Keywords are no longer the kings of content marketing they once were, but they’re still important. Google still uses keywords to help understand whether your content is relevant for a searcher. And since the vast majority of people seeking goods and services start with the search engines, home improvement companies can’t afford to get keywords wrong.

Here are three common mistakes you might be making when choosing keywords for your blog posts, landing pages, and other website content:

1. Going Too Big

Keywords are not a go-big-or-go-home proposition. But businesses that do their own keyword research tend to take this approach. They pick the keywords with the highest number of searches because if more people are looking, that means more traffic and conversions, right?

Not necessarily. A keyword with 100,000 searches may be too broad to do a great deal of good.

Consider the keyword “window.” It has between 100,000 and 1 million average monthly searches. That’s a lot of people, so why not target that keyword to get some of those people on your page?

Because you don’t know what the intent might be. People could search “window” for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with using your services—or even to do with actual windows.

Compare that to keywords such as “when to replace windows” and “cost of new windows.” These phrases have average monthly search volumes that are much lower (up to around 10K), but the people entering them are more likely to be looking for window services.

2. Not Paying Attention to Traffic

At the same time, traffic is important. If you’re a window fashion business with a new sheer curtain décor line in Monroe, Louisiana, you might think a keyword such as “sheer curtain window fashions in Monroe” would be a great keyword. But if it’s getting less than 10 searches a month, it’s not going to drive enough traffic to your page to make it worth targeting specifically.

3. Only Targeting a Single Keyword at a Time

The good news is that you don’t need to target a single keyword at a time. You should be categorizing your keywords so you can target a few at a time on a single page—that enhances the performance of your content by casting a slightly wider net.

Groups of keywords should center on user intent. That way, you can be sure the content you’re creating answers user intent no matter which keyword was used. For example, the following keywords have similar user intent—the people using them are looking for information on window costs and may be looking to make a purchase in the near future:

• Cost of new windows
• Repair vs. replacement window costs
• New window financing

You could write content that addresses all of these keywords and still serve the intent of people using each one.