As we have seen time and time again, Blogging is one of the best ways to create unique yet relevant content for your website. In Fact Blog posts are a great way to improve your SEO and help you reach the users who are interested in your offering. A massive part of creating content that helps your website appear in search results is how well you do keyword research for blog posts.
In order to be successful in your keyword and SEO endeavours, it is important make sure that you are truly optimising your website for search engines to return your page on the first results page. Although Google (and other search engines) can keep you guessing with almost constant changes to their algorithms, it is possible with some smart tactics.
Quick Definition of Keyword Research for ‘SEO Content’
Keyword Research a process in which you look for, and analyse different word and search terms that people would use to describe your product or service when using a search engine. Keywords are then strategically included on your website, on product pages, as well as in content (blog posts) to help your page appear higher on the search engine results pages (SERP).
How to do Keyword Research for SEO Focused Blog Posts
There are a few different stages to doing keyword research.
Stage 1: Finding The Right Keywords
Finding keywords is possibly one of the easiest, yet most difficult aspects of keyword research. It is important to understand who your audience is and what they would be searching for. Also understanding your “niche” – or your specialised segment of the market – is vital. By understanding these aspects, you are able to identify keywords and search terms that fall not only into your broader topic, but also the narrower subtopics and recurring themes within your niche.
Keywords within these narrower subtopics and themes tend to be longer in nature and are often called long-tail keywords. However these long-tail keywords (usually around 3 or more words) tend to have lower competition and higher engagement.
If for example you are a stationery company and you are blogging to improve your content and SEO, keywords such as ‘Stationery’ or ‘School supplies’ are obvious and have high levels of competition. Long-tail keywords such as ‘work from home setup’ or ‘office supplies organisation’ may work better to attract the audience you are targeting.
Stage 2: Analyse your Keywords to Match Them With Your Goals
Once you have found a few keywords that work well for your brand and match your target audience’s expected search terms and intent, you need to know if they are going to be any good.
It is important to use tools to help you determine whether the keywords you have selected are going to give you the results you are looking for. You need to consider three different aspects of your keywords:
- Popularity – how many times has this term been searched for
- Difficulty – how difficult it is to appear on the first page of search results
- Relevance – is the keyword relevant to your target audience search intent
By considering these three aspects carefully, and using keyword finder tools that utilise these aspects, you can improve your keywords and your chances to rank on the first SERP.
Stage 3: Using your Keywords in The Right Places
It is important to use your keywords carefully throughout your content and to not ‘stuff keywords’ into your content. In other words, you need to ensure that your blog makes sense and that the keywords you are using make sense in the context of your sentences.
When using keywords in your blog content there are a few strategic places you should be using your keywords to help the Google bots identify what you are writing about:
- Heading & Title
- Subheadings
- Image Alternative descriptions
- Introduction
By using your keywords strategically in these places you can improve your chances of your blog ranking on the first page of search results. Some seem obvious, such as your Heading and Title. If your blog is about Office Organisation Tools your heading should include that term. Additionally you should use subheadings that include synonyms and descriptive words related to your keywords.
Additionally by including your keywords in your introduction, you are making it clear that that is what your content is about.
Finally using Image Alternative Descriptions cleverly, you make your content accessible to those who are not able to view images. And one of the things that cannot view images as images, is Google’s bots.
Conclusion
The process of finding, analysing and using keywords is important for any online business. By cleverly using your keywords in your content you can help your website feature on the first page of search engine results pages. This is likely to help you attract more users to your website and could ultimately help your business grow.
