Creating a blog with great content is only half the battle. Without readers, a blog just lingers, and you put too much time and effort into your blog to let it linger. What good is our subject matter if nobody reads it? You want your blog to be found - and the easiest way is to show off your blog through the best marketing device available. Google search is a powerful tool, it has the ability to bring huge amounts of curious readers targeted for your blog. How? When a potential reader performs a search through Google, they first must tell it what they wish to find. Google refers to this as a keyword (or keyphrase). Having your site optimized for the best possible blog keywords can mean the difference between success and failure.
Do They Really Matter
Of course they matter! If you’re blog hasn’t been optimized for keywords, then chances are, you’re target audience will never find you. By taking a disciplined approach to blog content creation (rather than a random approach), you can easily increase your ranking in the search engines, ensuring that those who want to find you, do find you.
What Keywords Are In Your Blog?
Determining the best keywords to target with your blog is simple. Google has created a useful tool for this very job. The AdWords Keyword Tool will analyze the content on your site and report back. With this information you can find out just which common phrases you are competing for. Not all of the results returned may be an ideal match for your blog, but once you have a few good words, expand them, re-arrange them, or find some synonyms to discover new and different variations to target. The following section better explains how to pin point the best keywords to go after.
Tips To Make Your Blog Keywords Work For You
Choose A Descriptive Keyword With Little Competition. The best way to find a good keyword for your site is to stick with the adwords tool. Use the “descriptive words or phrases” functionality to find a few good ideas. Generally, you want the advertiser (and average CPC - or cost per click) to be low while keeping the average search volume high. This means that there will be a lot of people searching these terms, but the competition to get to the top of the search terms is minimal (and possible).
Place Them In Your Title And Heading Tags. Placing your chosen words between the <title>, <h1>, and <h2> tags will give the keywords prominence in your blog (and Google will notice this). The title is especially important, if you can get your phrase in as the first or second word you will notice much better results.
Make Your Blog Keyword Stand Out. Read through the SEO pages at V7N, they explain the importance of highlighting your words through bold or italicized text. I wouldn’t suggest underlining words, as they tend to resemble links - there is nothing more frustrating than clicking on an underlined word when it isn’t actually a link.
The First And Last Paragraph. A good rule of thumb is to always include your chosen phrases at least once in both your introduction and conclusion. This will show Google that you mean business, THIS is what your post is about.
Use Those Tags. Tags are useful! Every chance you get, every social bookmarking site, every directory, anywhere that lets you fill them out - do it!
Don’t Forget The ALT. This is one of the ways that search engines “read” images. When inserting pictures into your blog post, try to incorporate the following format: <img src=”" alt=”your keywords” title=”your keywords“>. Don’t forget that Google image search is also an effective way to bring in potential readers.
Pay Attention To Your Folder And File Names. Always include your main phrases when naming folders, categories, images, etc… Don’t think that these are ignored, they can have a huge impact on your potential placing. When separating a phrase into specific words always use the hyphen (-) as a separator. Google will not separate words that run together, or those that use an underscore (_).
Don’t Stuff Your Articles. Spamming your article with keyphrases is no way to get ahead. Apart from making your article unreadable, there is a good chance Google will penalize you, exactly what you don’t want. With that in mind, stay away from black hat techniques as well. Hiding text, for example, is a sure fire way to get your site banned. While you may see short term results, there is no benefit in the long run.
Get Out There And Rank
Blog keywords are an important part of getting your your website noticed by Google (and all the other search engines for that matter). Don’t underestimate the power they can have over the eventual success of your blog. Getting noticed takes time, it can’t happen overnight. The process of creating a keyword ready blog is a long and rather complex process, but it pays off. A Google recognized keyword can easily create a ten-fold increase in readership. And increased readership is what it’s all about.
Yes, use proper keyword and don’t stuff your article or content with many keywords. Thanks for nice post
Glad you enjoyed it
Hey, great post… Very helpful - thanks for posting!
-Atomic
Jesse, this is good info. Interesting that you advise to target keywords with low advertiser competition; I tend to go for high-competition ones, as these are also likely to attract higher-paying AdSense ads (if that’s your thing). I hear what you’re saying about competition though…
I also wonder how many bloggers generally use this technique for “ordinary” posts - I think most tend to reserve it for niche sites, and rather just write whatever they want in normal blog posts.
I’m glad you pointed that out (about going after low ad competition kewords) - that is the exact reason that I often go after them. I like the low hanging fruit and easy work. Chances are, very few people will be going after these keywords because everyone wants a high paying AdSense. So your competition in Google should be comparatively few.
Once I get those readers, THAT’S when I start going after those competitive keywords. It’s not until you have the reader base (and pagerank) that you can truly be competitive.
That doesn’t mean what I do is right, the best paying, or even the “best” way. I just find it the easiest.
Thanks for your comment!