Get Better Optimization With Good Article Keywords
Choosing article keywords involves two important things: making sure people are actually looking those keywords up, and finding out why your competitors rank on those keywords. Doing these two tasks is really easy.
The following is a general guideline; as you get more skilled at doing this, you’ll probably come up with your own procedure.
Don’t make the mistake of going too broad with your keywords or you will never get any kind of ranking. “Kettlebell” is not a keyword phrase, but “kettlebells for fighters” is. You have to be specific enough to set yourself apart from the general mass of content.
The only way you will rank on broad phrases is if you have an entire section of your website dedicated to that keyword (and good SEO techniques).
Step-by-Step Guide to Choosing Good Article Keywords
STEP 1: DETERMINE POSSIBLE KEYWORDS BASED ON ARTICLE SUBJECT
Once you have an idea of what article you want to write, think of the best keywords that relate to it.
For this example, your possible article keywords could be goblet squat, kettlebell squat, how to kettlebell squat, squat mistakes, kettlebell mistakes, etc.
Step #2: DETERMINE KEYWORD PHRASE OPTIONS ON ADWORDS
Login to your Google Adwords account.
Go to TOOLS > KEYWORD PLANNER.
Type in your keyword ideas.
Click GET IDEAS, then click the tab KEYWORD IDEAS under the chart.
Review which keyword phrase is looked up the most.
In this example, “goblet squat” is looked up 27,100 times each month (anything with over 1,500 avg. monthly searches is a potential candidate and you want 2-3 keyword phrases ideally).
Next, scroll down and sort the keyword chart by “Avg. monthly searches.”
Tip:
Look for a second and third phrase that could be included in the title of your article; in this case, “kettlebell training” is looked up 8,100 times.
Step #3: FIND OUT WHICH COMPETITORS ARE RANKING
Go to Google and type in each of your potential keyword phrases. In this case, BreakingMuscle.com has the highest organic search rank for their article, “How To Do The Perfect Goblet Squat.”
Step #4: FIND OUT WHY YOUR COMPETITOR IS RANKING
Click on the link to the top article and review the title, primary headers, pictures, length, and other media (e.g. videos, audio links, etc.).
Look at what keywords they use and how often they use them.
Then right click on the side of the page and click “View Page Source.”
Search the code for “meta” and review the meta description and meta keywords. You now know what your competitor wrote and how they got ranked.
Step #5: SELECT KEYWORDS
Now that you have all the information you need, you can select your keywords.
In this case, I would select one specific and one general. Specific would be “kettlebell goblet squat” and general would be “kettlebell training.”
