Why you need keyword research for your blog content

 

SEO is something that you need to consider if you want your blog to bring leads to your business. But what is keyword research, and how does it work for blog growth? Read on to find out how you can apply it today to drive more traffic to your website.

You’ve spent time and care in creating your blog post, and now you need people to read it! The best way to make sure that people find your content online is by getting familiar with keywords to improve the SEO (search engine optimisation) for your blog posts. If you can get it right, then you’ll stand a good chance of getting in front of the kind of people who want to read your content – and may even convert them to regular readers.

What is SEO?

SEO in simple terms is just learning to write in such a way that people can find you by particular search terms, and therefor start ranking for those words and phrases.

In order to write for SEO, you need to know a little about keyword research, and to do that you need to learn what your readers might be searching for in order to find blog posts such as yours.

I often find that the advice you find online about how to write for SEO or keyword research is overly complicated – it seems to me that there are ‘experts’ who want to make it sound that way so that you’ll be bamboozled enough to hire them to do it for you. I can tell you that it doesn’t have to be that complicated, and it shouldn’t be. At least not for blogging purposes. Let’s just keep it simple.

What are keywords?

When we talk about SEO, what we’re really saying is that we need to find out which words (keywords) and phrases people are most likely to put into the Google search box in order to find our blog posts. And then, once we know that, we need to place those strategically throughout our posts so that Google can see them, and recommend them to those who search for them.

For example, for this post, I might conclude that I should focus on things like:

·        SEO

·        Keyword research

·        What are keywords

·        What is SEO

·        SEO for blogs…etc etc.

In this example, I could decide that because of my title, ‘keyword research’ should be my primary keyword. But one keyword isn’t really adequate – you ideally need a good few, so I might choose 2 or 3 of the other words and phrases listed as well.

What is keyword research?

Now that you know what keywords are, you’ll need to know how to find the best ones for your blog post. How do you know which words people will search for to find a blog post like yours? Well, for that, you need to take yourself out of the picture, and think about it from the point of view of your readers.

In simple terms, you need to get inside your perfect readers head to find out what they need, and then discover what words they are most likely to put into Google to find it.

How to start your keyword research

Before you think about the how, you need to deep-dive into the who.

Who is your customer/client? Are they young or old? Are they tech savvy, or do they struggle to use even a simple search engine? Do they have a smart phone, or are they solely on a PC? Do they search via voice activation, for example by asking Alexa? You need to be able to answer questions like these in order to know how they’re searching, and what they’re likely to be typing into that search box!

Once you’ve got that information,  start making a list of the search terms they are likely to be using to find your articles. Write them all down, whether they’re single words, or whole sentences. If you’re not sure, there are tools you can use to help you – and even better, they’re free!

Free keyword research tools

Google

My first port of call is always Google. After all, this is the main search engine that most people use, both on PC and mobile. A little trick I like is to start typing something into Google, and seeing what popular searches it suggests for me. For example:

If I type in ‘why blog’, Google suggests these options:

Why blogs are good for SEO, why blog posts are important, why blogs are important for business, why blogs are good, why blogging is so popular…

And let’s try ‘are keywords’:

Are keywords case sensitive, are keywords capitalized, are keywords and tags the same, are keywords important for SEO…

Just from this simple exercise, you can see what keywords people are searching for right now!

Your own blog posts

Here’s a nifty trick – you can find out what your readers are searching for from your own blog! All you need to do is put your existing blog posts in order of views, and from that you can see what topics and keywords your ideal clients are looking for.

If I do this on my blog page, looking at my stats for the last 30 days, I can easily see that my most read post is ‘why social media is a waste of your time’. Perhaps I should do more content around social media!

Have questions?

If you’re feeling confused or would like me to answer your questions about keywords, please feel free to comment, or drop me an email.

About me

Tereasa Hedges, freelance copywriter for creatives, designers and makers.

I’m a freelance copywriter who specialises in writing content for creative people, helping you to reach larger audiences through blogging, web content, email marketing, and a little bit of social media for good measure.

Want to work with me? Contact me for a chat via shirecopywriting@outlook.com