As a newbie, you need to understand that SEO keywords play a very fundamental role in search engine optimization. This guide will help you develop a strong sense of keyword creation to maximize your SEO strategy. First, let’s define keywords. Keywords are ideas that define what content is all about. In SEO, they are words or phrases website visitors enter into search engines looking for certain information.
A keen blogger will notice that 95% of his blog traffic is coming from 5% of his or her posts. Meaning, they are getting a great amount of search engine traffic from few hand-picked posts. Why is this so? It simply means that they must be doing something right to get that much traffic. The answer lies in the keywords they use in their posts which are highly searched by visitors to be ranked on the first page of the search engine.
The ranking is done by a machine which uses a certain algorithm to rank the content appropriately. Ranking in this context means the order that pages appear in a search engine’s results page (SERP)
Here are a few terms that you should be conversant with to understand the relevance of your keywords for SEO:
• Keyword – Is a specific phrase that drives traffic to a specific URL. In SEO, it is known as a “target keyword”.
• Pos – It’s the keyword ranking or position in Google Search. For example, position 1 means that
Google will display it first on the search engine results page. Therefore try as much as possible
to create a keyword that targets on the first page of Google search(Pos 1-10) to achieve good
results.
• Volume – It gives you a rough estimate of people who searched for a particular keyword in a
given month. It’s important to get the volume since different keywords vary in searches. You
may think that a given SEO keyword will do good, but Google’s data will not concur.
Other useful terms are:
• Short Tail Keywords – This is phrases that have 1-3 words. For example: Traveling destination, Find jobs online, or Keeping fit.
• Long Tail Keywords – These are phrases that have three or more words.
Long tail keywords are more reliable for driving more blog traffic and increase your chances of ranking on the first page of search engines.
Any word or phrase qualifies as a “keyword” if it has a reasonable number of searches per month.
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Importance of Keywords on SEO
Now that you grasp the basics of keywords on your SEO, its time we dive deeper. While trying to optimize your SEO strategy, there is an option to define your target keywords. This option is called Meta keyword. Back in 2012, specifying meta keywords was crucial but not anymore. Nowadays, search engine algorithms are smarter and can auto-detect keywords and rank pages automatically. When selecting keywords, Google doesn’t consider meta keywords since they don’t benefit anyone. For example, for this post, some meta keywords could be: “keyword tips, SEO, keyword research”, and so on. Anyone who thinks meta keywords matter is definitely misleading you and is not worth your attention.
See More: Best Keyword Research Tools for SEO
Starting out with Keyword Research
The process of generating the keywords suited for your post is called keyword research. It shouldn’t be ignored since it determines how fast you will grow as a blogger and how much money you will make. Several ways are used to research for effective keywords. You can find Keywords with:
Keyword Research Plugins
There are various WordPress online keywords search plugins that can help you find keywords, see which keywords your site is ranking for, and spy on your competitors. When using these tools start by picking the top blogs in your niche, add them, and see which effective keywords they are using in their posts. This will give you a head-start ineffective keyword generation.
Use Google Search
Google Search is another method for finding target keywords. When searching using Google search engine it will auto-suggest a search query as you type. Create a list of keywords using this technique and use Google’s Keyword Planner to check the search volume for all these keywords.
Other Keyword Tools
Finding effective keywords is not enough. To test their effectiveness you need to write an SEO-optimized article using your target keywords. Once you have found profitable keywords, your task is to write an SEO-optimized article for your target keywords. You can use other keyword tools to understand how to target keywords on a particular post.
Keyword Density and Placement
Keyword density refers to the number of keywords used in a particular content which is complex to understand but I’ll give you an idea of how it’s calculated. You should always maintain a general percentage of keyword density, depending on your target keywords. When bots crawl your page, they can determine which particular keywords or method helpful to Improve rank for keyword density. As much as keyword targeting is important, try not to stuff them in one location on your content. Overusing keywords may have an adverse effect on your ranking. There is no particular format in keyword placement. Different SEO experts have different ideas on keyword density. Ideally, it shouldn’t be more than 2% of the article. So, stay within 1-1.5%. For effectiveness, accompany your keywords with related terms called LSI keywords. Note that, you can target more than one keyword on a blog post or a page. I recommend less than three to maintain high-quality content. Avoid keyword stuffing.
Keyword Stuffing
Sometimes you may find yourself overusing keywords without your knowledge. This will send alerts to Google bots for “spamming”. Google may penalize you for trying to trick the system. Be cautious when selecting the number of keywords you intend to use for SEO.
Meta Titles, Meta Descriptions, and Headings
You can also increase your ranking by using keywords as part of the title of your content. This, in turn, can also be the title shown in search engines as a meta title. A description of your content can also be written for your users to see when they look at your site in search engines (meta description).
Conclusion
I believe that this post has opened your eyes wider on the relevance of your keywords in SEO optimization. Better keyword ranking leads to better blog traffic. To improve on it, ensure that you do proper keyword research to help you with your SEO strategy. You can take advantage of Keyword research tools that help in coming up with effective keywords.
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Long Tail Pro Review
Best Keyword Research Tools for SEO
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