Why Keyword Research is Important For Every Blogger, we’ll learn today.
Heard about this term?
I know you heard about this many times on different blogs.
But the question is; did you try to understand it deeply?
Deeply enough to understand what keyword research actually is.
I know, I know. You tried.
But was it seriously deep enough to understand at a professional level to grow the traffic of your blog?
So today’s article is all about keyword research.
We are going to learn
- Why keyword research is crucial for any blogger
- How to find good keywords for your blogs
- How to optimize your articles for better SEO
Let’s start
# Why Keyword Research is Important For Every Blogger
I wouldn’t be wrong if I say, “This is the first ever step in blogging you must perform carefully”.
Keyword research is the backbone of your blog, this is an approach which will help you to understand more about your target niche.
Let’s say you are writing any article about how to start blogging.
You already decided that this is the topic about which I am going to write an article.
After 1 hours of brainstorming, finally you started writing an article on your blog.
After 4 hours of tireless efforts, your article is live.
You Put the title of your blog post – 5 Important Tips to Start Your Blogging Career
This is an awesome title for a blog post where you are going to share some of the best tips to start blogging… and further, this title is a convincing title as well.
You hit the publish button and the article is live.
BOOM!! Finally, your efforts are live for the world.
Such an awesome and satisfactory moment for a blogger.
Am I right?
But what if I say, you did everything wrong.
Wait a minute..
Sorry, I don’t want to hurt you.. But on the other hand, I cannot hide the truth as well.
So what is the right keyword approach?
Let’s take the example of the title which we have already published.
The title – 5 Important Tips to Start Your Blogging Career
So here is the approach.
Step 1: Decide your topic of the next blog post. In our case, it was about starting blogging career.
Step 2: Try to find a keyword (2-3 words) from your title. Let’s say it is “start blogging“.
Step 3: Open Google Keyword Planner (it will ask for the gmail login).
Step 4: Click on Find Keywords > Search For New Keywords Using a Phrase, Website or Category
Step 5: Enter your keyword and target a country.
Step 6: Click on the Get Ideas button and go to Keyword Ideas tab.
Step 7: Scroll down and try to find some good keywords for your title.
These are the keywords people searching in USA (we targeted USA while searching the keyword), and we can see the number of searches clearly.
Note: Don’t worry about the competition tab (where you see Low, Medium or High competition), because this tab is for the advertisers who are interested to run ads for these keywords.
How to make a blog keyword has 9,900 searches whereas starting a blog has 12,100 searches.
These numbers are good enough to bring quality and targeted traffic to your blog.
Now I’ll play with my title and try to write something like:
- These 5 Tips Will Teach You How to Make a Blog
- Searching How to Make a Blog? Read This Post
- 5 Important Tips You Must read Before Starting a Blog
- Are You Starting a Blog? Read My Crucial Tips
You can see how smartly I used “How to Make a Blog” keyword in first two title ideas and “Starting a Blog” in last two.
You can even do more brainstorming and get better ideas than these.
Got the point?
The point is; you should always write the title of your blog post after targeting good keywords in it.
There is no need to write a blog post, if people are not searching for it on various search engines.
So ALWAYS do research about your keyword and then start writing blog post.
Here are some benefits you ate going to get after doing perfect research.
- More visibility of your blog posts in search engines
- More traffic on your blog
- More business opportunities
- More paid post opportunity because of visibility
- More income from your blog
- More authority in your industry
- More confidence to write next blog posts on your blog
- Understanding of market while doing keyword research
- More steady growth of your blog
and many more indirect benefits.
# How To Find Good Keywords For Your Blog
I hope you have learned how to find the keyword for your blog which will bring traffic.
Now here is the question – how to find good keywords?
Luckily, the answer is; with the help of Google again.
#1. Google Autocomplete Search
This feature is going to help you find tons of new ideas for your blog posts.
Put your keyword in Google search and see what suggestions are you getting.
Here I got few more ideas like how to make a blog on Google, how to make a blog on blogger and so on.
#2. Google Related Search Terms
Scroll till the bottom of Google search result page, and you’ll see this.
This is a goldmine to find the related keywords which Google is auto-suggesting to search.
By digging deep in these keywords, you will come up with some nice ideas.
# How to Optimize Your Articles For Better SEO
Writing an article targeting a keyword and making it that keyword optimized are two different tasks.
But we are going to cover that as well. 🙂
Here are few checkpoints to target a keyword in the blog post.
#1. Keyword in the Title of Your Blog Post
This is a most crucial point to make your blog post SEO optimized. Having a keyword in the title will make your article for convincing for the readers as well as Google is going to understand about your blog post easily.
#2. Keyword in The Permalink
Permalink is the link which we get after publishing the blog post.
Like, this post has permalink – http://www.bloggingcage.com/keyword-research-importance/
So your permalink must have the targeted keyword in it.
I recommend to edit your permalinks while writing a blog post. This one step make them memorable and small.
I edited my permalink and made it http://www.bloggingcage.com/keyword-research-importance/
#3. Keyword in First and last 100-150 Words
Including keyword once in your first 100 words will convince search engines to look for what keyword you are optimizing your blog post.
Try to include your targeted keyword in first and last 100-150 words.
#4. Keyword in Alt Text and Description of Your Post Images
You should include your main keyword in the alt text and description of your post image.
#5. Keyword in Meta Title and Description of Your Blog
To add meta description on your blog posts, you can use WordPress plugin SEO by Yoast.
Here is the screenshot to understand what meta title and description is.
This is how it looks like in setting of WordPress SEO by Yoast Plugin.
This is the exact approach I use for my blog to find keywords and make them SEO optimized.
I have seen newbie blogger crying about traffic.
When I tried to figure out the problem, this was the step most of them were missing.
They were putting their energy to write great content on their blog, putting maximum efforts to promote their blogs on social media, but they were not doing any type of keyword research.
Final Words
If you are still not researching keywords for your blog posts, start it now.
Once you will start putting efforts on this and make it a habit before writing any blog posts, you’ll see flood of traffic on your upcoming blog posts.
Pro Tip: You can optimize your old blog posts with this approach. But you must not change the URL of old blog posts if you are going to do this.
Your Turn
Share your learning from this article in the comment section and put your queries if you have any.
It would be awesome if you can share this blog post with your buddies to help them understand the importance of keyword research.
