Using the right keywords in your blog posts is no doubt an important part of optimizing your blog. This of coarse is something that you must do if you want to get targeted traffic to your blog from search engines like Google.
On the other hand, keyword research can consume a lot of your time if you let it. Although it's definitely important, using the right keywords doesn't have to be such a full-time job.
5 or 10 minutes can be plenty of time to find keywords and keyword phrases that people use to find information related to your blog's topic.
Even though it might be beneficial, spending hours upon hours doing keyword research, can also hurt you too. Think about this, if you spend all of your time finding the search terms that you would like to rank for and then try to randomly place these keywords into a blog post, chances are it's not going to sound very natural.
This is why I always say...
Write for your readers first and everything else second.
Because even if you get search engine traffic from the keywords that you're trying to rank for, your blog posts might not make much sense to the people reading them.
If you're not writing your posts for your readers, they may not be your readers for very long!
Following these 5 easy steps can help you to...
Write For Readers And Rank For Keywords
- Quick Keyword Search - I like to use the Google Keyword Search Tool. I type in the most common words for my blog's topic to get good keyword ideas. (example: blogging, become a blogger, start a blog) The keyword tool will then return various phrases that are related to the keywords you had typed in.
- Find The Popular Search Terms - I will then try to find search terms that a good amount of people are searching for. However, I don't choose the keywords with the highest search volumes, those keywords would be too hard to rank for at this point.
- Write Down A Few Keyword Phrases - The next thing I do is write down a few of the keyword phrases that I found. I only choose a few, because any more than that would be too much of an overload.
- Make A Mental Note - After that, I make a mental note of the keywords that I had written down, but I don't sit and obsess over them. I want to remember them, but I'm not trying to memorize each one.
- Write Blog Posts - Now when I write my blog posts I will have those keyword phrases swimming around in the back of my mind. Basically, I will try to use the keyword phrases in whatever I am writing, but if the phrase doesn't work with what I am trying to say, I won't use it.
Doing these 5 simple things can help make the words flow out just a bit more naturally. It's like adding a new phrase to your vocabulary.
I would rather have my blog posts sound more like a conversation that I might have with one of my friends.
If you're sitting there staring at a list of keywords and trying to write a post around those keywords, it will sound less like a conversation and more like directions on a package! I think that we've all been guilty of doing this from time to time, I know that I have.
When I read a blog post that someone else has written, it has much more of an effect on me when it sounds like they are speaking to me, rather than to an entire group.
Do you use keyword research at all?
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