand. Somehow the new algorithm thing that google uses to rank websites recognizes when posts are overstuffed with keywords, and in turn ranks the website lower because of it.