The first idea here is that you should not be building your content around keywords per se. Your content strategy should always be about what your target audience wants. Then you go and see what keywords they type into a search engine to learn that information.
In this post, we’ll talk about the relationship between keywords and quality content. We’ll also touch on how to use these keywords properly within your content.
Keywords are words or phrases that searchers put into a search engine to receive a desired answer. Finding out which keywords your target audience is using is crucial in SEO. Researching is therefore also valuable in the creation of quality content. These keywords assist you in making content that provides the answers to people’s search queries.
There are several pros to keyword research apart from ranking for those queries.
Optimization Strategy
Keyword research is very important to any SEO strategy. Knowing the language that people use — specifically your target audience — is also vital to developing a strategy that works. This is because you can relate to them only if you are able to speak with them in the same manner that they speak to each other. This is a factor that search engines take into account, and one that is not likely going to change. While the application of keyword research may branch out and evolve over time, the need for it will remain.
Rapport Strategy
Keyword research helps you almost take a peek into the mind of your audience. You can get a good idea about:
The pain points or which areas your audience struggles with – navigational, informational or transactional;
What your audience is interested in and the amount of interest that they can maintain about certain topics (which you can guess based on the indicated search volume per keyword);
What the amount of competition looks like for those specific queries; and,
What formats audiences prefer to consume that information
When you’ve determined which keywords are best, they can serve as a guide in the composition of each piece of your content. Don’t forget to include them in the content itself, too. Audiences are more likely to find you if those specific keywords are present. We will talk more about that in the next section.
You should also consider classifying keywords based on their intent. This means what searchers mean to ask about when they type these keywords into search engines. Intent basically falls into a few categories. It can be informational, transactional, navigational or local. Look at your potential keywords and compare them against what keywords are currently ranking in the search results. Make sure that you are checking for the types of results that you want your content to show up for. This will tell you what types of search results the search engine chooses to show to users depending on for each keyword query.
Google, for example, can determine that a certain keyword has one type of intent when you might actually think it’s a different type of intent. You need to see what Google actually thinks if you want to know what would make them rank your content. This way, you will know what kind of content to prepare so that you can get picked and displayed to the type of searchers that you want to attract.
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Using Keywords in Your Content
Alright, let’s talk a little bit more about keywords within your content. It’s important that those keywords that you have researched can be found in areas like the body, the subtitles, and even the title of the page itself. However, you shouldn’t use them to the point where it’s too repetitive and doesn’t sound natural anymore. These keywords are important for search engines, but you need to make sure you don’t overuse them at the expense of your readers. Remember that you are writing for the benefit of these readers. This means that you must never forget thet they are the biggest factor when you optimize text with keywords.
Here’s a note on the contrast between the search query language of users and the expected content that comes out from those queries. You must understand that the point is knowing what searchers actually want to read and not at all about what these search engine users actually type into a search box.
As an optimizer or content creator, what you need to think about, therefore, is not the query or exact keyword matches of that query, but what users are trying to get at when they type things into search boxes. Search engines understand that users are not always super articulate. This is why they continue to improve their algorithms as they better understand users’ natural language. When you write, put yourself in users’ shoes and don’t focus so much on keyword density calculations.
Finding the Best Keywords
We see the same mistakes being made all the time when it comes to researching and using keywords in content. It’s not just businesses making these mistakes, either. Professional search marketers can make them, too, when they don’t have a lot of experience.
The first common mistake is doing only one round of initial keyword research. The second common mistake is not updating the keyword list for more recent data on search volumes and the like. The third common mistake is not going deeper into search intent and creating secondary keyword lists to expand into related keyword groups. The fourth common mistake is choosing to use the very popular keywords because they show very high search volumes but not considering that they are also very competitive — maybe way too much for you to handle or for it to be a worthwhile pursuit.
When you do SEO, you need to be doing keyword research on a continuous basis. The process is never-ending and always evolving. Marketing is not stagnant, especially when search engines are also always improving as they learn more about what people want and how they ask for it.
Look at any keywords that you researched last quarter and reevaluate them. Pick out all of the high-volume keywords that are also competitive. These main keywords will usually be one or two words long. This is different from the longer keywords that don’t have as many searches or as much competition. Compare them, side by side and really think about which high-competition ones you can replace with more specific phrases that are easier to rank for. These long-tail keywords are better designed to attract specific, targeted groups.
Don’t forget to run keywords again, too, so that you can get the most recent data on them. You can also get new related phrases and fresh ideas.
Once you have that down, then you can look into diversifying your content into pieces that target these different branches. This is a great way to stand out from the competition without going off the right track.
Final Thoughts
You will find your best keywords to optimize content for internet searches when you understand what your audience wants. Then, you will get the results that you want when you give that to them. You can’t go wrong when you approach your strategy from this angle, looking at keyword research as being in line with content creation.