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What are Keywords?

Keywords are the words or phrases people type into Google and other search engines, and social media, when making a search.   A keyword research strategy is one of the essential components for SEO success. Such a strategy helps website owners rank higher in the search engine results pages and secondly to identify their target audience.

Why is it necessary to search for Keywords for a Website?

Keywords are needed to

• meet the purpose of SEO
• satisfy search intent;
• cover a topic in detail;
• rank better in search engines;
• increase organic traffic;
• get more appropriate search terms.

The types of keywords and their Importance

There are two categories of keywords and several types under these two, with overlapping meaning. These two categories are

• primary – for example laptop, and

• secondary – Hp, Del, MacBook, Acer and other types of laptop.

Such categories are used for the search types of keywords mentioned below: Their meanings overlap in some cases.

Information and Navigation Keywords- 

These are used when a search is being made for

• information,
• direction,
• facts, or knowledge,

without the aim to do a transaction related to the search.  The user wants to fix a problem. 

• Question phrases like
• ‘what is’,
• ‘how does’,
• ‘how to’

are used in the former type of search. 

• Whilst Google map directions,
• amazon shopping,
• hotel and plane booking are examples of the latter. 
• It may just bring valuable users to your site depending on the type of information it is.  

How does Google determine Keywords?

In addition, more terms or other variations of words (LSI), are used to give further meaning to keywords. Latent semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords are used by Google to understand what a post is about. Reference Search Engine Journal:

“Google relies on LSI keywords to understand content at such a deep level.” by SEJ

How to find Searchable Keywords for Free

Most keyword tools have free and paid options. The free options are for a period or for making a few searches for a period of time. Below, let’s explore methods of doing keyword research without paid tools.

Let’s say you have a topic niche in mind for your writing and a list of relevant keywords. These are seed keywords, that should be written down or stored in a Google or Word document until you’re ready to perform some research. Seed keywords can be a list of topics, words or phrases related to your niche or subject. 

If the phrases are made up of five or more words they are known as long-tail keywords; and can sometimes be more specifically related to what is being searched for. 

For example “how to start a vegetable garden in a small space”. This is better than just searching for “vegetable garden”.

Step 1:

Google Auto Suggest or Auto Complete Method

1.  Put the keywords on your list into Google one after the other and go through the sites that come up to get more ideas to write on.
2. As you put the keywords phrases into Google, go through the suggestions that come up.  If there are some that youll want more info about, click on it.  It goes back into search and more results are revealed. 

3. Place and click the cursor at the middle or end of the last word in the Google search bar.  More terms are revealed. 
4.  Use as many question phrases as possible including what, why, where, which and action verbs in this kind of research. 
5. Also use the words of the alphabet one after the other in the phrase. The image below show results when the letter ‘c’ is added to the phrase.

Copy or make a screen capture of these results and save in a Google or Word doc to use again.  

Step 2

Use ‘People Also Ask’ (PAA) on Google  

To find more search terms, move to the ‘People Also Ask’ section on the first page of Google.

Have you noticed, that more questions are revealed, when the down arrow beside a questions in PAA is clicked? 

Go through more of these questions with their answers to uncover unique keywords and phrases for your post.

Step 3

Related searches at the  bottom of the first page of Google

Use the ‘related searches’ at the bottom of the page for the same purpose.  Put the phrases one after the other into Google 

Use as many of the steps as possible in your search for keywords;  not to use all at a go, if it’s not possible for you to do so.

Step 4

In addition use Google operators mentioned below for the same purpose:

• Use _ underscore before, in the middle or after the phrase.  This acts like ‘fill in the blank’
• Use “   “  quotes around the keywords.  – This will bring up only websites with the exact phrase in their title or sub titles
• Use * asterisk
• Use @
• Also plurals of some of the words
• Local names or location based searches, and
• Question phrases

User generated Phrases

Step 5

Sometimes you’ll find a question from a forum like Quora, on the first page.  Answer that question thoroughly as a blog post.   This could land your post in that position on the first page. Find below, an example of a user generated question:

 

Step 6. Use social media for keyword research

On social media, use the hashtag (#) symbol and also ‘@’ followed by the keyword. This will categorise the keyword, make it specific and easy to find.

Step 7. Use Keyword Generator Tools

There are several keyword generator tools online like Google Keyword Planner, Jaaxy, Ubersuggest, Wordstream keyword tool, Google trends, Soolve. Most paid tools have free options for several days or several searches for a period of time. Use these options also to find keywords for your blog.

Conclusion

Several factors go into SEO.  These techniques related to keyword search for SEO success are free and some of the best to use.  You may use those that resonate with you and add some more as time goes on.  Use them naturally in your writing, together with quality content that provides value to your readers.

Have you enjoyed this post? If you have, please leave me a comment and also share.

Have you finished writing your blog post, edited, and want to publish it? Go over it once more before hitting publish.   This is necessary because it is quite easy to overlook a few essential things.  Sometimes you do get exhausted just by doing the keyword search, writing an optimised post, making an image, formatting etc. that you quickly want to hit publish.  But wait a minute, that will not be the best thing to do.  There is no rush to get people to read an incomplete post.  Of course, we are not talking about perfection here; but at least it should be without some basic faults.

The thing to look out for before you publish your post is to make sure it is SEO optimised, so that the post can be crawled by the search engines for higher ranking and more traffic.

Blog Post Editing

1. Before you write the post select the necessary keywords using Google or a keyword research tool and use them in the body of the post, the heading (H1) and subheadings, namely H2 and H3 etc.

1. Write a great blog post title also using keywords.
2. The paragraphs should be of reasonable length.  300 words recommended for each paragraph.  This improves readability.  Helps visitors who have little time to stay on the site.

• The main Keywords should be in the first line of the first paragraph of the post.

• Re-arrange paragraphs to follow an understandable sequence.
•  Use a bulleted list to highlight items where possible.
• Try to make the post lengthy, putting in all the necessary facts or enough of it. 500-2000 words post is acceptable.
• Check the grammar and spelling in the post.  Link to Grammarly or other  grammar check tool
• The last paragraph should mention one or two of the main points.

4. Add a call to action (CTA) in the post and at the end so visitors know what to do.  A CTA is any action you ask visitors to take.
5.   Add tags and categories that organise posts together.

• Make sure you have placed it under the appropriate category.

6. Proofread again check spelling mistakes.

Check for SEO.

7.    Inside the Yoast SEO plugin, use the main heading as the focus keyword

Write a helpful  ‘meta description’ using some of the main keywords.  The meta description will be shown under the post title in the search results.

Check readability and grammar inside the Yoast SEO plugin.

Check the URL or permalink noting keywords and if there is the need to shorten it, do so.

8.  Add a blog post image.

• Give the image an alt tag and title so it is optimised for SEO.
• It should be placed in the middle, left, or right as has been done for all other posts on your blog.  Images should be relevant and as descriptive as possible.

9. Link the new post to another post on the blog.  This is internal linking and gives older articles new links.  It also boosts SEO.

• You can also link from old posts to newer ones.

10. Link each post to a related external website.
11. Videos can also be added to a post.  This helps to increase the rate of engagement .

• Learn how to embed videos in WordPress.

When you get used to doing this every time you write a post, it becomes the natural thing to do.  You can create a checklist for that purpose to use as a reference.

After writing the draft, leave it for a day or some hours.  When you come back to it, your mind will be refreshed or cleared, to see amendments you omitted in the first time draft .

If you have not been using a blog post checklist, it is time to start doing so.

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