Simple Secrets about Using Keywords that You Should Know

(Hidden somewhere in this article you’ll find how you and your friend can win free professional keyword help)

I do a lot of marketing writing – that’s how I pay my mortgage. For more than a year and a half, rain or shine, I’ve written at least one article per week for the nextdayflyers blog. Most of the articles I write on that blog help people and businesses market themselves – either through print (nextdayflyers.com is a printing company), or through online marketing. The blog articles are good examples of content marketing – we use content to provide useful information for customers.

Blogs are awesome for content marketing because they consist of – well, lots of content. One of the basics in writing effective content lies in the keywords. Keywords help people find your posts or landing pages – people who could benefit from reading your content.

• What are Keywords?

Keywords are those words or phrases associated with your blog or business – words you want connected to your copy – phrases readers might search for on engines like Google. For instance, if you have a blog designed to help readers live more fulfilling lives, you might have phrases in your posts such as “self help” or “meditation.” Those are really nice keywords – so nice, there are a lot of sites competing for those. Which brings us to:

• Short vs Long Tail Keywords

The phrases mentioned above – “Self help” and “meditation,” are examples of short keywords and are highly competitive. Why should you care about that? For a number of reasons. It will make it very difficult to rank well with these phrases because a lot of sites – really big sites – will be vying for that term. Not ranking well means if someone searches for “self help” (about 1,000,000 per month search for that term) your site will not come up in the top pages of a search – like on all those Google results pages you see every time you search for something. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use those terms – it means those kind of terms should not be your only focus, especially when you are pretty new. What you want is a longer-tail keyword, such as “self help spirituality.” This phrase has far less traffic, roughly 480 people on Google per month. But, the competition on this phrase is less. Incorporate these longer phrases into your content strategy, and over time you have a much better chance ending up on the first search page – where people will see your site and go there. So, now what?

• Beginning your SEO Keyword Strategy

SEO is short for search engine optimization. If this is all new to you, don’t worry. In the coming weeks we’ll cover all these basics so you’ll have a good handle on how to do this for your blog or business. For now, just understand that once you determine some longer phrases that you’d really like your site to be known for, then begin to use these phrases in your titles and your copy, and have it in your links. That is, in essence, a beginning SEO strategy.

• Finding Your Keywords

There are paid services to get keywords that will work for you. However, you can get a good handle on things with these free keyword tools: Google’s Keyword Tool or SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool. Getting started with these tools is quite easy. Simply put in any terms you think apply to your site. For example, on the Google keyword tool the page looks like this:

Put in your phrases at the end of the line where it says word or phrase. Put in one phrase per line. Once you click search Google will give you a list of results in the keywords ideas section. This will give you lots of ideas to pick from. You’ll see search traffic on each phrase, and also be able to see how stiff the competition is.

And that’s how you get started with keywords. Now, before your head explodes, here’s your chance to win free professional keyword help. Simply refer a friend to zencopy who would benefit from increasing the use of their creativity, or from learning about writing more effective content for online success. Let me know when you refer someone. If you both become zencopy subscribers, both you and your friend will be entered to win a free 30 minute keyword analysis for the site of your choice (one site for each of you), from Karen (fyi, this is about $100 value for each). You’ll end up with a list of keywords to give your keyword strategy a major boost. (If you’re already a zen subscriber then you just need to hunt down a friend). Yes, you can enter more than once. I’ll have my 7-year old daughter draw the winning pair from a bowl in one week, on June 21. Notify me about you and your friend at karenatzencopy.com

Now, if you’re eyes are rolling back in your head from reading about keywords – take a deep breath and let it go. It’ll be much easier next time around.

photo credit: Joseph Kosuth

Tagged as: keywords, long tail keywords, seo copywriting, SEO Tips and Writing