How To Choose Keywords For Your Next Blog Post
Posted on November 30, 2007
Filed Under Search Engine Optimization |
Why is learning how to choose keywords so important? If you are like most bloggers, a at least some of your website traffic will arrive via a search engine. Would you like to get more traffic from search engines? We all would and the way to go about it is to optimize our web pages for these search engines. But before launching a Search Engine Optimization campaign, the first thing you will need to learn is how to choose keywords. Choosing keywords forms the basis of any on-page search engine optimization strategy. This article offers some useful tips on how to choose keywords.
What Are Keywords?
In a nutshell, keywords are what describe your web page. Keywords are how search engines index and catalog your web page. The algorithms the search engines use will attempt to pick out the key words and phases used on your page in an attempt categorize your content, so that when someone performs a search they can display relevant results.
Put another way, keywords are what a prospective reader will use to find your website. It’s the word or phrase they will type into a search engine when they are looking for something. It’s important to keep this in mind when choosing keywords.
Why Choosing Keywords Is So Important?
Think of keywords as the basis of a free advertising campaign. If you choose keywords well and optimize your web page to target the correct keywords, you can expect search engines to send a fair amount of traffic your way - all well targeted and completely free.
How Would You Search For Your Site?
Spend some time thinking about what keywords or phrases people would use to look for your site. What would you enter into a search engine if you were looking for the type of content your site contains. Ask friends and family how they would look for it.
Once you have a few ideas, you might like to expand your list using a keyword suggestion tool. Wordtracker has a Free Keyword Suggestion Tool. You simply enter your keyword, and wordtracker will return a list of up to 100 related keywords or phrases along with an estimate of their daily search volume.
The Google Adwords website has another keyword tool. The tool is designed to help Adwords advertisers plan their campaigns, but can also be of use when choosing keywords. The tool will provide keyword suggestions and average monthly search volume for each of these keywords.
Be Specific…
When choosing keywords, you are really looking for a specific phrase - the more specific the better. For example, while canon digital camera is better than just digital camera, an even better keyword phrase might be canon digital camera lenses. There are 2 main benefits in choosing keyword phrases which are very specific:
- You are likely to get better targeted traffic
- There is likely to be less competition in the search engine rankings
Assuming your page really is about canon digital camera lenses, then the traffic delivered by a search engine for the search canon digital camera lenses is much more likely to be interested in your content than those who were searching for canon digital camera. If you are selling something on or through your page, you will get a much higher conversion ration with better targeted traffic.
If you are more specific when choosing keywords, there will far less competition. Continuing on from our digital camera example, we can see the principle illustrated below.
As you can see, the number of pages you will be competing with decreases dramatically as you increase the specificity of your keywords.
But Not Too Specific.
However, the more specific you make your keywords, the less potential search traffic you can expect. While the competition for particular keywords decreases as you become more more specific, so does the number of people searching using those keywords. Taking this to the extreme, gaining the number one search ranking for the key phase siberian croquet tournaments would not be difficult. But the number of people searching using those keywords in a year could be counted without taking your shoes off.
What If You Get Stuck?
If all else fails, look at what keywords other bloggers in your niche are using. Look at where they rank in the search results for various keyword combinations. How competitive are those keywords? Take some of these combinations and enter them into the keyword tools described above. This should give you some ideas.
But Don’t Forget Your Content.
Researching what keywords to use in your next post is very important if you want to rank well in the search engines. But even more important is your content. Don’t skew the focus of your article just to rank well in search engines. If your content is not well written, on-topic and interesting, your visitors aren’t going to hang around. Even worse - the next time they see your website returned in their search results, they wont bother to visit at all. Google almost always offers plenty of alternatives.
Keep up to date with the latest articles at Monetize Your Blog. Subscribe via rss for free.
Related Articles
- Marhgil Macuha Marhgil Macuha wants to help you make money blogging. Marhgil Macuha is running a mini-seo contest and is giving away $150 dollors in prizes. All you need to do to make money blogging is write a pos...
- Successful Blogging: 6 Steps To Create Your Blog Plan For 2008 With the New Year fast approaching, it's time to start thinking about what you want from your blog in the year ahead. A logical time boundary like a new year is a great time start something new. You...
- SEO - Backlink Anchor Text Optimization SEO & Anchor Text Optimization. One of the things I learned about in Marhgil Macuha's recent mini-SEO competition is the importance of backlinks and the backlink anchor text in search engine optim...
- Digital Point Keyword Tracker If you like to dabble in a little amateur SEO (Search Engine Optimization) then the Keyword Tracker tool from Digital Point is very good. Keyword Tracker is a free tool which allows you to track sear...
- Get the Latest News with Google Alerts Are you looking for something to blog about? Do you need to know the latest news in your niche so you can keep your blog at the cutting edge? Google Alerts is a great way to keep up to date by havin...
- Free Advertising with Palkey I don't know exactly what Palkey is, but they claim to offer free online advertising. Palkey looks like a search engine but I think it only contains websites submitted by members. When I went to the...
Comments
12 Responses to “How To Choose Keywords For Your Next Blog Post”
Leave a Reply
-
-
Sponsors
For cheaper house contents insurance visit Your House Insurance
How To Choose Keywords For Your Next Blog Post…
Are you looking for a front page listing in the search engine results for your niche? You will need to learn hoe to choose keywords.
Choosing keywords forms the basis of any on-page search engine optimization strategy. It’s worth spending the time r…
I’ve been using the excuse that keywords “aren’t that important” for too long. Thanks for pushing me in the direction that I need to get going.
Some very good tips on picking keywords. I’m jealous though that you’re probably going to rank number 1 for siberian croquet tournaments. I might have to write a post to compete for that traffic.
I just checked and I am now the proud owner of the number one Search Engine Ranking for siberian croquet tournaments. I just need to sit back and wait for the traffic to roll in … unless How2Blogger can knock me off top spot!
How To Choose Keywords For Your Next Blog Post…
Are you looking for a front page listing in the search engine results for your niche? You will need to learn hoe to choose keywords.
Choosing keywords forms the basis of any on-page search engine optimization strategy. It’s worth spending the time …
I too am discovering this. We should really do the keyword selection finding before we setup a blog so that the site as a whole gets known for some keywords besides each post being more targetted towards specific keywords. At least this is what my research is showing.
I’m so slow, I used to think keywords were this strange technical programming thing the way they were talked about. Now I understand better it’s more about popular words that will get people to find you in a search. I try to do this a bit now but I try not to think too much about it since it can make a title seem robotic. Thanks for the info.
[…] your blog. And for this search engine optimization strategy, you don’t have to worry about how to choose keywords - Marhgil has provided […]
[…] Are the keywords you’re targeting too competitive? Maybe you need to revise your keyword strategy. […]
Well written post apt and to the point. I landed here through Entrecard, but I have the habit of scanning through each blog I visit because I expect visitors to read mine too. I must say your post all had apt headings relevant to the topic then I saw why. This post. Plenty to learn here.
[…] Having a plan when you are blogging is very important. I’ve already written about planning for your blog over the longer term, but you also need to decide what you will be writing in the days (or weeks if possible) ahead. Plan out your next 5 to 10 blog posts in one sitting. You will find the ideas flow better. You wont be scratching around on a daily basis looking for the topic for your next post. […]
[…] in where you rank in search results. And anchor text links will tell the search engines what keywords you should rank […]