You’ve been working on great content, linking up your social media, and including photos and videos. Now what? Time to tweak your site with some simple keyword research.
Find the right keywords for your blog posts
The Google Keyword Tool, originally created for ad campaign strategy, serves as a free and easy way to search for the best keywords for your blog post. Give your blog improved search engine ranking by first doing a quick search.
Improve SEO with Keywords Search Terms
How do you choose the best keywords to use? Begin with terms you want to use in your blog post. Include short phrases, using different variations to see what your search generates.
Don’t be surprised to find that the terms you were considering do not show the best results. For example, if you were considering writing about cat memes, you would quickly figure out that the popular search terms center around pictures, pics, and captions.
Turns out not everyone knows what a meme is.
Your Keyword Choices Might Change
By playing around with the various options, you learn more about your keyword selection. By clicking “Only show ideas closely related to my search terms,” your results will greatly differ. Try both ways to see the best results.
When trying a “cat memes” keyword search, the search needs to be broad for any results. For the term “cat pictures,” the search must be narrowed to eliminate irrelevant keyword results.
For the “Sorted by” option, select “Competition” and then click on the arrow in the Competition column to sort from low to high. Look for low competition results with high monthly search results. Concentrate on the numbers in the Local Monthly Searches column.
Clicking on a keyword idea will give you further options, including “Exclude term” or “Show more like this,” depending on its relevance. For example, the “can i has cheezburger” result, which turns out to be a website URL, might not be at the top of my keyword choice list for a cat memes blog. (But not to fear, there’s even an iTunes mobile app for this handy-dandy resource.)
The things you learn while doing a Google keywords search are not to be scoffed upon.
Remember to Use Your Chosen Keywords Selectively
Once you have your keywords, plug them into your blog post title, headline, and text. Add some tags using the variations that showed high monthly search numbers with low competition. Don’t over do it. You aren’t writing for search engines. It’s the quality that counts.
You can create a Google AdWords account using your Gmail or other Google account information. You are not required to pay for or begin an ad campaign. This eliminates the need to enter captcha information for each search.
Once you sign in, check to be sure you are looking under the “Keyword ideas” tab and not “Ad group ideas.” It’s easy to miss.
With a little practice, you will become a keyword-tool-searching fanatic.