Keywords, organic traffic and being specific
Starting a blog is one thing, but having a blog that gets lots of traffic is the next level. How do you get your blog to become a popular place on the web for people to land on and engage with your content? What is the objective of your blog in the first place? In this article I shall explain a bit more about what a blog needs to be found in the search engines, and how to use keywords in a blog post.
Organic traffic versus paid traffic
What you want to achieve with your blog is to attract a high number of organic traffic. Paid traffic on the other hand, is, as it says, paid for by advertisers. These are the listings that come up at the top of your search results. They are paid for listings. When you are just starting out with your blog, you don’t want to start spending all your money on paid traffic, and this is not needed either.
How do you generate a lot of organic traffic? You need to know which keywords to use in your content. Keywords are the search terms people type in to look for certain information they need. The first thing you need to ask yourself, therefore, is: ‘what would my ideal client type into Google to find what I offer?’ Write down a list of possible keywords and phrases they would type in, and use them in your content.
What keywords should I use in my blog?
The most important thing to remember is: be niche and specific. If you run a blog writing business, like me, and you only use the keyword ‘blog writing’ in your content, you will not get found by your ideal client. There are millions of sites about blog writing, worldwide, so the competition is huge. Instead, think of ways to add to this keyword, or come up with variations. For example, you could use ‘blog writing service in Valencia’, or ‘hiring writers for blog content‘, or ‘English freelance blog writer’. You could think of something similar for your own business.
Hit the sweet spot with your selected keywords
To double-check if your chosen keywords actually attract enough traffic, use an online keyword checker. Many are paid for services, but some are free or give you limited access, still giving you enough basic knowledge to start your blog. What you want to find, are keywords that rank high enough to attract enough traffic, but not so high that it becomes impossible to compete. Niche is good, but if you become too niche, nobody will find you either.
These are some of the tools I use, to know how to use keywords in a blog post.
Keywordtool
> Free option gives you a handy list of all key phrases you could use.
Wordstream
> free tool to type in keywords and see how they rank.
Spyfu
> type in the website of your competitor and see what keywords they use.
Make sure blog posts are related to your business
Now we are getting to the practical side. You have chosen a topic for your next post, so you are ready to write. You now know how to use keywords in a blog post, and you want to:
a) rank for this specific topic, but also
b) rank for your particular business.
You want organic traffic that consists of readers that are both interested in your blog topic, but are also potential clients. So always make sure the blog post topics are related to what you do as a business. If you write about random topics, that have nothing to do with your business, but attract a lot of traffic, none of these readers will ever buy from you.
Where to place keywords in a blog post?
Before you start stuffing keywords in every sentence, hold on a minute. Your blog has two main objectives: SEO and adding value. The latter is achieved by offering high quality content, which, ultimately, works wonders for your Google rankings. Google will spot a keyword stuffer from miles away. Search engine crawlers look for quality output, because they want to give people the most accurate listings. An article that reads badly because of too many keywords, will be marked as low quality and won’t be mentioned to searchers.
Therefore, make sure your article flows and is of value to the reader.
The general rule of thumb is to include specific keywords no more than five times in a standard blog post.
Use keywords in your header, and in one or two sub headers, depending on how long your post is. Then try and use the main keyword and variations on it, across the paragraphs. Also use the keyword in the title, description and ALT text of images, when you upload them. Images also rank in search engines. If your blog offers a meta description option, use this too to put in keywords.
Like in this blog post you are reading right now. I am using the key phrase ‘How to use keywords in a blog post’. Have a look again at the article and see if you can spot it.
Review keywords annually on your blog
Unfortunately knowing how to use keywords in your blog doesn’t end here. The popularity of keywords changes often, and what you may be ranking high for in one year, may not be the ideal keyword to use in the future. So make it a habit to review your keywords once or twice a year, using the online keyword checkers, to see if the keywords in your blog posts need to be updated. That way you make sure you keep attracting organic traffic to your blog.
Do you need help with your blog?
I offer monthly blog packages for small businesses, to help them grow their organic reach, become more visible online and add value to their website.
Copy Por Favor 
Incredibly helpful post! Thank you for sharing 🙂
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Thanks!
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