How To Improve SEO Using Keyword Research

Looking to improve SEO on your blog or website? It’s important to implement SEO keyword research!

As some of you may know, or even if you don’t, one part of my “day job” is writing SEO for a major news network. I actually really love it, because it forces me to stay on top of trends in SEO in the constantly evolving internet world! 

Before we dive in, let me make one thing perfectly clear – I’m not an SEO expert. In fact, I sort of question anyone who says that they are, because even though I work in SEO multiple hours per week, it’s something that is constantly evolving. In any case, I’m happy to share what I know!

First of all – what is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, in other words – how internet crawlers like Google read the content of your website and rank it within searches. After a couple years of research and getting into the nitty gritty – SEO is the only tried and true way to push visitors to your blog.

You can push content on social media all day long, but as so many of us are learning – social media changes all the time! It’s not as reliable of a source for readers and optimizing your blog content to make it easier for Google to read is worth the time. Trust me.

How To Improve SEO Using Keyword Research 

One of the ways Google reads your website or blog for SEO is by scanning it for keywords. In other words – what is your blog post about? Research has shown that most people don’t click past the first page of Google, so optimizing your content to make that first page is crucial in order to get more page views!

SEO Keywords 

Once you are ready to write a blog post, it’s important to narrow down keywords that are related to your topic. For the purposes of this post, let’s say the blog post I want to write is about my chocolate Labradors, Judy and Bill, and training them. 

Listen, I love my dogs, but no one is going to search “Tips For training Judy and Bill” in Google. No, they’re going to search things like “Dog Training Tips” or “How To Train Chocolate Labrador Retrievers”.

Now, it’s time to research!

How To Find Keywords For SEO 

With this in mind, I’m going to head over to Google and type in “tips for training dogs”. I scroll all the way to the bottom of page one where it gives me a list of related searches. This is what people are looking for in Google!

When I’ve noted all the related search terms I want to use, my next stop is Pinterest. I do the same thing there to see what people are searching for visually. In the search bar, topics will pop up as you type.

SEO Keyword Research 

Okay so now you have some keywords that are related to your topic, what the heck do you do with them? So glad you asked! The best places to use keywords for SEO are:

In your blog post title

URL 

The meta description (the information that pops up on a Google search)

In subheadings within your blog post

The first paragraph of your content

Images (I talk about this in my Supercharge Your SEO blog post!)

 

I know the thought of doing this for every single post seems overwhelming and I’ll be honest – SEO is a lot of work! But it is a tried and true method of growing your website and getting more steady page view growth in the long haul. Any questions? Just ask!