When creating content for your website, keywords are crucial in ensuring that they bring the appropriate traffic to your website. We pick out primary keywords that resonate with the audience and have the potential to bring organic traffic.
The same applies to secondary keywords that are as equally important as the primary keyword. In this article, we’ll learn about leveraging these keywords in your content.
- What are Secondary Keywords?
- Why are Secondary Keywords Important?
- 5 Ways to Find Secondary Keywords For Your Content
- Best Practices to Make Use of Secondary Keywords
- In Conclusion
- Related Reads
What are Secondary Keywords?
Secondary keywords are related to the primary keywords and complement them when creating a webpage. These keywords could be sub-topics, synonyms, and long-tail variations of the primary keywords.
These keywords are usually included in the page’s sub-headings and overall context. This helps Google understand your page and helps in ranking better in SERP.
This is because, when you add all the related keywords, it shows Google that you possess an in-depth knowledge of the subject and are not just focused on the single keyword for rankings.
Why are Secondary Keywords Important?
- When secondary keywords are used in your content, the content creator will have the opportunity to cover different aspects of the same topic and try to rank for them. This also helps in supporting the content that you publish.
- Once your content is published and indexed, you will find that your page has the potential to rank for hundreds of keywords and not just for the primary keyword that you targeted.
- Since more keywords can rank, it significantly improves the traffic to your page.
- Secondary keywords help in adding more context to your content which helps the search engines to sort out the user’s search intent and rank faster on SERP.
5 Ways to Find Secondary Keywords For Your Content
1. Google Auto-Complete Suggestions
When you use Google Search, you’ll find that as you start typing your search query, Google will suggest some phrases and keywords based on the most popular queries and phrases. Write these down.
This is a good place to start with researching your secondary keywords. These queries are what people are searching for. This will help you in building keywords that have the potential to bring in more traffic.
Try typing your primary keywords and see if the suggestion fits your context. This will give you a good start for your secondary keywords.
2. Try Synonyms and Acronyms of Primary Keywords
Similar to how we leveraged auto suggestions for secondary keywords, we can also use synonyms and acronyms of the primary keywords.
This is because most search engines understand the synonyms and acronyms of the primary keywords and show results that consider them.
3. Check the “People Also Ask” Section
After you search on Google, you will find the related queries at the bottom of the search results page. These terms are good candidates for secondary keywords.
Look for patterns that might appear in the “People Also Ask” section for your keywords, and consider using those in your content. And, of course, stay mindful of using only the relevant suggestions to your content.
4. Check Competitor Pages
One of the best ways to find secondary keywords is to check out your competitors or competing pages for your primary keywords.
To get a list of all the keywords your competitors are ranking for, try using keyword research tools like Ahrefs and Semrush. These tools will give you the related keywords and their rankings, making it easier to shortlist secondary keywords.
5. Curate Content For Your Audience
When you plan your keywords, also think about the search intent of your target audience. This can only happen once you strongly understand your audience as you understand and build a customer profile.
Focus on keywords that appeal to your target audience. What are you selling? What are your services? What are the customers most likely to search for? What phrases and terms might they lean towards when searching for your products and services?
Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner can help you with finding secondary keywords that the customers are most likely to use.
Best Practices to Make Use of Secondary Keywords
You must follow certain guidelines when using secondary keywords to help your content stand out and increase traffic.
- Avoid keyword stuffing in your content. This makes the content look unnatural, and visitors will immediately see that you’re spamming them. Predictably, this will lead to users leaving your web page.
- Ensure that you choose 5 secondary keywords for your content at most. This is to make sure that you do not engage in keyword stuffing and keep the flow of your content seem natural.
- Whenever possible, try to overlap your primary and secondary keywords. This makes it easier for your content to sound natural. For example, Secondary keywords such as “link building agency” and “white label link building” can be used as “white hat link building agency.”
- Include internal links to strengthen your primary and secondary keywords in the content. This will provide a signal to the search engines that these links are important for SEO.
- Try to use your secondary keywords in H2 tags at least once in the content to strengthen their usage.
In Conclusion
Keywords play a huge role in the presentation of your online content. They help in rankings, bring organic traffic, and give context to the web page. While secondary keywords are often ignored, leveraging them will help you gain an edge over your competitors and drive the appropriate audience to boost your revenue.
Related Reads
What Are Crawler Directives? 6 Steps To Create A Crawl-Friendly Website
Understanding Website Crawlability and Indexability for SEO 2022
How to Drive Traffic to Your Website (12 SECRETS)
