Quite simply, keywords are just the words that people type into Google or their search engine of choice to find you. One of the best ways to find keywords (besides using the google keyword tool) is to join forums and facebook groups with your ideal clients — take note of the words they use to describe their problems. Those are likely to be excellent keywords for you.
The search engines choose the sites to bring up based on the words that are on the site, in the headlines, attached to images, etc. It used to be that you could get a good search engine ranking just by using keywords. The search engines have gotten more sophisticated, so there is more involved. Still, there is absolutely nothing to lose by making sure that your content is very relevant to your target audience.
Here are five tips for using your keywords in your blog posts:
1. Use keywords in your blog post title.
One of the best ways to incorporate keywords into your blog posts is to use them in your blog post titles. The key is not to go overboard. It is much more important that your title entice people to read your post.
2. Use just one or two keyword phrases in each blog post.
Writing for keywords is much more effective if you choose one or two keywords to focus on in each post. If you write blog posts about your keywords this comes naturally. Trying to use too many keywords at once dilutes the effectiveness and makes your post hard to read.
3. Spread them out.
Try to use your keywords (without keyword stuffing) multiple times in your blog post. For best results, use your keywords within the first 200 characters of your blog post, several times throughout your post, and near the end of the post. Keyword stuffing is going overboard with the keyword use so that it seems unnatural. You should aim for your keywords use to seem natural in the context of your content.
4. Use keywords in and near links
Many SEO experts think that Google and other search engines give more credit for linked text. Again, this is one of those strategies where a little goes a long way. Too many links makes your post hard to read and can have negative SEO consequences.
5. Use keywords to describe images
When you use images in your blog posts, you are usually asked for an alternate description (called an alt tag) for people who can’t see the image. In addition to helping more people access your material, the alt-tags are included in the source code (or html) for the site. Google and other search engines crawl that code and use the alt tags as keywords. I’ve also found that sometimes my images will show up on google image search and bring a few new visitors to my site.
Would you like to learn more about how to maximize the effectiveness of your blog? Check out my new course, Blog Mastery.
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