If you are a newbie to the WordPress world and wanna start your own blog but are struggling to do so, you came to the right article. There is a ton of ways to start a blog, but starting great from the get-go is not that simple.
Let’s say that you already created your blog, and you have every detail you wanted – from the web design to the logo, contact tabs, and so on. Now, it is time to provide some content so that you can attract visitors. But you might be asking yourself. What should I write about? What will attract the most visitors? What is interesting? What is trending currently? How can I reach my target group?
These are all valid questions and a great starting point for a newbie, but before you decide what exactly to write about, let us introduce you to the magic of keywords.
Nowadays, people are discovering blogs they like through search engines, but that was not always the case. This started happening because of a thing called keywords. It is sometimes hard to find the right keywords for specific topics, but buckle up, we have something hidden up our sleeve just for that.
So without further ado, let’s dive in.
What Are Keywords
The best way to describe what keywords are is to say that those are phrases and topics that are connected to your blog’s content, and can help you bring up more traffic through search engines.
It is a known fact that every living human being who is searching for something on the internet is using Google or another search engine. And if you wanna be on top of the results generated by those engines, you need to give special attention to keywords. They are the bridge between your content and your target audience.
Let’s imagine that you are starting your online shop for sports equipment, and your first keyword is right there – sports equipment. Although it is probably hard to get on top of the search results with this one, some tools can help you out with that.
Ubersuggest is by far the best option, it is easy to use, and it lets you use a ton of features for free!
It will easily provide you with keywords ideas that are based on multiple sources like, related keywords, Google suggest, preposition comparisons, questions, and answers.
You can also use it to run an in-depth site audit, where it crawls around 150 pages on your site, to see what mistakes and errors you have so that you can fix them.
You can see what type of content, keywords, and phrases are well-liked by your target audience which can teach you about your user’s intent.. This will give you insight into what keywords you should use in your content, so you make sure that you are writing content that your target audience will actually read.
The Importance of Keywords
As we have already mentioned, keywords are the link between your content and target audience. And they are more important than you thought.
Everybody wants their visitors to be interested in their product, but fail to reach the right audience. Or, they do reach an audience and get a lot of clicks, but not a lot of long time visitors.
That can happen when you are not careful enough about picking the right keywords. Also, you need to know the questions people are asking about the content your blog is about. Why? because you want to provide answers, which will get you more visitors on your site, that are interested in the topics you are covering.
The key is to provide pieces of information that they seek, while being original and interesting as well!
You can always ask yourself what would you google about the topics that your blog is about, and you can ask people around you as well. And with those pieces of information, you can start thinking of phrases and content you want to provide.
Types of Keywords
Its time to introduce you to the types of keywords that exist in this online world.
Singular keywords have huge traffic – which in theory is good, but the competition for these is tough. If you want to use something like “weights”, the chances are slim that you will rank better than the big companies that have already established their brand on the market in the same category as you.
Let’s say that you are selling sporty clothes, you are definitely not gonna rank as high as Addidas, there is a long way for that to happen, but nobody is stopping you. It is all in your hands.
But you can always use plural keywords to reach the audience that is interested in those kinds of topics.
Plural keywords, or as we like to call them long-tail keywords are much better for a new blogger than singular ones. The reason why is because this type of keyword is much more informative, and has defined intent. For example, “best weights for a beginner” or “quality ski jackets for men”. These will probably give you more traffic because they have less competition than singular keywords.
Think of this as if you googled something specific, and the search engine showed exactly what you were looking for. That’s what you are doing with long-tail keywords. So strive to use those types of keywords, that way you can position higher, and reach your audience.
If you think that finding the right keywords is a problem for you, you can always use Ubersuggest. They will show you how to win the game of SEO in no time!
Using Keywords
Using keywords is a must, especially these days, but where should you put them? There is no benefit in just throwing them around in your content, or just putting random words so you can trigger our little helpers at Google. You need to provide valuable content, in which you will use keywords to attract your target audience.
Some pretty useful advice is to put unique phrases in the body of your content as well in your title, but also on each page of your site. A smart move would be to choose one main keyword and build around it a few other related words, on every landing page or post. But fair warning, don’t try to use clickbait titles. You may think that you will get more clicks, you probably will, but in the long run – it is no good.
People came to be informed from your title, and if you didn’t give them what they were looking for, so they leave, and probably won’t come back. But you want them to come back and maybe even subscribe to your page. So in a nutshell, with clickbait titles you will just do the opposite of what you are actually trying to do.
What will also help you with your rankings is properly tagging and describing your pictures. Yes, pictures are as important as the article. The pictures you use for your articles are very helpful for SEO.
Just like you can google texts, you can search for pictures, right? That’s why it is important to properly use them in your articles. Someone who is looking for a picture of low weights, will maybe come to your blog because of a picture you included and will then get interested in the content you are providing.
It might take a few minutes of your time to put alt tags and descriptions for your pictures, but it will pay off.
Keyword Search Volume and Difficulty Score
Difficulty score and search volume are two things to always take into consideration when choosing the right keywords for your content.
The score is determined by the strength of the pages that are currently occupying spots on the first page. So the higher the score is for a keyword, the harder it is to get to a spot on the first page.
At the beginning of your blogging career, it is better to aim for the phrases that have a difficulty score around 20 to 30, so that you can get higher positions, and establish your audience with ease.
Search volume is an estimated number of how many people are searching for that keyword every month. But don’t get blinded by the huge numbers, sometimes it is better to use the ones with a smaller search volume because they are better suited for your content.
Almost everyone is only checking the first page of search engine results, rarely the second or the third one, so if you are gonna be positioned on the let’s say the third page with a keyword that has a high search volume, you won’t gain any clicks. But if you are positioned on the first page with a keyword of lower search volume, you will get views and traffic.
Now, how can you check those stats? Easy, just head over to Ubersuggest again to get over a thousand keyword suggestions from them, learn about the volume of the competition as well as seasonal trends for each keyword.
They even create a list of keywords that are working for your competitors and based on what are people searching for on Google.
Some Important Details
We already explained this, but using keywords the right way can give you great organic traffic from Google, and you need to strive for that.
Researching them is everything, because you want to know what will give you more visitors, and possibly, long time members. Ubersuggest will help you tremendously with this. You will have all the pieces of information you want such as what keywords work the best for your content, what is trending, etc.
Posts that are answering specific questions will bring you the most visitors. Why? Because people are searching for something that they have questions about, and they are looking for answers. Your job is to answer those questions through your content and use them to garner more interest in your site.
We can also say that introducing new ideas, or sharing personal content won’t bring you great traffic from search engines, just because no one is searching for that.
Of course, we are not saying that you should only write content that is answering questions. Personal content and new ideas will probably bring you traffic from social media, but in the long run, you should focus on the traffic coming from Google.
Also, here are some other important details to keep in mind while choosing keywords:
- Think about how you would describe your content to someone
- Avoid words with multiple meanings
- Do not choose words that have a high SEO difficulty
- Ask your friends and family how would they describe your content
Conclusion
After reading this article, I hope that you learned the importance of using keywords for your own benefit. Starting a blog is a fun process, with all the editing and designing, but the key to success is written in those little gems.
Don’t forget to use them in a smart way and don’t just use random words and phrases that have little to no relation to your content, because it will backfire. So take your time when searching for the right keywords and the right answers you can provide to your community.
It is always a good move to ask somebody else what they think your content is about because sometimes you are too invested in it, that you can miss a good keyword opportunity. Maybe they will flick a sparkle in your brain with their answer that will give you a great idea for your content.
And don’t be modest, use all the help you can get – use a tool like Ubersuggest which will for sure help you master this topic!