By using the right keywords, you will get more search engine traffic…
Optimize your website/blog for keywords and you will rank faster…
How many times have you been given advice like this when you were learning SEO?
Probably a lot.
This is because when you optimize your blog for SEO, the first thing you should know is keywords.
I wrote this guide for beginners like you to help you understand the most basic concept of SEO – keywords.
Read: SEO Keyword Research – A Beginner’s Guide
Let’s start with the basics…
If you’ve been blogging for a while, you probably know that 95% of your traffic comes from 5% of your posts. You probably get the most search engine traffic from a few carefully chosen posts.
Have you ever wondered why these posts get so much traffic? Well, the answer is that you must be doing something right.
Right?
The reason is that some of your posts are ranked high on the first page of search engines for keywords that are hotly searched by users.
So here are the key questions to think about:
Who ranks your content?
It’s a machine (algorithm) that looks for certain signals in order to rank content appropriately.
What do I mean when I say the “ranking” of content? In this context, ranking is the order in which web pages appear in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
You can go to the Semrush website and enter your website address to see the keywords you are ranking for.
Here’s an example from one of my popular blogs:
Let's try to understand what's going on in this picture. (Don't worry if you don't understand 100% because this is normal for beginners.)
- Keyword: This is the specific phrase that drives traffic to a specific URL. When doing SEO, this is the phrase we are “targeting”, so we often call it the “target keyword”.
- Rank: This is the rank (i.e. position) of the keyword in a Google search. For example, if it is position 1, it is the first result that Google shows. If it is position 4, it is the fourth. And so on… Your goal should be to have your target keyword ranked on the first page of Google (position 1-10).
- Volume: This tells you roughly how many people were searching for that particular keyword in a particular month. This is very important because even if you think a certain search term will be popular, Google’s data will tell you that this is not the case. In the example above, you can see two similar keywords with quite a big difference in their monthly search volume:
- Free professional email address: 110 searches per month
- Free professional email: 70 searches per month
While we're defining things, let's look at two other important terms:
- Short-tail keywords: Short keywords of 1-3 words.
- Make money online, professional email, lose weight
- Long-tail keywords: More specific keywords, usually three words or longer.
- How to make money from blogging , How to get professional email from Google, How to lose belly fat in 6 weeks
Note: All words and phrases qualify as “keywords” if they have a reasonable amount of searches (search volume) in a month .
Long tail keywords are more profitable because you will get more targeted traffic and your chances of ranking on the first page are higher. For more information, check out this post .
Now, try to understand all the terms mentioned so far.
What is the importance of keywords from an SEO perspective?
Now that you understand the basic concept of keywords, let’s take a deeper look.
When we do "SEO optimization" for a blog post or web page, we can choose to define a target keyword. This keyword is called Meta_keyword.
In 2012, specifying meta keywords was important, but in 2017, it is useless. Search engine algorithms have become smarter; they now automatically detect keywords and automatically rank pages.
Google has made it clear that they don’t take meta keywords into account when choosing keywords, which makes sense because it doesn’t do anyone any good.
For example, for this post, some meta keywords might be: “keyword ideas, SEO, keyword research,” etc.
Now, anyone looking for "keyword ideas" will come to this page, see nothing useful, and leave, increasing my bounce rate. This is bad for me and my users.
So remember, whenever someone tells you that meta keywords are important, always ignore them.
How to Start Keyword Research
Keyword research is the process of finding the right keywords for your posts. This step is important if you want to grow your blog/website in a short time and eventually make money. There are many ways you can find keywords and do keyword research.
Find keywords using Semrush :
This is an online tool that allows you to look up keywords, see which keywords your website ranks for, and allows you to spy on your competitors.
A good idea is to select the top blogs in your niche and add them to Semrush to see what keywords these sites rank for. From here, you simply build unique and high-quality content around those keywords .
This is a paid tool, but you can get a 15-day free trial ($199 value) via this link .
For more information on how to use Semrush, check out:
Use Google Search to find keywords:
You can also use Google search to find target keywords.
Google automatically suggests search queries when you type anything. You can create a list of keywords using this technique and then check the search volume of all these keywords using Semrush or Google’s Keyword Planner.
* Savings
**Other Keyword Tools ** :
- KwFinder : A great tool for finding long-tail keywords in any niche.
Once you have found a profitable keyword, your task is to write an SEO optimized article for the target keyword. You can follow this guide to learn how to target keywords on a specific post.
Keyword density and keyword position
Keyword density is a complex topic.
This Wiki article will give you a clear idea of how keyword density is calculated. Depending on your target keywords (long tail or short tail), try to keep a general percentage for keyword density. When robots crawl your pages, they can determine which specific keywords the page should rank for based on keyword density.
Keyword targeting is important, but avoid “keyword stuffing.” This is the overuse of keywords on any page. This will ultimately hurt your rankings.
Different SEO experts have different opinions on keyword density, but ideally, your main keyword should account for no more than 2% of your article. I try to keep it between 1-1.5%.
In addition to your main keyword, you should also add some related terms, also known as LSI keywords. There is also a free LSI keyword finder tool here .
Remember, you can target multiple keywords in your blog post or page . But I recommend keeping it below three because if your article is high quality, you will also indirectly rank for related long-tail keywords.
So be careful not to “stuff” keywords.
What is the purpose of keyword stuffing?
Overusing keywords will make the Google bot realize that you are "spamming" by stuffing unnecessary keywords into your post. Google will think that you are trying to cheat the system. Google will penalize this behavior.
Therefore, be wise in choosing the number of keywords you use for SEO. Especially since the Google Panda update (2011), any SEO manipulation that doesn’t look natural will work against your site.
Meta title, meta description, and headings:
Now that you have a perfect target keyword and are writing a great article around it, try using that keyword as part of the article title as well. By default, this title will also be the title that appears in search engines (i.e. the “meta title”).
You can also write a description that users will see when they view your site in a search engine (i.e. a "meta description"). Adding a relevant meta description will also give search engine bots a deeper understanding of your page/post. I recommend that you use your keywords in the meta description as well.
Note: You can use an SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO to write meta titles and meta descriptions.
Write SEO-friendly articles using H2 and H3 tags (the default title in WordPress is H1). However, don’t overuse title tags, as keyword-stuffed titles and too many title tags can lead to poor rankings. Nowadays, there are content optimization tools that use AI and machine learning to help you write SEO-friendly content.
Random SEO Tip: Don’t use numbers in your permalinks (e.g. yourdomain.com/4-ways-to-rank-higher-in-google) because in the future, if you want to expand the article by adding additional bullet points (e.g. 5 Ways to Rank Higher in Google), the permalink will no longer be accurate. For more information on writing SEO optimized posts, go here .
What to do now?
Now that you know that keywords play an important role in SEO, your first task is to find 5-6 profitable keywords for your next article.
You can use Google Keyword Planner, Semrush , or other tools. Here is an updated list of the best keyword research tools .
Write an article based on your target keyword and use any of these Google keyword rank tracker sites to track your keyword position.
That's it. Keep improving, learning, and experimenting!
When you rank on page one, let me know in the comments! Like this article? Don’t forget to share it with your friends!
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