Beginner Blogger’s Guide to Searching SEO Keywords
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In the world of blogging, you’ve got to have traffic. And while social media dominates the quick game, search engines rule consistant relyable traffic. Social media is a great place to get people to your blog quickly but it’s like a flash in the pan, it comes and goes quickly. But search engines like Google bring the long sustainable traffic which is why it is so important to optimize each of your blog posts for search engines to make sure your posts rank high on the search pages through seo keywords.
How To Conduct an SEO Keywords Search For Free:
Keyword research tools can be really expensive but there is a good free option. KWFinder has a free keyword search option that allows you 5 free searches a day when you register for an account. So all you have to do is put in an email and password and you get 5 free searches every 24 hours.
If you don’t want to sign up for an account, they allow 2 free searches a day but the account is free and you get 3 more searches so why not?
1. Search for Longtail Keywords.
A long tail keyword is a keyword phrase that contains at least 3 words, and when searching for keywords you want to rank for, look for keywords containing 3-5 words. You want to use longtail keywords as opposed to short one or two-word keyword phrases because you have a higher chance of ranking high on a longtail keyword than a short keyword.
When you type in your SEO keywords into KWFinder, it will pull up a list of similar keywords/keyword phrases. Look for the keyword phrases of 3-5 words.
2. Look at The Keyword Difficulty.
When you search your SEO keywords into KWfinder one element you want to look at is the keyword difficulty or KD. This shows how difficult it will be to rank high for that keyword.
Anything over 50 is pretty difficult to rank for, optimally you’re looking for a KD under 30.
3. Look at the search volume.
In addition to the KD, you also want to look at the search volume. This is how often people are typing that keyword phrase into Google every month. You are looking for search high search volume, low KD. A keyword or keyword phrase may have a low KD but if it also has a low search volume you won’t get very many eyes on your content. On the flip side a keyword or keyword phrase may have a very high search volume but if it has a high KD your post will most likely get lost in the ump-teenth page of Google, also driving you zero traffic.
How to optimize your blog post for your SEO Keywords
1. Add your SEO Keywords into your SEO plugin for that post.
Once you have found a longtail keyword of 3-5 words with a low KD and high search volume, it’s time to optimize your blog post to rank for that specific keyword phrase.
- Download a good SEO plugin like the Yoast SEO plugin.
- Add your keyword into the focus keyword section in your blog post edit page. (Click add new post > scroll to the bottom of the editor page until you see the Yoast SEO section.)
- Add a meta description that includes your keywords. This is the little snippet that Google will display.
2. Add Your SEO Keywords in your post.
Once you have your SEO keywords into your SEO plugin, it’s time to optimize your post for that keyword phrase.
Add your keywords to:
- Your post title
- Post URL
- First paragraph of post
- In H2 headers
- Image alt texts
- and as much throughout the post that seems natural.
Basically, you want to use your keywords as much as possible in your post but you also don’t want it to sound weird or unnatural to your readers. So if your keyword is, stay at home mom jobs use that phrase as much through your post without using stay at home mom jobs in every sentence. Remember, make it about your reader first!
Done!
That is how you can use SEO keywords to optimize each of your blog posts for search engines. Remember SEO is the slow game but it’s the consistant relyable game too!
The Comments
Kelsey
Thank you for these tips! They really help, as well as your third episode in your podcast: 8 Surefire Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Brand New Blog.
I just started following you, but I look forward to learning more tips on how to grow my blog: http://www.mnmilitarywife.com