Keywords are one of the main cornerstones of SEO. Today I want to share with you a very quick and easy keyword research guide (check out my SEO Keywords 101 article for a more in-depth look at keywords and their importance).
Below are 4 simple points that you can follow to get your keyword research up and running in next to no time.
How to do Keyword Research for SEO Quickly
- Create Your Keyword List Use a keyword tool such as Google Keyword Planner to search for keywords with low competition and which have a high search rate. As a rule of thumb you want to be looking at keywords with more that 1000+ searches per month. The Keyword Planner tool us free but if you are okay paying for a premium service then I recommend SEMrush.
- Review Your Keyword Competition Enter your keywords into Google search and see what are the top 5 website that are listed – this is your competition. Click through to their websites and learn from their articles and writing. These people are at the top of the SERP so they know what they are doing – learn from the best. Open their pages and search for your keywords within their posts. See where and how they are using the keywords. Take note of the number of times the keyword appears on the page and also how long the article is. Article length vs keyword count equates to keyword density. Keyword density is important to take note of as we don’t want to be penalised for keyword stuffing.
- Creating Long-tail Keywords Long-tail keywords can be a real powerhouse for your page rankings. Take some of the highly searched keywords you have selected from the first step and turn them into long-tail keywords. For example your main keyword maybe “chocolate cake” which you could turn into “how to bake a chocolate cake” or “what is the best chocolate cake recipe”.
- Putting It All Together You now have a list of long-tail keywords and know how your competition is using them. It’s time to put all this together into your writing. Content is king so writing high quality content is an absolute must for anything you are posting. Check out this article for a guide on how to write a high quality blog post if you need help on creating great content. Use your keywords throughout your article maintaining a keyword density of about 1-2%. Remember don’t overdo it with your keywords or the search engines will see this as keyword stuffing and this won’t be good for your rankings. You should target your long-tail keywords over broader short-tail ones as they tend to have a much higher conversion rate. If you are using WordPress you can make use of the free Yoast SEO plugin for helping with your keyword usage. You can set your keywords in Yoast and it will track their use within your post, informing you of your keyword density.
There you have it, 4 simple steps to doing keyword research for SEO. By using a process such as the one above it will help you become more efficient in keyword selection and writing quality content.
Planning is the key to success.
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”
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Happy Blogging - Mathew