Blogs aren’t fluff pieces that you essentially set and forget on your website. They’re actually strategically planned pieces of content that can help drive traffic to your website and get indexed on search engines. One of these ways is primarily through incorporating appropriate SEO keywords into your blogs. With this in mind, here’s how SEO keywords can work wonders for your digital presence.
The Importance of SEO Keywords
If you want your blog to rank high on search engine result pages (SERPs) (a search engine’s response to search queries), you’ll want to incorporate certain phrases (SEO keywords) related to your post in your content. For example, if you are writing a blog on how a social media calendar can grow your business, you’ll probably want to select a term like “social media calendar” as your targeted keyphrase.
You’re probably wondering why. Consider the blog’s target audience and what they’re searching for. Incorporating the term “social media calendar” throughout the blog will allow for search engines to index your content and cover the ground of those who search for said topic. Moreover, the blog you’ve written will provide valuable information on the topic, thus possibly ranking the content even higher (and hopefully the first page!).
Of course, you’ll want to avoid nebulous keywords. If you were to write a blog on best baseball bats to buy in 2022, you should probably not use the term “bats” — as you may draw readers who are looking for a specific flying mammal.
Choosing the Right SEO Keywords
Making sure you’re using the right SEO keywords is imperative to ensuring blog success. In such, it’s important to understand the different types of keywords. These fall into three categories: head keywords, body keywords, and long-tail keywords.
Head keywords are generally composed of one to two words. These keywords tend to be more competitive due to its broad nature (think: “marketing”) and draw less conversion as a result. Body keywords are composed of two to three words and are generally less competitive, but still relatively low on conversion. Finally, long-tail keywords are usually four words or more. While these are more specific, they tend to drive higher conversion rates as a result. Ultimately, your choice of keywords depends on your goals.
One wise tip for selecting your SEO keywords is to come up with a list of terms and plug them into Google Trends. There, you can compare certain words and phrases to see which generates more traffic — allowing you to make more well-informed decisions regarding your SEO choices.
Good SEO Practices
Once you’ve selected your SEO keyword of choice, now it’s time to put it to good use. Sprinkle the keyword into your blog — ideally capturing the term in your blog title, headlines, and throughout the text. However, in doing so, you should avoid the biggest pitfall: keyword stuffing.
As defined by Google, keyword stuffing is “the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results.” Avoid repeating terms that offer no value to the content at hand. A good way to avoid this is keeping track of your keyword density. According to SE Ranking, a keyword density of 2% is ideal.
It’s also a good idea to incorporate alt text into your images. However, if you’re considering throwing your keywords into an image’s alt text, Yoast advises otherwise. Instead, use the alt text bar to add “useful, information-rich content … in context of the content of the page.”
How ONE18MEDIA can Boost Your SEO
Here at ONE18MEDIA, we provide an array of marketing resources to boost your SEO and digital presence. With social media experts and a copywriter on hand, we work diligently to expand your digital presence through search engine-friendly methods. To learn more about how ONE18MEDIA can help you, please visit our website and contact us for a free marketing audit today!