Every post you publish needs to have one main point, and no more.
This helps keep things as clear and specific as possible.
People need to immediately know what you’re talking about when they land on your site.
You do this by targeting a specific topic, and optimizing your post to make it as specific as possible.
But before you do that, you need to do some basic research that will tell you exactly what to target.
In 15 minutes, you can solve generic blog posts and give each page some meaning.
The basics of keyword research
In the Part One, we learned that you need to target specific people with long-tail keyphrases.
You do that by doing keyword research, and using those keyphrases in your posts and pages.
Now because you’re so busy, our goal is to do basic keyword research and make it as quick and effective as possible.
There are two things we’re looking for and comparing during keyword research.
1. Search Volume:
The popularity, or average number of people searching for that phrase in a specific time period.
2. Competition:
The quantity and quality of how many other people are targeting that keyphrase.
Generally, we want to find a long-tail keyphrase that is:
- The most specific and relevant to your article
- With the highest search volume
- With thelowest competition
How to do basic keyword research
To start off, type in your ideas for long-tail keyphrase variations. It will give you results for those, as well as suggest other similar keyphrase possibilities.
Look for keyphrases that are the most specific to your post. You don’t want to re-use a keyphrase for different posts, because you’ll basically cannibalize your efforts. So it’s important to try to target different, related keyphrases.
For example, try to target other keyphrases related to “Las Vegas Shows”. These could be “Las Vegas Cirque Shows”, “Las Vegas Comedy Shows”, etc.
Now it’s important to change the keyphrase results from “Broad” to “Exact Match”. This will give you the best estimate of relative competition and search volume.
Here are some good rules of thumb I’ve found, depending on your website or blog. These are just rough estimates, but they provide a good range of possible keyphrases to choose from.
- New/Unestablished: You should look for keyphrases with around 0 – 500 local monthly searches.
- Established/Growing:You can look for the 500 – 2,000.
- Big/Popular: You can target even keyphrases 2,000+
Once you have your keyphrase, it’s time to optimize your post.
4 Common SEO Mistakes that Will Hurt Your Rankings this Year
Enter your name and email below to get a free on-demand video about how to fix these four common mistakes:
- Mistake #1: Relying on a “Head” Keyword Strategy
- Mistake #2: Over-Optimizing Your Pages and Posts
- Mistake #3: Acquiring Easy, Low Value & High Risk Links
- Mistake #4: Not Using a Combination of Tactics to Boost SEO
