Google generates about 8.5 billion searches every day. Understanding how Keyword-research works is the need of the hour to make your content relevant, and search engine optimized, and to get it recognized quickly and effectively. 

What is a Keyword?

How many times do we end up making a Google search just to confirm something? Or to read about a topic? It has become such an indispensable part of our lives that we don’t think twice about googling something. The words and phrases that are entered into the search engine to search for content are called keywords or search queries. For content writers, being familiar with the concept of keywords is crucial to constantly creating relevant content.

There are about 99,000 search queries that Google processes every second. And there are a bunch of different keywords that exist. A search query could have long tail keywords – like a phrase, or there could be local queries where people search for something related to a specific city or place. There could be people using a navigational keyword to look for a certain website or comparisons to find the best product among available options. Incorporating different types of keywords could help your content land on the first pages of different search engines, and increase your views and reach a wider audience.

Why do we need Keywords?

Keywords are the backbone of content marketing. They are an important tool to study your target audience. It provides an insight into what they are looking for and can thus help you decide what kind of keyword could be beneficial for the content. Keywords are also effective in gauging the interests, preferences, and intent of the audience you are planning to cater to. 

Effectively using keywords to craft your blogs and articles is vital for a better reach too, and not to forget that these keywords define your content – the niche you are working on, the objectives, and the kind of information you are delivering to the viewers depend on the efficient and successful use of keywords.

How to find the right Keywords?

The first step is to identify topics that your blogs often revolve around or a topic your targetted viewers would be interested in. Once you have listed down a range of topics that could work in your niche, you would want to think of words or phrases that are important under these topics. It could be words that come up while you write about a certain topic or search queries that your readers enter when they look for blogs around a topic. These phrases would act as your keywords. 

Once you have a bunch of these handy, you would need to understand what the purpose is behind them. Simply put, what kind of information is the searcher looking for?  This would help you make your content rich in terms of information and accuracy while also making it relevant to the readers. 

Finding searches related to your topic is a great way to generate more relevant keywords. You can simply put the keywords you have listed into the search engine, and see the suggested results. This is super useful to get an idea of a wider picture and narrow down further on the keywords.

There are several tools available online that you can use to perfect the search and finalization of keywords for your next blog. Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and MoZ,  are some tools that can assist you in generating more ideas based on what you already have and further enrich your content.

How to effectively use Keywords in your Content

Even when there is a list of effective keywords available, it can be rather tricky to incorporate them in the blog in a way that it is ranked higher but the words also don’t stand out. The first thing to keep in mind is that we don’t need to stuff keywords into the content, more doesn’t mean better. Most blogs that are SEO Optimized have a keyword density of at least 0.5 percent and at most 2-3 percent. 

The seamless placing of keywords in strategic places is the key to making it work. Using the keyword in the title of your blog is a good place to start. You can also use it in the first 200 words – this is because the first couple hundred words are an introduction to what the content is going to be about, and the algorithms used by most search engines ideally analyze the initial 200-300 words while ranking the content. 

Using the keyword in the title or the beginning of the introduction is thus a reliable way to make it search engine optimized. Using keywords in anchor texts or link text is an efficient way to highlight the importance of the word or phrase and make it more noticeable to the search engine algorithms.

Researching and placing keywords the right way goes a long way in making your content relevant in a place as dynamic as the internet, use these tips to give your content a glow-up. 

Consider Apostrophe’s SEO services to ensure that your content aligns with search engine algorithms, optimizing your chances of ranking on the first page and increasing its visibility across various search engines.