Choose the right keywords for effective SEO

The next step is to complete your initial list with keywords that you

have not spontaneously thought of, then to analyze their interest, their relevance… and your chances of positioning yourself on them in the search engine results pages (SERPs ).

This step consists not only of seeing on which expressions you can optimize your SEO, but also of better understanding the expectations and behavior of Internet users.

A tool allows you to obtain for free the (approximate) volume of requests made monthly on the keywords you have defined in your list: Google Keyword Planner.

If you have a Google AdWords account or if you register now, you can connect to this free tool from Google which allows you to research or find new ideas for keywords, to estimate the results that a list of keywords is able to produce, set bid levels if you want to set up an AdWords campaign…

You just need to enter keywords (or even a whole list) to access search volumes, related terms that you may not have thought of…

Quick tip: If you don’t have enough ideas, copy/paste a competitor’s web page address to see what keywords they’re getting traffic on.

And that’s not all: the tool gives you an idea of ​​the degree of competition of the keyword, calculated according to the advertisers who bid on it.

You can filter by territory, language, etc.

A search on the terms “Pizza Delivery” can, for example, yield the following results:

11,000 = the number of people who type “Pizza Delivery” every month

Estimated level of competition = “low”.

Be careful to interpret the level of competition correctly: “low” means that few people advertise on these terms. Conversely, “strong” competition does not necessarily mean that you cannot aim for the 1st page of Google in the natural results.

Don’t be blinded by vague high-volume searches either: “pizza delivery” has little interest for you if you are not a national brand. “Marseille pizza delivery” will surely be more relevant if you are based there, even if the volume of searches is of course lower.

To take it a step further, it’s time to look at what’s known as the long tail , which is the less competitive search keywords and phrases that are related to your universe.

These words can be used in particular to optimize the pages of your website and when writing your restaurant’s blog.

Understand the long tail and exploit it effectively

A good SEO strategy must go through the analysis and exploitation of the long tail.

It designates all the keywords and expressions which, individually, generate little traffic on your site but which, combined, are likely to represent a major part of the total traffic of your Internet site.

These keywords are used less by Internet users, which generally means that it will be easier for a given website to obtain a good position in search engine results.

In short: the more precise keywords of the long tail often make it possible to rank better and to reach qualified Internet users.
This can be done in particular by optimizing the pages of the site or by writing a blog rich in keywords (SEO internal to the site).

Here is an example of “generic” keywords and related long tail phrase:

• Key word: “restaurant in Nice”
• Long tail: “restaurant in Nice for lunch on the seaside terrace”

Working around the long tail requires understanding the behaviors and habits of your target audience:

• What is he looking for?
• What language does he use?
• What culinary preferences did he adopt?
• Why does he come back to you?

To make it easier for you, there are some great free tools to access those long-tail queries.

For example, if you are a pizzeria located in Rennes, you can start by typing “Rennes pizza”: the tool suggests 304 sets of keywords related to this query, and therefore likely to be searched by Internet users.