SEO Insights: A Guide to Strategic Keyword Selection
⏳ This article can be read in about 6 minutes
Bloggers often face the problem of not getting enough traffic on their blog, despite writing high-quality articles. The reason behind this could be the failure to choose the appropriate keywords. Choosing the right keywords is important for SEO. Good content alone won’t work if the keywords are wrong.
We will explain the specific steps and critical points for selecting keywords that can help increase traffic. You can use this guide as a reference for managing your blog.
Keyword selection in SEO
Choosing the right keywords is crucial for successful SEO. Proper keyword selection is critical to attracting more visitors to your blog.
What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
SEO is a method to make your website more visible in search engine results for certain words or phrases. The specific rules for ranking are not shared, but we can guess based on previous patterns. SEO involves implementing tactics based on these factors.
By successfully implementing SEO, your blog or website can attain higher rankings. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of attracting potential customers, getting more clicks on ads, and boosting product sales. Therefore, SEO is a crucial strategy for achieving your blogging goals.
What is Keyword Selection?
Choosing the right keywords for SEO is essential for your blog’s success. It involves selecting words or phrases that accurately represent your content’s theme and are likely to be searched by your audience on search engines. The primary objective is to ensure that your blog attracts the right users.
If you fail to choose keywords effectively, your intended audience may be unable to find your blog or engage with your articles. Even if your site ranks high in search results, your content must meet users’ needs and expectations. Otherwise, visitors may leave quickly, and your blog’s purpose may not be fulfilled.
To improve your blog’s success, select keywords that align with what users are searching for. Additionally, ensure that these keywords are relevant to the content of your article. By doing so, you will be able to attract your target audience effectively.
Important points when selecting keywords
We will explain important points to remember before selecting keywords for SEO measures.
Clarify the theme and concept of your blog
Organising your blog’s theme and concept is crucial before selecting keywords. Once you have a clear understanding of your blog’s focus, you can determine which keywords to target.
For instance, if your blog covers different topics such as cooking, investing, and travel, it can be challenging to select relevant keywords. Visitors who come to your site to read cooking articles may not be interested in investment articles, which can make them feel uneasy.
However, if your blog has a specific theme, such as “easy and money-saving recipes to make at home,” then effective keywords might include “cooking,” “recipes,” and “saving money.” Narrowing down your content to a specific genre also has SEO advantages. It makes it easier for Google to recognise your blog’s niche and categorise it accordingly.
Set your target persona
After narrowing down the potential keywords for your blog based on its theme and concept, it’s important to consider who the target audience is. You need to think about the kind of people your blog is going to help and create targets and personas accordingly.
Targets refer to the marketing targets categorised by attributes such as age, gender, and area of residence. For instance, this can be “women in their 20s” or “the child-rearing generation living in the Philippines.” While setting targets, you must also take into account the market size of the target group.
Personas are detailed images of targets. They include occupation, family structure, and hobbies. They are made up people. We also narrow down their profile. For example, “I work in sales and make 1 million a year. I have a wife, one child, and I like soccer.”
By setting up personas, you can predict your audience’s specific needs and behaviour patterns. If you try to write articles that appeal to everyone, the message will be weakened. However, if you clearly define your target and persona and have an image of “writing articles for that person,” the content will be of high quality, and results will be more likely to be achieved.
Understand keyword classification
Keywords are divided into “big” and “small” based on their search volume, or the number of user searches, to help select appropriate keywords.
Big keywords are those with a large search volume, generally over 10,000. These keywords are in high demand among users, and if you can rank high in search results using them, the traffic to your blog will increase significantly, making your blog more visible.
However, ranking high for big keywords is challenging due to the competition from other websites. Moreover, big keywords are often short words with multiple meanings, making it difficult to understand user needs. Even if you manage to attract users to your blog, they may not click on ads or make product purchases.
Small keywords have a low search volume of less than 1,000 and are often niche words or a combination of several words.
Although small keywords are searched less frequently, they make it easier to understand users’ concerns and search intentions. Additionally, they have fewer competing sites, which increases your chances of ranking higher in search results.
Many users visit blogs looking for specific needs, so if you create content that addresses their concerns, they are more likely to stay longer on your blog. This increases the likelihood that they will click on ads or purchase products, which can benefit your blog monetarily.
Think about the words your users will use
To optimise your website’s search engine ranking, choosing relevant keywords that your target users are likely to search for is important. For instance, if someone is new to stock investing, they probably won’t search for technical terms like “stock investing for beginners” or “how to start stock investing.” Instead, they might search for “easy ways to invest in stocks.” On the other hand, experienced investors might search for “stock investment chart analysis” or “stock investment tax.”
It’s important to think about your target user and their perspective. Be flexible and imagine what they might search for. It’s also helpful to check suggested keywords, which are candidate keywords that appear when you enter a keyword in the search window.
Summary
We discussed the significance of keyword selection in SEO this time. While SEO strategies may appear challenging, selecting the right keywords is crucial and can undoubtedly lead to positive outcomes.
Choosing the appropriate keywords becomes easy if you precisely follow the key points and steps. Although it may require consistent effort, many useful tools are available that we will introduce in our upcoming article.
