Keying In To The Proper Keywords For Your Blog

Keywords are an important part of web content development. While social media is starting to compete in the area of blog traffic, it is still vital to ensure you are grabbing the attention of the all-mighty search engines. Being new to blogging myself, I have done a fair amount of research into what keywords are, why they are important and how they help get your blog more traffic; and here are a few of the things I found out.

What is a keyword?

A keyword is a word, or phrase, that you incorporate into your blog post. It must be a relevant word; meaning, you don’t want to just pepper a word like Google throughout a post that has nothing to do with them just because it gets a lot of hits from the search engines. To begin with, the search engines will pick up on this and give your blog a lower ranking, which puts you lower on the list that pops up when you type in a search question or term. Secondly, the readers that find you through irrelevant keywords will get annoyed that they wasted time clicking to your post, when the web content you have provided has nothing to do with what they are looking for. If you aren’t sure which words to use to get your blog more traffic, there are many free tools available that will help you with this. One such tool is word tracker. You just type in the word you are thinking of using, and it will give you the number of hits it has received that day. This brings me to another point; just because a certain word got a lot of traffic one day, doesn’t necessarily mean it will get the same amount everyday. That being said, it is a good indication of how popular the word is. You can also try asking the people you follow on twitter, or other social media sites. I have found them to be a great resource, and the diversity of ideas out there gives you a much broader knowledge-base to work with.

How do I work keywords into my web content?

This is where good writing comes in. You want to use the keywords a fair amount throughout your blog post, but you want it to flow and seem as if they naturally go there. Never, and I repeat never, sacrifice quality content simply to get more traffic. It may work in the short run, but eventually people will not see you as credible or knowledgeable, and that spells death to any blogger. There is a lot of competition in the area of search engines, and getting loyal readers is the most important way I can think of to market yourself or your business. The web content you produce should be helpful, entertaining and/or thought-provoking to the people that take the time to check it out. Some of the research I found suggested that your keywords should make up approximately 3%-6% of your blog post. That number should be easy enough to achieve without cramming these specific words down your reader’s throats. If you aren’t sure how to do this, check out some of the blog articles that people post on social media sites like StumbleUpon. There are many great writers out there, and I believe in following the example of those who are already successful.

I have also found that keywords, or at least the main one for the particular blog post you are writing, should be incorporated into your title as well. Again, don’t sacrifice quality to do this. I believe it is far better to leave them out, if you can’t come up with a good title with them. This is just a few of the things I have learned so far. Search engine optimization has a lot of aspects to it, and keywords are just one component. What have you found out about the importance of keywords? How often do you use them throughout a blog post? Do you think your web content suffers from trying to stuff them in, or are you able to make them flow. Please share your thoughts,questions and suggestions, by leaving a comment.

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