Like many companies in Hull, yours may be keen to establish the best search engine optimisation in Yorkshire, ensuring that your content is the one people see on page one of the Google rankings or those of other search engines.

Achieving this requires maintaining the best SEO quality possible amid stern competition; while some others may not be very clued up in getting their content seen, others will be very well aware of what they need to do, perhaps because they have sought out the kind of expert help that we offer.

While there are many aspects to SEO, keywords remain the core element. After all, it is by definition the thing people search for. If the keywords your content include do not match what people are looking for, your content won’t appear in the results.

Of course, some keywords will be very obvious and common. If you sell used cars in Hull, for instance, the phrase ‘used cars Hull’ will generate lots of results, meaning you may not make the first page, the vital place to be if your site is likely to be found by those searching. Indeed, the top handful of page one results get most of the clicks.

For this reason, it can help if you find less generic keywords that might still be popular. But rather than try to read the minds of those doing searches when you produce content, it is important to carry out regular research. This can show you not just what the competition is using, but how effective particular keywords are in generating traffic through search engines.

There are various tools out there that can help you find trending keywords, whether they are niche single or short terms – known as short tail keywords – or longer phrases, known as long tail keywords. SEO professionals are familiar with these tools – the likes of SEMRush, Wix, Serpstat and Hubspot to name just four.

As well as showing you which new keywords and phrases to look for and put in new content, they can also show you which ones are obsolete. That is important to know because you can then go back to old content and – most importantly – your static ‘evergreen’ content – and swap out old keywords for new ones.

However, doing this takes time and it can help when you get expert support in to keep checking for changes in these areas. It can also help to have a specialist examine your content to ensure you are using them the right way.

As ever, it is vital not to overdo it; keyword stuffing or spam can have a negative impact on your SEO as the search engine algorithms are set up to punish this. But the good news is that having the most relevant and powerful keywords should help you overcome this temptation anyway, as you can have more confidence in their effectiveness.

Of course, some keywords may remain completely unchanged for a long time, so you don’t need to change for change’s sake. But by continually researching and making updates whenever you need to, you can make sure your keywords make the best possible contribution to your overall SEO ranking.