Keywords

Keywords

Keywords

It feels like when it comes to blogging or anything to do with your website, you hear the importance of keywords. This blog post isn’t going to be an in-depth explanation of keywords. Instead, it is going to be a how-to guide to help you choose your blog post keywords.

I love guiding you through complex topics in an easy way. It is a strength of mine so we are going to break down some common questions about keywords and then we will talk about how to choose the keywords that you will use in your blog posts.

QUESTIONS ABOUT KEYWORDS ANSWERED

When I started blogging, I knew nothing about keywords or anything about blogging. I just was writing to write and that was how I got started. Throughout my 7+ years of blogging, I have learned along the way. This is why I help women start their blogs because I know how frustrating and confusing blogging can be.

Let’s break down some questions that I hear about keywords.

What is a keyword?

Keywords are words or phrases that you use in your content (we are focusing on blog posts) to help the search engines tell what your content is about. This blog post will have a keyword focus of blog post keywords.

These keywords allow you to find relevant information when you type those words into a search engine.

What is the benefit of using keywords?

I laugh whenever I hear people tell me that they don’t read blogs. Why do I laugh? Because people read blogs even when they don’t realize that they are reading blogs. This is the benefit of using keywords in your blog posts.

When you go to Google or to any search engine and you type something in, the information that shows up is relevant to what you typed in. That means that those articles that you are reading are in someone’s blog.

When you use keywords, you are ensuring that you are reaching your target audience who is searching for your content.

How else can you use keywords to your advantage?

When you go to research a keyword, other relevant keywords will pop up. This is a great advantage because you can see what others are searching for. This helps with other content ideas but it also helps give you ways that you can say the same thing without repeating the same word or phrase over and over again.

Search engines have gotten really smart and really good at detecting when articles are keyword stuffing. What does that mean?

That is when you just stuff a specific keyword into your article so that you can rank for that specific keyword. It doesn’t work anymore and it used to be the way to rank fast on search engines. Luckily, that isn’t the case anymore and you now have to provide information that people are searching for and not just keyword stuff.

Where do you use keywords?

Since this blog post is talking about keywords in blog posts, that is what we are going to cover. There are different places that are important to use your keywords.

1. Title of your blog post. Using a targeted keyword in the title is important. It helps to tell your readers what the blog post is about before they even click on it.
2. Headlines in your blog post. Breaking down your blog post into sections with headlines is a great way to break up that wall of text. Plus each headline is going to tell your readers what a specific section of your blog post is about.
3. Throughout the body of the blog post. You want to make sure that you use your keywords throughout the body of the blog post that you are writing.
4. URL of your blog post. This is great for search engines. You want to make sure the keyword that you are targeting is in the URL of that specific blog post.
5. Alternate text on graphics. Search engines can’t read graphics, they read text. So placing a keyword or a keyword phrase in the alternate text on your graphics is a great way to boost the graphics that you create.
6. Name of your graphic. If you haven’t noticed before, when you create a graphic in Canva, you get to rename it. Use the keyword that you are focusing on for that blog post to help.

So now that we have these questions answered, let’s dive into how to choose the keywords for your specific blog post.

HOW TO MAP OUT YOUR BLOG POST KEYWORDS

You are creating a blog post so having a plan is going to help make writing your blog post that much easier. Here are a few ways to get crystal clear on the keywords that you want to use.

What is the outcome that you want your readers to walk away with?

What are you teaching your readers in this blog post?

When you are beginning to map out your blog post, you want to start with the end in mind. These questions help you focus on what you are teaching your readers and then you can start to put all of the other pieces together.

With the end in mind, you can now go to a keyword search tool and start to look up keywords that are relevant to what you are teaching in that specific blog post. I love using Ubersuggest by Neil Patel. Another one that I use is Keyword Chef. There are many other ones that you can use as well but these are the two that I normally stick with.

You type in the topic of your blog post and see what pops up. You will see relevant keywords that you may be able to use.

When I am creating a blog post, I stick with one main keyword that I want to focus on. That doesn’t mean that is all I am using throughout the blog post. That just gives me my focus. From there, I figure out different ways to say the same thing differently.

A way to also help you with this is by going to Google. Type in what you want to blog about and you will see that there is a section called People Also Ask. This can help you to see what is relevant to the topic that you are wanting to write about.

This is where using my Blog Post Creation Map can really help you. There is a place for keyword focus. There is also room to add headlines and more. That means that you can take all of the information that you have collected through your search engine searches and your keyword searches and create a blog post that will help to answer the questions of your readers.

Once you know what your keyword focus is going to be, you are going to brainstorm all the ways that your ideal readers will say it. You are going to focus on long-tail keywords as well as short-tail keywords.

An important piece to remember is WHO you are talking to. For example, I am talking to beginner bloggers. That doesn’t mean that I am using blogging jargon unless I explain it. I need to break down what I talk about in a different way than if I was talking to more experienced bloggers. So remember who it is you are talking to and that will help with your keyword research.

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