How To Do Keyword Research For Blog Entries
When you set up a blog, you know you are going to have to post content to it. What you need to do is get every last piece of value you can out of that content. The only real way to do that is to give it a chance of being seen by organic search engine traffic. To have any chance of being seen by organic search engine traffic, you need to have realistic expectations. To rank for certain highly searched terms is virtually impossible. Some people may think that if the demand is that huge then even a bit of traffic will be good. The problem is, it doesn’t work like that. No matter what the search term is, there is a limit as to how many pages deep people will go.
What this does not mean, though, is that you should disregard a highly searched for market, just that you need to avoid aiming for words for which you couldn’t possibly rank. What you need to do is dig deeper, and find what are known as “long tail” keywords, sometimes referred to as the “low hanging fruit”. These keywords are often phrases which are being searched for, but for which it is still possible to rank. The long tail keywords give you a chance in markets where many people would just give up due to the highly competitive nature of the market.
Opinion is very divided on how useful keyword research tools really are. Some, like Wordtracker, are chargeable, and not cheap at that. Wordtracker does have a free version that returns very recent searches, but it is not really representative data. Many people use free keyword tools. For many years the Overture tool was recommended virtually anywhere, but there have been problems with it in recent years. Last year, it seemed to be pegged permanently into January results, which is very disturbing if you happen to be researching a very fast changing market, or something where the demand changes with the seasons.
Free tools that people use now include the free version of Wordtracker mentioned earlier, and the downloadable Good Keywords software. Now, we have the Keyword discovery tool which can be used online. The only time consuming problem with this is the need to keep typing in a CAPTCHA every time you want to do a search. Never mind, whichever keyword research tool you use, the method remains the same. Whatever the subject of your blog is, type that word into the keyword research tool.
When the results come up, you have a basis on which to work. Look down the list to find something that relates to the blog post you want to write. Now, put that entry into the keyword research tool. This should bring up a selection of results which includes some “long tail” keyword phrases. These phrases are what you need for your blog post titles. If the links have been set up so that they are search engine friendly, with no question marks and numbers, your blog post will have every chance of getting ranked highly in the search engines.
Tags: Good Keywords, keyword phrases, keyword research tool, wordtracker
