Clearly there is no better way to achieve success on the Internet than gaining great visibility. In fact, one of the best ways to get that longed for visibility is to know how to choose and use the best keywords to position your blog or your website.
As we will see today, there are small details that can make a huge difference when we talk about keywords. The correct choice of words, is decisive for obtaining the best market approach possible.
Keep in mind that, in addition, Google is relatively effective in positioning in the top places of their rankings the most relevant content of a sector in question. Therefore, it is your task to choose the right words for the articles of your web or blog.
This effectiveness, logically, is not reached by chance, as this giant uses complex patterns and algorithms to give us what he believes (and increasingly correctly) that we are looking for.
But before discussing complex algorithms and equations, we should start at the beginning and define the subject of which we are going to speak today.
What are keywords?
In its literal translation, "keyword" means "keyword". A keyword is a word, or set of words, that summarize a search or a need, and that's where its value lies.
So, think of keywords is to think (first and foremost) on the needs of the people, but also in our ability to intuit ahead and try to satisfy those needs.
Let's look at an example:
If we pay attention to the campaign of a politician, we will see that there are phrases or words that are repeated constantly (with certain criteria and without being heavy). These repetitions (which are clear reinforcements) have their reason for being, since they are the ones that summarize the ideology that this candidate wants to remarcar.
In other words; What a politician seeks is, plain and simple, to attract followers.
As in this example, the same thing happens with the words we choose as our keywords. Those phrases or words are those (ideally) used by our target audience to find the product they are looking for. Therefore, they are the ones that we ourselves must know to choose to facilitate the task.
To do this, let's now look at what types of keywords we can use to meet our goal.
The keywords and their classification
There are basically two types of keywords: "conventional", or short tail, and long tail keywords.
Among the former there are two large groups: information keywords and keywords of commercial, service or product type, and both refer to a specific and narrow search.
Among the first group we have examples such as "how to learn Castilian" or "how to make a blog". In the second, however, others such as "where to rent a car" or "where to buy a computer".
Now, long tail keywords are much more complex, for one simple reason: it is a phrase that includes, in turn and in itself, many keywords. Or what is the same: is a set of keywords condensed into a large keyword.
And do not go too far to see an example of a long-tailed keyword. The same title of this article: "How to choose the best keywords to position your blog" comes to us like a finger.
In addition to its global meaning (to be included in the results of phrase matching), we find some such as "keywords" and "blog", but also others like "best keywords to position your blog" and "how to position your blog ".
And all in just one sentence.
It is for this reason that long tail keywords are often ineffective: if you manage to create a precise and powerful, you will surely hit the mark.
How do keywords help someone find you?
Following the example of the political campaign, the keywords that are repeated in the speech are aimed at marking an ideology and winning followers, and all this is done by appealing to a need: to belong to a group.
When we write a text for our blog, the thing does not change much. What we are looking for, as we said before, is that it is easy to find ourselves amid thousands of other similar articles.
Once we have chosen the topic we want to talk about, we must make proper use of the keywords following a process of analysis and rationalization.
Then it will be Google's turn to "read" those keywords and decide if the text we're offering is the one that best fits what our target audience is looking for.
All this, of course has its logic: search engines are nothing more than match-finders. And this is pure mathematics, since they use search algorithms created specifically for this purpose.
How to choose the best keywords for your blog?
All right. If you've read this far, you know what keywords are and why they are so valuable when trying to improve the positioning of your blog.
Below we will see what path to follow to successfully meet our SEO strategy. For this, I would like to share with you some tips that will surely help you in this (sometimes) titanic task.
1 - Choose the keywords that best fit your target audience
The best way, perhaps, to clarify this first point is by asking yourself a question: Are you sure that the keywords you have chosen fit the needs of the people you want to reach?
It may seem superfluous, but this is as basic as naming things by name.
Be sure that neglecting this aspect is like shooting a blindfolded target, as you will surely never hit.
2 - Choose keywords based on what people are really looking for
You can write the best article in the world in terms of content, but it will not work if it does not reflect a search or a real need.
At present we have some very valuable tools to know what people are talking about.
One of them is SEMrush, a very powerful tool to identify the most important keywords today. And I speak of actuality because later on I will present you some interesting news about it.
Another excellent tool is Keyword Planner , since it helps you to choose the best keywords for your blog for free (although it is much more focused on Adwords ad campaigns).
Always keep in mind something basic: you must be very attentive to trends, as they constantly change. What is significant today or now, will not be tomorrow or later, and who decides is the people themselves.
3 - Check the 10 best articles that already use the keywords you are considering
Sometimes you do not need a specific tool to know which items are well positioned in terms of the keywords you are shuffling.
In fact, you can keep an eye on items that are well positioned to know why they are where they are. What do they use for keywords? How often? And above all, are they results of services, products or information and learning?
The quality of the results of that search also says a lot. If you discover that within the first 10 results there are poor articles or are simply spam, you are very likely to rank very high using those keywords.
4 - Be Specific
If you choose narrowed words and adjusted to what you want to offer, you are much more likely to rank high in Google searches. The clearer you are, the more likely you will be to be found as well as to be positioned.
5 - Use the main keyword in the same title and, if possible, in the first and last paragraph
Titles are hugely important in SEO (Search Engine Optimization or, what is the same, Search Engine Optimization).
Using the main keyword in both the title and the first paragraph of the text you write will not only help you increase the chances of appearing in the first results of the search engines, but will give a clear message to your audience on the subject that You want to expose
6 - Create a powerful long-tailed keyword
In one of the previous points we talked about being specific, but that does not mean to be scarce.
A specific analysis of the keywords related to the main one will surely give wings to what you want to spread, and it will also help people find it easier to find you ... even if you are looking for something else.
This, in addition, gives you another advantage; To improve your content and focus on what you want to convey.
Now let's see in a basic way how we should use the keywords in the content.
How to correctly use keywords in your content?
Now, and for you to get a little better, I'm going to tell you briefly how to apply keyword density and semantics to your content.
First of all, you should know that:
"The density of a keyword is the number of times a word is repeated in a content compared to the total number that exists in it."
An example:
With a content of 1,000 words, the main keyword is "web positioning", and this is repeated 12 times, therefore its keyword density is 1.2%.
We must try in every way to avoid density, since a very high will be considered by Google as Keyword Stuffing (that is, we would be over-optimizing the content).
A correct keyword density usually ranges from 0.5% to 2%.
Secondly, I'm going to talk to you about something I've already mentioned, semantics.
Google, uses LSI (latent semantic indexing), which is nothing more than the ability to detect keywords semantically similar, that is, the same family.
In this sense, our duty is to help Google in every possible way, using semantic keywords, or what is the same, using words from the same family, such as "create" and "do."
If we do this optimally, we will increase the chances of getting more organic visibility.
All right! Once you have seen these tips, let's now turn to the tools you have to choose the best keywords to position your blog.
Essential Tools and Techniques for Accurate Analysis
There are some practices and tricks to analyze keywords, and it is something so important that you need an exclusive section.
Here we will try to elucidate how to analyze the competence of a keyword, how to search the trends that have the key words that interest us, why it is so important to go deeper into the domain authority and what tools are the right ones for a precise and realistic analysis of our competition .
Just this once, let's start by talking about the last of these 4 elements.
It is clear that the best thing is to use a set of tools , rather than one. But, as you can see during the development of this section, I will focus on one of my favorite tools: SEMrush.
To perform the analysis of the competition of a keyword , you have (within SEMrush) the "Keyword Difficulty Tool" function, with which you can check the difficulty (or average) of a specific keyword.
Once you enter the keyword, you will see not only its degree of difficulty, but the volume of searches, trends and even the SERP sources, ordered from greater to lesser relevance. For a detailed analysis of the trends you can use the section "Overview", where you will also find detailed information on both organic and paid search.
In addition to these results, SEMrush offers a list of the first 20 URLs of the ranking ranking, something to consider. And because? For one simple reason: to see what related keywords make those URLs are at the top.
In addition to SEMrush, there is also another tool to take into account to obtain actual data on the domain authority of those URLs or Landing Pages.
We are talking about Moz (or MozBar). By installing this bar in your browser you will have easy access to the keywords used by a URL, your domain authority, your backlinks, etc.
To conjugate these two tools is fundamental to know the authority of a page, and is something that we should not neglect in the process of choosing the keywords to position our blog. Knowing this data you can consider a realistic goal in the amount of searches that a keyword has.
Perhaps you are wondering if it is really necessary to contemplate this range of possibilities.
My answer is this: without a detailed and serious study of competition, and a comparison of those results with our own reality, perhaps you will get some results. But rest assured that the more attentive you are to these details, the closer you'll be to meeting your goals.
Extra Bonus: SEMrush and its new SEO tool Keyword Magic Tool
As we have seen above, SEMrush is very useful for searching and analyzing the right keywords to position your blog.
This research sometimes requires a great deal of effort, and many others must be accompanied by what is called Brainstorming, something that can be done easily and on a regular basis with the help of specific tools.
Remember what we said above: To achieve the best results in SEO strategies, it is important to choose the most relevant keywords for the project at hand.
Researching keywords involves continuous discovery, careful consideration of new opportunities and niches, and integration with the rest of the digital marketing efforts in order to achieve more cost-effective results.
Compiling a single list of keywords and using it for your content for several months will surely not bring many benefits, and in fact is not the best strategy to follow. What's more, it can even lead to cannibalization of your content by trying to position you in the SERP more than once for each term.
The features and standards of search engines have been changing almost from the day they became available to the general public.
If this is a fact, how can you do more dynamic keyword research with the aim of including relevant terms ... and also remain profitable in the long term?
Thinking about this, SEMrush has created a new tool that is available in the beta version within the section of keyword analytics, and is called " SEO KeyWord MagicTool ".
Thanks to this new feature you can save a lot of time, since you can perform an automatic calculation of the potential of the keywords for your project in seconds, presenting you with some valuable metrics including the following:
- The CPC and its volume (which although they are fairly basic metrics should always be taken into account).
- The difficulty of the keywords.
- Your level of competence.
- Some SERP functionalities.
Another advantage of this tool is that it allows us to download up to 1 million keywords in a single file. This means that we will not have to jump from one document to another to continue working.
And there is more, because it offers us another very interesting function: the possibility of grouping the terms related to a specific market niche, in addition to a complete evaluation to help us in the decision to look for unknown niches and / or potential business.
Just pay attention to this latest news: the database of Spain of this tool has 50 million keywords and is growing frankly.
Not bad, right?
CONCLUSIONS
So far we came today with a theme that I had long wanted to share with you in more detail.
Although it sounds repetitive, there is something you should always remember: when you think about your SEO strategy, be sure that the more matches that search engines find between keywords and people's needs, the more likely they are to be in the top places of the lists Of searches.
Stopping a moment to think and question a little to yourself is a very healthy exercise.
So, ask yourself the following;
Do you know what keywords you are using? Are you sure that they are the best and the most appropriate according to the market niche you want to target?
Personally, and from experience, there is something of which I am sure; Recognizing (first) these shortcomings and then looking for appropriate solutions is by far the most appropriate way to choose the best keywords to position your blog. You just have to get down to work.