Whenever you see a website ranking right there majestically at the top of the SERP, you can rest assured knowing that it took a lot of work to make that happen. And when we say a lot, we mean it takes an ongoing and monumental targeted effort, which is the heart of SEO.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing web pages and their content to be easily discoverable by users searching for terms relevant to your website. This includes optimizing a website’s technical configuration, content quality, and relevance, and link popularity to make it easier for search engine indexing software to find, scan, and index a site. The better the site is optimized, the higher it is ranked.

While the concept of SEO is relatively straightforward, it is also vast, and the execution is complex. For the sake of this article, we are going to talk about the basics of building a digital marketing strategy and begin at the beginning, with keywords.

Why? Because it is the heart and soul of your digital marketing. The first five organic search results account for around 68 percent of all the clicks. Getting your keyword strategy right is the difference between being competitive and being left behind. It is that important.

Billions of searches are conducted online every single day. Searchers use phrases containing keywords that comprise the search query. People tend to use the term “keywords” to mean both search queries and actual keywords, but they are not quite the same thing.

Keywords matter because they:

• Are the foundation of your SEO campaign.
• Tell the search engines what the page is about.
• Connect the right audience to your site or ad.
• Help segment your audience.
• Ensure an effective ad spend.
• Help direct searcher actions.

So how can you find keywords for your SEO and PPC campaigns?

First, define your product, services, audience, and goals. That sounds simple, but do not neglect this step. For example, do you want residential or commercial clients? If you are a manufacturer, are you B2B, and are you targeting particular industries? When you narrow down the people you’re targeting, you’ll also be narrowing down certain group-specific keywords. From this, make a list of relevant topics concerning your security business to use to help find the most beneficial keywords.

Next, conduct keyword research. Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines to use for search engine optimization (SEO) or general marketing. Keyword research can uncover queries to target, the popularity of these queries, their ranking difficulty, and more.

We recommend SEO tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, Ubersuggest, Google Keyword Planner, and Keywords Everywhere to start your keyword research.

Once you start your research, consider three things: relevance, authority, and volume. Google ranks content for relevance or how well it meets the searcher’s needs. That means you need to wrap great content around those keywords. The better the content, the more authority you earn. Lastly, consider the search volume for your particular keywords. Keywords with higher volume will be most competitive, while raking for low-volume keywords is like opening a business in a ghost town.

There is also value in considering semantic SEO in your keyword strategy as well. Semantic SEO is the discipline of technical SEO that focuses on identifying query intent and answering all questions users might have around that query, factoring in related keywords.

We have only just discussed keyword basics, which are necessary to understand as you begin your digital marketing strategy. However, we do not want to oversimplify the topic. According to the Search Engine Journal, 53 percent of trackable website traffic comes from organic traffic. Yet, Ahrefs notes that almost 91 percent of pages on the internet do not get organic traffic. What does that mean for you?

Getting keywords right means you can grab a lot of attention away from the biggest competitors with even a bare-bones budget. SEO is something no security industry business can afford to ignore.