Sunday, December 26, 2010

How to Choose and Use Your Keywords Wisely

You know how important quality, original content is and how important the right keywords are, but do you know how to choose them wisely? Choosing your keywords is more than just sticking words that you think are related to your subject into your content or blogs. It takes a bit of research and thought, but don't worry it's not rocket science and there is a free tool that makes it very easy to have effective keywords at your disposal.
webwise.com

Google Adwords Keyword Tool is the most comprehensive keyword research tool and it is free. You can sort your results by Relevance, Keyword, Competition, Global Monthly Searches, Local Monthly, Searches, Estimated Avg. CPC, Ad share, and Search share. You'll need to have a Google account first to use it, but having a Google account also lets you use all of Google's free webmaster tools and gives you access to their blog.
  1. Make a list of possible keywords. Think of the most obvious ones and then think out of the box. For example if you own a beauty salon you can come up with the obvious ones but then also think in terms of the services you perform. You may want to include hair color, human hair color, haircuts for men, haircuts for women and children, you get the idea.
  2. Go to the keyword tool and enter your keywords from your list one by one. You will then get a report showing the frequency of the searches based on the most recent searches done on Google. You will also get related keywords and phrases related to each keyword. 
  3. Make note of the ones that perform well and also the ones that don't. Knowing what not to include in your content is also important. Pay attention to the competition column. This will tell you how many people are looking for this term. Using a keyword that has low competition is also a good idea because you can get the hits that are rather random or search term specific. 
Once you have your list you are ready to start writing. Keep your keyword saturation below 3% and make your content flow freely. You can designate primary keywords and secondary keywords to include more without making your content seem stuffed and pick up on more search hits. Use your primary keywords in the first and last paragraphs so that they will be found by the search engine's spiders when they crawl your site.

With a bit of creativity and research you can come up with a list of keywords that will give you quality content that is more likely to be picked up by the search engines and found by potential visitors to your site. Don't want to do all this work? Contact the professionals at The Cutting Edge Pros. They are experts at keyword research and content writing. They'll get you the most effective keywords and provide you with quality, 100% original content and blogs.

1 comment:

  1. Hey Kathryn,

    I found this very helpful because I did not really know just what all keywords did for us.

    I guess in a way when writing fiction I feel that having to worry about keywords may interrupt the flow of how I wanted to write.

    But I do see how important it would be to have those words so that we could be picked up easier by those searching for those very keywords-or things.

    Thank you for helping me understand this more. And to help me realize I do need to put keywords in my stories. :-)

    ReplyDelete