In the digital age, a strong online presence is vital to growing businesses like financial services companies offering bad credit loans. This means search engine optimization (SEO) and keywords play a crucial role in that.
If you don’t have a solid keyword-based SEO strategy, individuals with bad credit looking for financing will probably never know about your services. On the other hand, ranking higher for bad-credit loan keywords can help elevate your business profile and generate more leads by increasing quality traffic to your website.
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How Search Engines Work
Search engine web crawlers gather material from a vast number of web pages and organize it in a search index. When someone enters a word or phrase into the search engine – a keyword – it uses an algorithm to return results from this index.
Also see Top 10 SEO Ranking Factors: How to Increase Google Ranking
The way these search engine results pages (SERPs) are ordered is known as ranking. When deciding how to rank search results, the algorithm looks for:
- Relevancy – content closely related to the search term.
- Authority – content that’s accurate and trustworthy.
- Usefulness – content that provides a good user experience.
So you can’t simply stuff keywords into web pages with little, if any, original content.
Role of Keywords in SEO
Keywords are phrases that define your content and help online searchers find it. They drive free, organic traffic to your website from search engines and website browsers, and the keywords you target determine the kind of traffic you get.
To create content that sends visitors to your website, you need to understand the language they use and the type of content they’re looking for. This calls for keyword research.
How to Research Keywords
Deciding which keywords to use entails getting inside the minds of your target audience to identify the words and phrases they’re entering into search engines.
You can do this by asking your customers about the search terms they used that led them to you and by visiting online forums and other online communities with an interest in the services you offer.
You can then generate and evaluate keyword ideas by using one or more of the many keyword tools available, including Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Moz, and Ahrefs.
These tools will help you find relevant keywords based on your location, industry, and niche (such as bad credit loans within the finance sector). They can also provide valuable data on keyword volume, competition, and trends.
Finally, you need to monitor how your keywords are performing so you can tweak them as necessary to ensure optimal results.
Where to Place Keywords
Important areas to place keywords include:
- Your web address – the URL (uniform resource locator). Example: Badcreditloans.com.
- Title tags and meta descriptions. These tell search engines and visitors what your web pages are about. Title tag example: Loans for Bad Credit. Meta description: Looking for a loan but have a bad credit history? Compare bad credit loans without harming your credit score.
- The headline on your content (H1 tag). Example: How to Improve Your Credit Score Fast.
- Subheads (H2 tags). What is a Credit Score? How Long Does It Take to Improve a Credit Score?
- Body of your content – at the beginning and end and sparingly in between. Ways to improve your credit score. Benefits of improving your credit score.
- Alt tags – text that appears when an image fails to load. Man checking credit score.
What Is Keyword Intent?
If you’re trying to rank higher for bad-credit loan keywords, you need to know about keyword intent, also known as user intent or search intent. Keyword intent refers to the reason people enter a specific term into a search engine. Search engines like Google look for keywords in content that match search queries, and they prioritize content that gives value to people.
The main types of search intent are:
- Informational. The user wants to know something like “What is a credit score?”
- Navigational. The user is looking for a specific business website or web page but doesn’t know the web address. “Chase Bank branch Clovis California.”
- Transactional – the user is interested in buying a service or product. “Get a bad-credit loan online.”
Why Ranking on Google is Key
Google dominates online search, processing more than 8.5 billion searches a day, with 63% of Google’s U.S. organic search traffic originating from mobile devices.
Various studies have underscored the importance of keywords that rank highly on Google. They show that:
- At least 71% of web traffic goes to sites on the first page of Google SERPs (WordStream). Other sources put this figure even higher.
- More than 25% of searchers click the first Google organic search result (Chitika).
- 84% use Google at least three times a day (Oberlo).
- Nearly 93% of global web traffic comes from Google Search, Google Images, and Google Maps. (SparkToro)
- 46% of product searches start on Google (Oberlo).
- The average Google user won’t go farther than the first five listings (Advanced Web Rankings).
- Fewer than 1% of Google searchers click on results from the second page of search results. (Backlinko).
Keywords in Search Engine Marketing
Unlike SEO, search engine marketing (SEM) entails buying adverts on search engines to drive traffic to your website. This is typically done on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis, with Google Ads, formerly Google AdWords, a major force.
With good keywords, pay-per-click advertising makes it possible for a business to appear immediately on the first page of search results. Return on investment (ROI) objectives can also be tracked.
Combining SEO with SEM
Many marketers advocate combining SEO with SEM because SEO on its own takes some time to be effective.
Quality bad-credit loan SEO keywords to optimize articles, blog posts, and product/service descriptions can help send your business soaring up search rankings, attracting a larger audience and boosting lead generation. This organic traffic can outperform paid ads and result in leads for years to come.
However, organic SEO is a long-term strategy that may take four to 12 months to reap rewards, according to Google. Meanwhile, SEM with paid ads can produce instant results.
