Adding quality content to your website on a regular

basis is a very good SEO tactic. Google sees that

your website is active because new pieces of
information are added. On top of that, you increase
the volume of your content. If your keyword
strategy has been crafted properly and your
content is nicely optimized for the right keywords,
adding content will increase your findability. But
how to choose the perfect focus keyword?
Especially when you’re blogging and focussing on
long tail keywords, it can be quite hard to decide
which keywords to optimize for. In our view, there
are at least three things you should do before
writing an amazing (high quality) text.
Content SEO: learn how to do keyword
research, how to structure your site and
how to write SEO friendly content
$ 19 - Buy this eBook now »
More info »

What is the focus keyword?

The focus keyword is the keyword that you want your page
to rank for. When people search for that keyword, you want
them to find you. You set it in the focus keyword input field.
Once you’ve done that, the plugin evaluates the page’s
content and provides feedback on how to improve the page
for that keyword.

Choose a focus keyword that

is used to search
Your keyword strategy should have given you some idea
what you want to write about. For blog posts, you will
usually aim for a long tail keyword (containing multiple
words). In our Yoast SEO plugin you will find a drop down
menu which supplements your entry with suggestions.
These suggestions are actually based on Google Suggest.
This is exactly the same as what you’d see when you type the
search term into a Google search box.
Update August 2015: unfortunately we had to drop the
suggestion drop down of our Yoast plugin,
since Google  shut down the autocomplete API that was
needed for this feature.
The terms you will find in the suggest drop down menu are
thus terms and combinations of words that are logical and
used by actual people to search on the web. This tool can be
very helpful in giving you some first ideas about the search
behavior of people in the area you want to write about. Our
Yoast Suggest tool uses the same data to find the first 10
keywords and then expands on that. Also, Marieke has
recently written about more keyword research tools.
When we searched for the term “focus keyword” in
February of last year, this was the suggest output:

Right now, the output shows this:

Suggest changes based on the problems people have, so

monitoring it for important keywords makes sense. This
particular new result gave us some extra input for this post.
New to SEO? Learn the Basics of SEO in
our Basic SEO course
$ 199 - Start learning today »
More info »
Discover some information
about search volume
Once you have found a long tail search term you would like
to start ranking for, you should put some effort into
discovering whether or not the search volume of your
chosen focus keyword is high. We will be the first to admit,
Google has made this really hard. The only way to know ‘for
sure’ how often a search term is used, is by having an active
and alive AdWords account and by bidding on the search
term of your choice. We understand this is a bit too difficult
and expensive for most of you (we honestly hardly ever do
this).
Not to worry, using Google Trends should give at least some
idea, in a creative way, about search volume. Google Trends
allows you to compare the search volume between two
search terms over time. This will give some insights in the
volume of the search terms people use (always relative to
another term).
Check posts that already rank
If you already have some (blog)posts that rank well for good
terms, you will know how many visitors these posts attract.
Using Google Trends to compare the focus keywords of
older posts (of which at least the number of visitors to your
website is known) with the focus keyword you have in mind
for your new post, could give you some idea about the
potential of traffic this new focus keyword could have. Make
sure to choose older posts that are most similar to the post
you’re planning to write: if you’re planning to choose a long
tail keyword, compare posts with long tail focus keywords
as well.
For instance, this post about focus keywords could be
compared to a post about snippet previews, a very
related feature of the WordPress SEO plugin we wrote about
before:
As you can see the traffic is comparable, we know the search
traffic to our snippet preview post is reasonably good, so we
know it’s worth optimizing for.
Using Google Trends to compare between your old focus
keywords and the one you would like to choose will give you
some insights about the prospects for your focus keyword.
Another way to use Google Trends is when you are doubting
between a number of (long tail) focus keywords. Google
Trends will easily show you what search term will have the
highest search volume (compared to another). Google
Trends will help you decide which long tail keyword is most
common in the search engines.
Optimize your site for search & social
media and keep it optimized with Yoast
SEO Premium
Buy this plugin now
More info »
Google your proposed focus
keyword!
Apart from knowing which search terms are actually used
by people, you need to know whether or not your idea for
your post or page fits the desires and expectations of the
people who use the search terms. The best way to find out
whether or not your content fits these desires is to Google
your proposed (sets of) keywords yourself.
Take the time to look at the first two result pages. Are the
articles Google shows of the same character that your article
will be like? Does your website fit between the results
shown in these result pages? If you decide to write your
blogpost or page, while optimizing for this exact focus
keyword, you are aiming for a display of your page amongst
these.
For instance, when we wrote this post and Googled our
chosen focus keyword, we saw we’d be competing with
ourselves:

We also saw lots of questions on the WordPress forums,

giving us all the more reason to write this post.
Note that we looked at the old post and decided it wasn’t
good and complete enough, so we decided we would delete
it and replace it with this one.
Make sure to use the content of the result pages as an
inspiration for your blog post. Are there any useful ideas
(we are NOT encouraging to copy content, merely to see
whether you perhaps missed some information or
arguments for your own blog post)? But more importantly:
how can you make sure your post will stand out? In what
way could your post be better, funnier, more original than
the post presently displayed in the result pages. Try to think
of content that will make the audience click and share!
Should every page have a focus keyword?

We often get this question: should our about page or our contact
page have a focus keyword? What should it be?
The answer is easy: not every page needs a focus keyword. Your
contact page should be easily reachable, it might for instance
need to rank for “<company name> address”. That probably
doesn’t make sense as a focus keyword though and it’s perfectly
fine to leave it empty.

Conclusion: picking a focus

keyword is not easy
Choosing a perfect focus keyword is not an exact science.
You should aim for a combination of words that are actually
used by a search audience. Aim for a focus keyword that is
relatively high on volume and aim for one that will fit your
audience.

Want to read more?

We have quite a bit more content: you can read about
keyword research, content writing and improving your site
structure. We’ve also combined all of these different topics
into one eBook on Content SEO. If you want a specific post,
your best next is Marieke’s post:

Keyword Research
101: How to
Choose The Best
Tags & Keywords
For Your Blog Posts
– And Why This
Matters
Twitter
Facebook
Google+
LinkedIn
Email
PrintFriendly
Previously we talked about keywords,
specifically What Are Keywords And Why Do
They Matter?“. Today we’re talking about how to
choose the best tags and keywords for your articles
and why this matters. Do you know what the “best”
keywords and tags are and how do use them to get
seen in search engines (Google, Bing, Ask.com,
etc)? We’ll show you.
First, what’s the difference
between Keywords and Tags?
There really isn’t a difference. Simply put, the
keywords that you enter at the bottom of your article
or blog post in WordPress are called tags. So for the
purpose of this article we’re going to use them
interchangeably.

RECOMMENDED: “Free Blogging

Crash Course” 
What are the “Best Keywords
and Tags?”
The tags for an article are the few words that best
describe what your article (or blog post) is about.
Ideally there are 5-10 keywords that specifically tie
into your post.
A word of warning: these keywords have to be
topics that actually relate to your article. You can’t
just throw in random keywords that you think will
get you noticed on search engines, as that will
backfire on you. That’s called keyword spamming
and it’s a one way ticket to nowheresville,
population: you and your blog that no one will go to.
What are the some examples of
the Best Keywords and tags?
Let’s say you had a post on your blog entitled “How
to get a hot date online!” Some keywords you might
use include as tags are: dating, online dating, online
dating profile, get a date, get noticed online. See
how those actually relate to the article we’re talking
about? That’s the idea. Your job of course is to find
the ones that best reflect your article AND get the
most search traffic, but more on that coming up.

RECOMMENDED: “How To Start A

Blog And Make Money Online”
(Blogging Cheat Sheet) 
Also there’s no need to post 50-100 keyword tags. In
fact, that’s not going to help you at all. Less is
usually more, and the keyword realm is no different. 
Be honest about what your article is about and you’ll
be much more likely to get noticed in search
engines.
WordPress “tag pages” are
great for SEO
A lot of people don’t know this, but one of the
(many) great things about WordPress is that for
each tag you add to an article, WordPress creates a
tag page. And that tag page will link to all articles
tagged with that keyword. So all articles tagged with
the keyword “dating” will be linked from the
“dating” tag page on your blog.
For example, here are the tag pages for “web
hosting” and “WordPress” here on Blog Success
Journal. And to give you a little different flavor,
here are the tag pages for “pick up lines” and “sex
positions” on Ask Dan & Jennifer.
Tag pages are important from an SEO perspective,
because they can rank really well in search engines.
Tagging your posts well will help you climb the
keyword mountain faster and you’ll get noticed in
the search engines and gradually move your way up
in search rankings for those keywords.
Again, this is assuming you are tagging your posts
accurately: if you add bogus keywords as tags, then
your “tag pages” will be full of spam, i.e. non-
related junk, and they will NOT help you get better
search engine rankings.
Categories are not keyword
tags – don’t use them
interchangeably
Tags are just the natural evolution of the old
category concept. Whereas years ago you had to
choose 1 or 2 pre-defined categories when writing
an article, these days it’s easy to just add the 5 to 10
tags, which are the topics the article is really about.
“But what about categories”, you ask? Well, for the
moment you will still need them as well. We
strongly recommend that you choose a single
category that your article best fits into – in addition
to the tags. For example, on Ask Dan & Jennifer,
our 3 top-level categories are “sex“, “love“, and
“dating“. Each new article is filed in one of these
top-level categories, and then we add the appropriate
tags to it.
We use major keywords as categories for better
search engine rankings, because just like with tags,
WordPress creates a category page which links to all
the articles in that category. But you still need to tag
your articles appropriately.
Use the same form of keywords
and tags from one post to the
next
As far as Google is concerned, the following
keyword tags are completely different: “website”
and “web site” and “websites”.
You need to be aware that those are completely
different keywords and be consistent in the way you
tag your articles. There’s nothing wrong with either
keyword, but choosing one form and using it that
way consistently increases your chances of getting
ranked for that form of the keyword. So pick one
and stick with it. Either you always use “website” as
your tag or you use “web site”. Don’t use both
interchangeably or you’ll be missing the chance for
better rankings and more traffic.
Do your Keyword Research to
determine with keywords get
the most search engine traffic
“Website” and “web site” are perfectly valid
keywords (tags), but we’ve also mentioned that
search engines regard them as two completely
different keyword tags.
But did you also know that each one generates an
entirely different amount of search engine traffic? 
Well, you do now. Fact is that not all keywords are
created equal. Obviously if you are building your
audience for your website, you want to only have the
most effective keywords possible.
How do you that? Keyword research. That means
doing your homework and looking up the number of
searches each version of a keyword gets.
Doing your keyword research is crucial to have the
most effective keyword tags on your blog, and it’s
literally the ONLY way you will learn which
keywords and tags are the most effective for you and
your blog. It’s a bit time-consuming and tedious, but
if you’re starting a blog you really need to start
thinking of it as a business and more importantly as
YOUR business. Treat it as if it is your full-time job,
because well, it is and who else is going to research
keywords and tags for you? That’s right. Nobody.
And here’s great news about keyword research:
these results are fairly consistent from day-to-day.
So you just need to do it once and save your findings
in a spreadsheet – that’s what we do. Sure you’ll
find yourself updating this
keyword research spreadsheet now and then, but you
won’t have to duplicate your work every time.
Keyword research tools – how
to find the right keywords to
use.
Here is a great keyword tool for you to check it. It
can take a little getting used to, at first. But once you
play with them a little bit they get easier to use, and
it really helps to know as much about your niche as
possible. That way you can hone in on the words
that your audience are mostly likely to use to try and
find the kind of content you have to offer online.
• SEO Book Keyword Research Tool – free
keyword research option.
Tip: A very helpful strategy we use is to do your
keyword research for your niche up front, find your
most valuable keywords (in the right form: plural,
singular, etc.) and keep track of all of them in a
spreadsheet (complete with number of views per
day). That way you can always refer to this again.
And you will refer to it later – and you will update it
later… but it’s important to have a strong starting
point to build on.
Do your keyword research now
and it will set you up for long-
term success
Fact of the matter is that most people do the research
too late after they’ve already made up their own
keywords and find out they don’t work as well as
others would have. But why do that? Why waste all
that time (and potentially money) when you can
simply do the keyword research NOW and get
started on the right foot? It’s much easier to start off
on the right foot than it is to get off to a slow start
and get stuck in bad habits and then try to correct
them. Do the keyword research now and start
yourself off with the best tag habits possible and you
won’t need to correct them later.
This is a very technical article, with a lot of
information. It’s unrealistic to expect to assimilate
all of it at once. We highly recommend that you read
it several times to make the most of all the keyword
and tag information above. Then, after you’ve done
that, go out there and make the magic happen!

Related
1 Keywords 101: What Are Keywords And Why
Do They Matter? Keywords: what are they? Why are
they important? Why are they vital...
2 Google Plus Impact On SEO SEO (search engine
optimization) continues to change as new developments,
products, and...
3 New Duplicate Content Detection & Monitoring
Tool – PlagSpotter If caught with duplicate or poor
content, your website or blog could...
How Can I Get My New Blog Listed In Google?
So you've started a new blog, and you understand it's not going...

How to Easily
Find the Best
Keywords to
Write About
(and How to
Activate
Them)
Now this header is here
h1 class="title">How to Easily Find the Best
Keywords to Write About (and How to Activate
Them)</h1
59 amazing comments
As you know, I really don’t like the approach to
blogging where you just write a random article
and see whether it sticks.
I prefer a semi-strategic approach.
An approach that combines research with targeted
traffic and an end-goal for every blog post.
And that means knowing what keywords to put in
your title, text and promotion attempts.
In this article I’m going to show you one of the
easiest ways to research the best keywords for your
posts. You want to make sure you are writing about
topics that you can compete and convert for. This
means dominating Google as well as referrals.
Ready?
NOTE: Some of the links in this article are affiliate
links which means I earn a small commission at no
extra cost to you if you purchase after clicking.
Thank you for your support.

What the hell? Things you want to

know about keywords
Okay, so many of you are new to blogging and have
probably heard a little bit about keywords but aren’t
sure how they fit into the whole blogging scene. Let
me explain it for you as best I can.
What is a keyword?
Keywords are words or short phrases that you target
in order to get web traffic from Google or other
online sources.
How do we use them?
Once you have decided on a keyword(s) you then
write titles and blogs posts and engage in SEO or
advertising to rank for those keywords so that more
people searching for those words can find you. You
can then promote products, affiliates, etc. to them.
What are short and long tail keywords?
Marketers break keywords down into two broad
types: short tail and long tail. For example, a short
tail key phrase is “dog collars” while a long tail
version might be “dog collars for German
Shepards”. It is harder to rank for short tail
keywords due to increased competition.
Before you start: choose your
keyword outcome
Before you start researching keywords you want to
know the outcome readers will need to take.
There is absolutely no point in ranking for a
keyword unless you know what it is going to do for
your blog. Getting lots of traffic is pointless if you
don’t get any results from it.
Some of the outcomes you might want to think about
include:
• Selling a product
• If you have a product to sell then that can be an
end-result for your keyword research.
• Getting sign ups
• Getting relevant sign ups on a mailing list is a good
(short term) outcome. As long as you also have
a goal in mind for those subscribers too.
• Creating authority
• Ranking some extremely good content on Google
can go a long way to boosting your personal
authority as well as the authority of your blog
by encouraging more backlinks and social
shares.
So before you start with all this make sure you have
a clear idea of what you want these keywords to do
for you.
Finding the best keywords for Google
Now, the first part of keyword research revolves
around figuring out whether or not you have a
chance to rank on Google and, if you do, figuring
out which formation of your key phrase is the best
suited for success.
So with that in mind let’s have a look at one way
that I do it.
1. Use Market Samurai to get a feel for your
target keywords
Market Samurai is a great tool that you can use in
order to get an inside look at what your competition
is doing, or how competitive certain keywords are.
It’s a really good place to start because you can just
punch in a bunch of different keyword or key phrase
ideas and get a feel for the climate.
One of the things I’ve done in the past is use Market
Samurai to decide whether my blog post title is the
best optimised and has any chance of success.
For example, you might type in “paleo diet” and
then see who is ranking up the top and how many
back links they have for that particular post. This is
useful because sometimes you find that they don’t
have that many links or that, with a bit of work, you
might be able to replicate the ones that they do have.
2. Investigate further using more tools
The next step you can take is to use some other
online tools like SEMRush and Majestic SEO to dig
a little deeper and get an overall picture of how your
competition is getting their rankings. You also want
to spend some time to see whether the keywords you
are looking at actually get any traffic…
For example, you might find that a blog is ranking
for your chosen keywords because they are an
authority website and have lots of back links and age
as opposed to just one single blog post that has
garnered a lot of attention and grown its links. These
are more difficult to compete with.
Don’t be disheartened if you find that there is a
really authoritative site ranking there because there
are a lot of other things that come into play. I’ll get
more into that in a minute.
3. Personally investigate those sites
The next step I take is to visit each of those sites that
are ranking for my keywords. This will help you
give you an idea as to whether there is something
you can do to compete.
Look for things like:
4Interaction on post
5How many comments and social shares are they
getting?
6Top posts linking
7Do they have any other posts on similar topics that
have done really well that are linking to the post
keywords that you are researching?
8Tools
9Are there any original tools or plugins that they
have developed that are making that post
particularly valuable in the eyes of Google?
10 Improvements
11 Can you make any improvements to their
article? Can you write about it in a different
way?
One you have done all of that stuff you should start
to get a pretty good idea of what you’re dealing with
and whether or not your post is something that will
work.
Some other things to remember
When you are looking at keywords to see how they
will perform on Google you have to remember a few
little things:
• Differentiation matters
• Just because the first result is an article about
“How to set up X” doesn’t mean that the second
one will be. Google likes to show a variety of
types of information so that people get their
questions answered. Consider competing with a
different take on things.
• Plurals and stuff matter
• One of the main reasons we check out traffic levels
is to see if small things like plurals make a
difference to traffic numbers. For example, the
phrase “dog collar” might get 1,000 visitors a
day while “dog collars” gets 40,000. Some
people don’t think it matters but I still do. I also
think you should look at word variations and
spellings like is it a “movie ticket” or a “cinema
ticket”?
• Asking questions
• The latest update to Google wasn’t about changing
how sites are indexed as much as it was about
changing the way Google itself tries to answer
questions. This means you need to spend more
 time thinking about how a person might ask a
question in Google in a natural way in order to
find an answer for the keywords that you’re
looking for. For example, do they type in
“keyword research” or “where do I research
blog keywords”?
• Freshness
• As Glen from ViperChill has been saying for a
long time, the Google results are now heavily
dominated by newer articles vs older (better
quality) ones. Make sure you check whether
your target keyword is showing fresh results or
not.
Now that we’ve looked at the SERPs (search engine
ranking position) side of things we need to move on
to the next important area of researching keywords
for blog posts.
Remember, that stuff ain’t
everything…
What I really want to point out now is that
researching keywords is not just about what will
work well on Google. It is a much more multi-
layered topic than that.
And in any event, if you want to rank on Google
nowadays you need to think about more than just the
amount and types of back links that you’re going to
need.
Yes, that is important.
No, it’s not the whole story.
So while the first section above dealt with keyword
research based on an SEO approach, you then want
to move on and look at your target keywords in a
more holistic manner.
So what’s next?
1. Consider your blog’s funnel
I’ve talked about a funnel quite a few times on this
site so I won’t go into too much detail again other
than to say it’s really important to consider this
when thinking about your keywords.
Basically what we’re trying to consider here is how
the traffic will behave when they arrive on your site.
How does your content and site layout “direct” them
and where do you want them to go?
If you do all this keyword research for a phrase that
brings lots of traffic but doesn’t fit well with that
funnel you’re wasting time. For more on this read
my article about getting useless traffic.
2. Consider your promotion methods
Ranking on Google is one promotion method. There
are many, many more.
For example, the particular keyword that you are
going after might lend itself really well to some
StumleUpon advertising. Or perhaps it might be a
really solid, long term Google Adwords campaign.
Or Facebook might respond well to it if it is
something that is likely to get shared.
When you’re thinking about your keyword, think
about the landing page and then the promotion
method. It’s important to think about how you will
popularize it aside from just Google rankings.
3. Think about the people searching and
“activate” the keyword
Okay so now we are really getting into the more fun
and sophisticated part of keyword research for
bloggers. It’s very important to think about the type
of keyword and whether people searching for are it
are in an active or “buy ready” mode.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you write an amazing
post and rank number one for the term “healthiest
food” and let’s say it brings you 1,000 unique
visitors per day. Well, are those people then likely to
buy something from you once they’ve found out
about the food?
Maybe. Maybe not.
This comes back a lot to the end outcome we talked
about at the start but is slightly different because you
can tweak the phrase to maybe make it more likely
to earn. You can activate it. For example, you might
switch it around so that (assuming the food is a chia
seed) you target “buy chia seeds online”.
4. Think about the demographic
Okay so one thing I also think about is the
demographic of the person searching. This can help
you determine what product or style of sales page
will work best.
For example, if you are promoting a game for kids
then you need to be aware of things like the fact that
an adult will need to have a credit card to purchase,
and the fact that Facebook isn’t allowed for people
under a certain age thus rendering the Ads pointless.
You also need to think about how tech-savvy those
people might be and change your landing page
depending on how they might react. An old
grandma, for example, won’t want to see pictures of
girls in bikinis.
5. Think about potential alliances
As I wrote in my previous post on blogging success,
your online friends and contacts are a huge part of
what you need in order to do well online.
After having chatted with Chris Ducker, for
example, I feel like I could comfortably ask him to
Tweet out an article on outsourcing if I had written
about it.
This is extremely important for rankings as well. A
good +1 from an authoritative Google+ account can
boost your success in the SERPs really significantly.
Think about that when you’re choosing your target
keywords.
You don’t have to over do this
At the start of the post and in the title I said this was
the “easy” way. Well, after 2,000 words you’re
probably thinking that it doesn’t seem so easy.
If you’re planning to start a new blog then you’ll
want to spend a lot of time planning all this out. That
is important.
If, however, you are just planning on writing a blog
post then you’ll only want to spend 10 – 20 minutes
going through all this. Sometimes I spend a bit long
if I have a plan for a series of articles around one
keyword.
Time pays off when it’s thousands of visitors
Just think about it for a second. A 30 minute
keyword research session before you start writing
might bring you an extra 1,000 visitors per day.
That’s over 300,000 per year. If you’re converting
2% of your traffic to your email list then, well, that
30 minutes was well spent.
Furthermore, I often spend eight or nine hours
writing just one blog post. Why then wouldn’t I
want to make sure it had the best chance of success
based on the above criteria?

The above graphic is just a quick little way to

visualise how I think about post titles before I go
and write the post. You don’t have to take too long
and after a while you’ll start to get pretty quick at it.
Your post title and text should then be based on
keywords that have a balance of the above four
things.
Does this help you?
Please let me know if this kind of thing is helpful for
you. I’d love to know what problems you have with
your own keyword research before writing a blog
post or whether or not you even do keyword
research! Please leave a comment and let me
know.

How to Use
Keywords: Writing
Blog Posts that
Improve SEO
Posted by 2 Comments
Go to www.addthis.com/dashboard to customize your tools
AddThis Sharing Buttons
Share to Facebook
6
Share to Twitter
Share to Google+
Share to LinkedIn
78
APR
 28

QUIZZES start QUIZZES end

Writing an effective blog post that targets the correct
keywords can be a real struggle for many online
businesses. Trying to balance the context of your
content between your users’ needs and the ability to
rank for a particular word can lead to stale content that
is ineffective for your business in the long term.
Sometimes it is worth slowing down to stop and think
about your content creation efforts and how to get the
most out of your writing. Here are a couple of tips that
can help you create blog posts that are loved not only by
search engines, but by readers as well.

Do the Research
Begin by assessing the subject matter of your business.
What words would you use to define your blog? Narrow
down the general topic of your site and the types of
categories it will branch off to. Use this as a starting
point to begin planning your keyword research. Start by
creating a list of words that describe the content of your
site and blog posts. Once you have a list, it’s as easy as
plugging the terms into search engines to see how
competitive and relevant they are. Pay attention to the
data you find and note where you have room for
opportunity. Finding the right topics and phrasing allows
you to hone in on your target audience, possibly even
new markets, thus helping build your blog and business.
Sometimes it might be difficult to find ideas or
variations of words, but don’t get stumped by a
creativity block. There are many free tools that can
assist you in the planning process. Google Adwords is a
useful resource that can help you find relevant terms
and phrases to avoid repeating the same terminology.
Once you look over the various terms, check the
competitiveness of each one. Does the keyword have a
high search volume? Check it on Google and assess the
possibility of you ranking for it. Ideally, the targeted
word should be less competitive but strung along with a
few high volume terms. After all, writing an effective
blog is about its content and readability.

Find the Right Balance

While it is tempting to try and stuff keywords into your
blog content with as many variations as you can, this
can be less helpful than you might think. From a user
perspective, having a word repeat in quick succession
more than a few times can be a bit tiring. Not only does
it make what you're saying less interesting to the user,
but it is also disruptive to their reading experience.
For example, if you were to sit down to read a book and
saw the word digital marketing 15 times on a single
page, you'd have real questions about the education
level and writing proficiency of the author. This doesn't
change for readers on the internet, and should not be
forgotten.
That is why doing keyword research is so important. It
gives you more phrasing options to avoid creating a
post that is filled with business jargon your users might
not understand. That’s when the balance of word
relevancy and long-tail phrasing come into play. To
optimize your blog, it doesn’t matter how many times
you include the keyword as long as there are terms that
relate to it, or even a longer phrase that supports the
targeted word. Google has become more aware of word
relevancy and will acknowledge any phrases in your
post that match with the topic.

According to most “best practice” guides, you can

hypothetically have a keyword on a single page up to 15
times before a red flag is raised. However, making
content that is tailored for your audience should come
first. Ultimately it is people that will provide you the best
link equity and garner traffic to your site. By primarily
focusing on creating content based around a topic that
users actually want to read you will naturally satisfy your
optimization needs and provide the best overall results
to users in the long-run.

Contextualize the Keyword

While it is a bit rudimentary, sometimes the best
approach to take when trying to incorporate a particular
word into a blog post is to try and contextualize it once
you've written the rest of the content. This means that
ideally you would take the time to map out a blog post in
a way that is aimed to bring value to your users first and
worry about adding the keyword to the mix later.
This is probably the best way to begin writing a blog.
Since you already have the topic in mind, the key
phrases will naturally occur throughout the post, then
when editing you can either remove or insert words
wherever necessary. Focusing on the overall subject
rather than the keyword is better because if you begin
with a particular word in mind, you may find yourself
forcing it into the writing. Remember, users want to be
entertained, not overwhelmed, when reading a blog.

Choose the Right Blog

Format
Just like novels and other works of writing, blogs also
have different types of formats. Since users are often
looking for solutions to problems, informative blogs are
popular for answering their queries. However, if you see
yourself repeating the same kind of post and looking for
something to improve your overall SEO, there are some
other types of blog posts that often perform well.
As mentioned, users search the internet to be informed,
but there are ways to increase their interest and
engagement with your posts. One of the more common
well-performing layouts is a “how to” blog because of
their ability to drive organic traffic due to their impactful
educational nature. People want to know how to do
things and it’s likely that any “how to” post has a
specific topic you can begin basing your keyword
targeting around.

Another type of popular blog formats are list posts.

These are often known to be very concise and give
readers a straightforward idea of what they will begin
reading. Even though numbered lists may be clichéd, the
right content can reach a large audience, especially
considering the opportunity to add targeted words
within each point. Some consistent examples include a
number of tips, ideas, and advantages, as well as “top
10” posts of the best items in a category, such as “10
Best Website Designs.”
Fun blog posts are definitely good for entertainment
value and keeping the blog content fresh. Being able to
share an anecdote that relates to your business can
personalize your brand and gain traffic in a natural way.
When you make a clear effort to add keywords to posts
like these, users often overlook them because they are
thoroughly enjoying the content itself.

Utilize the Tools

One of the best tools for figuring out whether or not your
blog content is as effective as possible is to use a page
grader tool like Moz's Page Grader. By taking the time to
run this tool on your blog content you can see what you
can do to further optimize your post for search engines.
This includes things like title tags, image attributes,
keyword usage, internal or external links and other key
search engine optimization elements.
This can be particularly useful if you first write your blog
content with the audience in mind and then take the
time to go back over it to see how effective it is for SEO
purposes and edit accordingly. By taking the time to
write your content this way, you'll be sure to get the
most out of your content for both real people and
search engines.

Writing for SEO

Blog content should read fluidly even when your content
is targeting a specific set of keywords. While writing for
SEO can be a valuable tool, it is the content that
captures the imagination of real people and makes
them want to link back to your website that provides the
most SEO value for you and your business.
Breaking down your blog writing process into steps can
effectively answer your users’ questions, resulting in
higher traffic and better optimization. Take the time and
effort to do the research and determine your audience.
Focus on keyword planning and research, so you can
easily write creative content that will help improve your
search engine results.