Finding Keywords And How To Use Them

If you're starting to get serious about your blog or small business, you might want to delve a little further into SEO. Yes, for someone who isn't all that clued in on digital marketing, SEO looks like one of those scary, complicated abbreviations that only men and women in business suits throw about. In truth, it can be a little difficult to navigate, which is why it's always good to start with the basics. 

SEO simply means Search Engine Optimisation and one of the best ways to ensure search engines are noticing your blog or website, is by targeting specific keywords. Keywords are not the be all and end all however, SEO is a combination of many different things all working together to give a ranking. Understanding your keywords can help you understand where your competition lies and can also help to focus your business to a more niche audience. 

Google Keyword Planner

The best (and free) keyword tool you can use to do a spot of keyword research, is the Google Keyword Planner. The Google Keyword Planner searches for your chosen keywords and lets you know the average monthly searches for those keywords, the competition for those keywords and how much they cost if you were to run a PPC campaign. 

The best way to use the Google Keyword planner is to compile a list of keywords you want to target in you blog post or website page and find the ones with the highest average searches and the lowest competition. 

Keywords or Key Phrases?

If you are a small business or blog starting out with very low domain authority, it's usually better to target phrases rather than keywords. Unless you are targeting a very specific keyword, a key phrase can help to really focus your content and ensure it is reaching the people who are searching specifically for your type of content. For example, instead of targeting 'makeup' you could try and target 'cruelty free makeup' or 'makeup tips for 20 somethings'.

Targeting key phrases can help you to get your foot in the door of SEO. By targeting your niche, you have a better chance of building your sites authority, gaining quality back links and it will eventually allow you to be a competitor for some of the more popular keywords. 

Keyword Rich not 'Keyword Stuffing'

It can be very easy to get carried away with keywords, you want to include a healthy amount of keywords in your content and not 'stuff' your content in hopes of better rankings.

Here's what Google says about 'keyword stuffing':

"Keyword stuffing" refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site's ranking in Google search results. Often these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of context (not as natural prose). Filling pages with keywords or numbers results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site's ranking. 

Examples of keyword stuffing include:

• Lists of phone numbers without substantial added value
• Blocks of text listing cities and states a webpage is trying to rank for
• Repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural, for example:
  We sell custom cigar humidors. Our custom cigar humidors are handmade. If you’re thinking of buying a custom cigar humidor, please contact our custom cigar humidor specialists at custom.cigar.humidors@example.com.

Google does not take kindly to sites that value keywords over content, make sure you are writing around your keywords and not to purely 'promote' your keywords. 

Have you ever given a bit of thought to what your keywords and phrases are? Do you keep them in mind when writing your posts or website copy? Do you think about them when writing your 'about' profiles on your social media profiles?