All You Need To Know About Keywords

When talking about keywords we have to look at both keywords and key phrases. These are often spoken of in terms of short and long tail keywords. A long tail keyword is a long phrase, includes modifiers and more information, while a short tail keyword is short and often consists of only one word without modifiers.

What a Search Engine Does

When people search for information online they rarely actually type just one word. Most people ask a question or put more than one word called a keyword phrase, or a long tail keyword. Keyword phrases are super important to your SEO plan because they help your audience find you. If you use the phrases that people are searching for your website will show up if you use those same words when someone searches. The search engine’s job is to serve the search engine’s clients with relevant content per their search.

Use Keywords and Keyword Phrases Throughout the Content

Keywords and key phrases should appear throughout your content. They should appear normal though, and not contrived. For example, don’t purposely misspell words just because other people do, and don’t drop keywords in that affect the flow of the content you’ve created. The keywords that you use should fit seamlessly into the content and expand on the meaning of the content too. This can take some thought and planning.

Write Normally

The best thing to do is to write normally. Write how you talk. Don’t try to sound like someone else. You have your own unique voice that your audience wants to hear. Keep the keyword phrases you’ve chosen in mind, but just write normally. Then when you edit the content go back and add the keyword phrases that work best and make most sense without altering the meaning of the content. It’s best not to include any keywords if it makes the content look weird or lose its meaning. Your first job is to write for your audience, not the search engines.

Do Your Research

Before using keywords, you want to use the tools available to you to find out how in depend they are and how many people are searching for this information using these words? If you don’t know that a phrase is in high demand you could be wasting your time adding them to the content. Some good tools to use are Google AdWords Keyword Planner Tool, Moz.com, Spyfu.com, Semrush.com, and others.

Use keywords for titles, alt text for images, headings, subheadings, bullet points and so forth but use keyword phrases sprinkled throughout the content to enhance understanding as well as help search engines find your information. Don’t forget to use synonyms too, but always check with tools to ensure that the keyword or keyword phrase produces results or not. If you don’t check you don’t know.