Blog SEO Tips: Using Keywords for Blog Optimization
One of the most basic, yet highly effective things you need to consider when doing blog optimization is using keywords to indicate search engine spiders what your posts are about. The more relevant to the page’s content, the better the search engine ranking.
Keyword optimization is part of on-page SEO, which means that it is a part of the optimization you’ll make on your blog’s code.
What you should know right from the start is that keywords can give your blog posts a boost in rankings or get your blog out of the first and most important search results. It all comes down to how well you’re using them and how relevant they are to your content.
Rules of keyword optimization
Since you’re reading this, I have no doubt that you understand how important well-researched keywords are and that you’re willing to make better use of them. These are some of the most important things you need to consider:
Things to do
- Consider using keywords relevant to your article;
- If the keywords are somehow related to each other, that’s a plus (for example: internet marketing, online marketing, search engine marketing);
- Use different keywords for different blog posts. In most cases, search engines will return two results from you blog at most, so having five or six posts optimized for the same set of keywords would be a waste of content;
- Write your article first, but with the right keywords in mind, not the other way around;
- Use your most important keyword(s) in the title tag. If you’re using a SEO plugin, you can set a different page title than that of your blog post;
- Use those keywords in the META description too;
- Use the keywords in the title of your blog post and preferably in the first phrase or paragraph of your article;
- Edit the post slug (permalink) so that it contains the most important keyword and also try to keep it as short as possible;
- Place the keyword(s) a few more times (don’t overdo it) throughout the article in a humanly natural order and context;
- If there are other older relevant posts on your blog, try to create backlinks from them using the selected keywords as anchor text (same goes for external incoming links).
Things to avoid
- Don’t target too many keywords. Use as many keywords as you feel that are relevant to your content which means they are present on the page and have value to a visitor. A list of 50 keywords means that most probably at least 40 of them are almost totally irrelevant;
- Don’t use irrelevant keywords. If your post is about NASA’s recent trip to Mars, I don’t know how Demi Moore or Vi*gra would fit in the picture;
- Using text formatting on some keywords in your content is OK. Bolding everything out is not;
- Avoid duplicating keywords in your META tags;
- Placing a list of comma separated keywords in your title tag and META description is a big NO. Write something natural and appealing to humans;
- Avoid keyword stuffing. Don’t fill your blog post with keywords only to increase the keyword density. It is unnatural, provides a negative user experience and will probably get you penalized by search engines.
Conclusions
Some say that keywords don’t really matter when it comes to search engine rankings, and since everyone is entitled to an opinion, I will disagree with that. Same people say that their blogs or websites rank high even if they neglected keyword optimization. That is true, but I’d like to see how well they perform when they’ll be competing with a well optimized blog or website when similar factors are on the table, like: almost same age (possibly younger), number of indexed pages, number of backlinks etc.
Keyword optimization is part of a much bigger and complex process. Acting blind in front of it is like sticking your head in the sand, hoping that if you don’t see anyone, nobody will see you.
Next week, we’ll talk about choosing relevant keywords and discuss a few keyword suggestion tools.
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Those tips where great Alex. I am actually following most of them and are very useful…
I find it helpful to include secondary keywords, synonyms, stems and thematically related keywords.
However, I will only keep those in mind so they get into the article naturally.
Linking to authority sites and pages with relevant keywords fro within your article is also important to hint search engines about the topic of the article/post.
Very interesting tips. Keywords can be targeted via SEO packs as you can enter more then one keyword.
CAN YOU PLEASE GUIDE, HOW TO INCORPORATE KEYWORDS FOR BETTER INCREASED TRAFFIC.
THANKS.
RASHI
Great post, thank you. I was always curious about whether the meta title should be the same, what to use for the slug, and how to fill out the keywords in my SEO plugin.
Great tips and very informative. Many people miss the point of optimizing their permalink. There is lots of debate, which is better permalink. I am wondering Alex which is better permalink for blogger. I mean to include date or category or just stick with direct link which I believe will make your website link more SEO friendly to search engines.In my blog http://incomeideas.net I am just using /%postname%/ structure to keep it short.
Great blog! It’s always so nice to be inspired
Hey i love this blog,, i am a recent visitor to this blog and everytime i visit here i see something new and inspiring.. i wanna be a successful blogger in future and I am sure tips from blogsessive would help me achieve dat
Fantastic
A good way to get keyword suggestions is to use Google Adwords keyword tool. First, you need an Adwords account. Then start a new PPC campaign for your site and use the keyword tool to find not only keywords that people have searched on but also their relative popularties.
Keywords are the most important part or characteristic of a blog or website.
Choosing competitive keywords so your topic is found is important too, but not too competitive.
Typically single keywords are very difficult to compete for while keywords phrases are more apt to be found by people searching for your subject matter because they are more likely to show up on the first pages of search results.
Good post, I always keen about keyword optimization.
Am running a skin care blog with no traffic. How can i benefit from keywords?
Great post, thank you. I was always curious about whether the meta title should be the same, what to use for the slug, and how to fill out the keywords in my SEO plugin
thanx for valuable tips: )
Thanks for the useful tips. I’ll start utilising them.
thanks for the tips.
Top post. So many bloggers and website marketers fall into the trap of keyword stuffing. Only around 3% of your post or article should consist of your chosen keywords. Any more may be considered spamming by Google, and after all it is Google you want to keep sweet.
Great article on SEO, I would also add to use the ALT tag for images, and in WordPress make sure you use the category and tag functions to boost the keyword in question.
nice article
i have to try it
Before optimizing the website with the keywords I suggest to check if you can rank for that keywords. My firs advice is to check the keyword/keywords on Goolge Adwords Keyword Tool External and choose the ones that have Monhly search volume between 1.000 and 5.000. Choose 1-5 of these keywords and try to optimize your blog/website for them.
Thanks for the tips
I am a SEO writer and people generally ask me ‘how do I better ranking in google?
And my answer is just keep it simple. Always start with best content on a specific topic and then tweak it by following the best current suggestions going around.
Keywords are important because they make your site specific in the search engine. Good keywords works both ways, they make your site specific to the search engines and they make it easier for you to identify your target market.
Great post!
I’m using All in one SEO pack in my blog
Can you tell me, what is the difference between Home keywords and “post” keyword?
Can I change the “home keyword” regularly, instead provide new keywords in every new post? Is it ok duplicating keyword in new post with home keyword?
Ya , what you have said is true . Among my pages , I have a page that is optimized for a keyword .Once i changed it and changed the structure of the keywords — what you have told just now — I did this –”duplicating of keywords” .I followed the page getting invisible for a specific period of time . I changed it again .Now i see it has been optimized now again .You are absolutely write . I am agree with you. Keywords must be topic related –It is true -when we are discussing about NASA , The keywords ,”Demi Moore or Vi*gra is not applicable there
Great tips….
I’ll try it…
Thanks for this, it’ll help me be more precise with my blog posts. Regarding keyword stuffing, i don’t think there is anything to suggest 3% is a good density, I’ve found more success just writing naturally, my keywords usually get the most prominence in my posts anyway without being spammy that way.
I personally use the keywords meta tag but I think is one of the less important ranking factors if we talk about very competitive niches.
Great information! Keywords are so very important. Since I began doing keyword research, my success rate has tripled. Thanks for the very helpful information.
Great post, thanks for the tips.
Great tips, you have mentioned the exactly mistakes that I have been doing.
Thank you for throwing light on me, from now onwards I’m going to use keywords properly and I hope that I will come back here with my testmony.
Thank you so much for the tips!
Bolding keywords within a website is definitely a good idea. When you bold keyword text within a website it makes it easier for the search engine to crawl your website and pick up those keywords. Bold text is given more weight then regular text and will help with optimization for your website perform well.
Hi i am new to blogging and still learning new things everyday.Your advice is really helping me but I am still confused on the keyword thing,Do you mean write popular words into my blog,example i write a celebrity gossip blog so does this mean that celebrity names would be keywords.I hope so because then I dont think I have to do anything else. Thanks for your help.
Many website owners use keyword articles to help draw Internet traffic to their websites. Keyword optimized articles are those written with specific keywords that help the website pop up near the top of the search engine results page. To start attracting more Internet users, webmasters need to add lots of content. Most webmasters don’t understand how to write a keyword article quickly, so they’ll hire a freelance writer to help them supply the site with content. In order to be successful, writers need to write articles quickly and know how to optimize for the search engines.
very good post thank you