Why Is Keyword Research Important For Your Blog Post?
Blogging is a way for you to share your knowledge and to help people in a certain area. I always believe that sharing is the best way to learn and also to help people. Writing quality content with the right keywords will vastly improve your chance to rank high in Google and other search engine. In this post, I will share with you why is keyword research important for your blog post.
In this context, our focus will be more on understanding the concept of keyword research. You may read my earlier blog posts if you want to learn more about content writing in term of readability and content outline.
We will talk about search engine very often here as it is interrelated to keyword research. Since Google pretty much dominates the search engine market, we will refer to Google only when we talk about search engine.
What is Keyword Research?
Every post you create should be targeted on a certain niche. In other word, you create the content for a group of audience around a particular keyword that relevant to your topic.
So, keyword research is a study of finding keyword phrases that are relevant to your niche. Then, you will decide whether the keyword phrases are suitable to build your content based on the demand of the keyword.
That means, you do keyword research to find out what keywords are mostly search by your audience in Google and their demand. Then you build your content around the chosen keyword to reach out your audience.
By doing this, you are increasing the reach out rate of your content and resulting in more visitors coming to your website.
Therefore, keyword research is a critical component for your search engine optimization (SEO) success because it decides how well your content rank in Google.
Let’s Understand The Basics of SEO
As explained earlier, the reason you do keyword research is that you want to create a content that can reach out your targeted audience. Choosing the right keyword will improve the SEO of your site and result in ranked high in Google. So, it is important to understand the basics of SEO and how does Google find your website.
SEO is a very wide topic, so I am not going to go into detail with it. I will make it as simple as possible.
First thing first, let’s see how does Google find your website. Basically, Google consist of 3 main components:
- Crawler
- Index (database)
- Algorithm
The process starts with the crawler follow links from one web page to another. Then Google saves the found web page into a gigantic database called the Index. Once your web page is saved into the Index, Google will be able to show it in the search result pages.
However, it doesn’t mean that your web page will be shown in the first page of search result. Google has a secret algorithm that decides which result pages ordering your web page will be shown.
Nobody knows exactly how this algorithm works. Testing and experimenting are the only way to have a good feel about the factors that affect the search result pages ordering.
So, What is Keyword?
Let me ask you a question, whenever you want to look for information where did you go for? I am sure you will find the information online using Google.
For example, if I am looking for information about loosing weight, I will type in the following phrases in Google search box.
“How to lose weight?”
“Best tips to lose weight”
“Best exercise to lose weight”
All these phrases are “Keywords“. So, keywords are what you type into Google to find the information you are looking for.
And What is Long Tail Keyword?
Most of the time we tempt to create content using keyword that are too general or less specific. As a result, your content couldn’t rank high in Google due to high competition. Thus, using a long tail keyword would be a better SEO strategy.
But what is long tail keyword?
Long tail keywords are generally more specific and less common. They are usually focused on specific and dedicated audience (niche specific).
For example, “How to lose weight” is way too general and less targeted. The competition for this keyword is very high, therefore it is also very hard for your content to get ranked in Google.
Then how about “How to lose weight and still eat”?
This keyword sounds more specific and targeted. Using this long tail keyword, you are targeting audience that are looking for lose weight solution without dieting. Relatively, it is much easier for you to get ranked using them.
Why Is Keyword Research Important To You?
The reason is very simple, you want to get more traffic on your blog. You do keyword research to find out what your audience is looking for, and then you create content to provide solution.
By using long tail keyword, you can avoid competing in the highly competitive market and your post can get ranked in Google much easier. This is a great SEO strategy for you to gradually get more traffic.
Let’s imagine what if every post you created has the opportunity to rank in Google with a keyword and getting you traffic? It means that the more post you create the more traffic you will be getting.
How Do You Do Keyword Research?
There are 3 steps for you to start your keyword research. Firstly, you need to decide the niche or audience you are targeting to. Secondly, you will create a list of keywords that relevant to your chosen niche. Once you have done with your keywords, then you can start writing your content around the keyword.
As for creating the relevant keyword list, it can be a difficult process. However, there are tools you can use to find the possible keywords. There are 2 tools from Google you can use, Google Adwords Keyword Planner and Google Trends.
Google Adwords Keyword Planner is a useful tool for you to come up with ideas and potential keywords, whereas Google Trends allows you to compare the traffic between keywords.
For me, I like to use Jaaxy keyword tool that powered by Wealthy Affiliate. It is a powerful tool for keyword, competition and market research. It is free to register an account.
Type in your keyword in the text box below to try out what Jaaxy will show you. You would be surprised! 🙂
Conclusion
Keyword research is an essential SEO strategy you should carry out to gradually get more traffic from Google. I hope you enjoy ready my post on why is keyword research important for your blog post. If you are not doing keyword research for your post blog yet then you should start doing it as soon as possible.
Lastly, let me summarize what we have discussed in this post.
- Understand what is keyword research.
- Understand the basics of SEO.
- The use of keyword and long tail keyword.
- Importance of keyword research.
- How to do keyword research.
If you have any question or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below.
To Your Success,
Kwah Choon Hiong
