if
you’re blogging then you will almost certainly have heard about keyword
search optimization. There are many ways to get traffic to your blog,
but the best free method is to appear in the search engines for relevant
keywords. Searchers will then click through to your blog to find what
you’re looking for.
Although the search engines may
include your site in results when you take advantage of keyword search
optimization or not, you can give them a helping hand. By doing keyword
research, finding highly searched keywords, and then using them
appropriately in your content, you can make sure that the search engines
rank you higher for these terms.
Keyword Density
When
writing using keywords, the number of times you include a given keyword
throughout the content is known as “keyword density”. For example, if
your blog post is 400 words long and contains 4 instances of the
keyword, this means that you’ve got a 1% keyword density (one instance
of the keyword per 100 words). There is debate about how much you should
use the keywords, but it’s often recommended you use them at least once
per 100 words.
Where you use the keywords is also important. You should include them:
* At the beginning of the title,
* Within the first sentence,
* Within the last sentence,
* And spread through the article body.
Keep It Natural
Although
keyword search optimization is an important strategy for many bloggers,
it’s also important to sound natural. After all, it’s not just the
search engines looking at your content – there are real human readers
too! And they’re likely to be turned off if it sounds like you’ve just
stuffed in your keyword as many times as possible.
This is why it’s important to
work on writing a good blog post first, and worry about the keywords
you’re including second. No matter how well you’ve incorporated keyword
search optimization into your article, your site isn’t going to do well
unless you can keep readers interested with well crafted, interesting
content that’s written with their needs in mind.
Too Many Keywords Can Have The Opposite Effect
Although
we all know that it’s useful to include keywords in your blog posts,
including too many can even turn the search engines off. The giants like
Google are well aware that bloggers and internet marketers are trying
to improve their rankings with methods like this, so they won’t reward
you for taking shortcuts and stuffing your content with too many
keywords. If they did, it would be too easy for low quality rankings to
get to the top of the rankings.
Keywords Aren’t Everything
Following
on from the point above, it’s important to realize that Google is
looking at a lot more than just keywords to rank your site. It takes
into account who links back to your site, how you link to your own
pages, how well your site is laid out and, importantly, whether your
website actually delivers the information your visitors are searching
for.
Keyword search optimization is
definitely something you should be incorporating into your blog posts if
you want to take advantage of free search engine traffic. However, it’s
also important to work on the quality of your blog. The visitors will
follow.
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