Are you struggling to get your blog posts noticed? Optimizing your blog posts with keywords is one of the best ways to improve your chances of ranking higher in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). But how do you use them effectively without sounding like a robot?
In this blog post, I’ll show you how to use keywords in blog posts in a natural and engaging way for your readers. First, we’ll discuss what keywords are and why they’re important for SEO. Then, I’ll show you a short comparison of short-tail and long-tail keywords. Next, I’ll share some tips on how to incorporate keywords into your content without sacrificing readability or engagement.
Finally, we’ll wrap up some best practices for using keywords in your blog posts. So if you’re ready to take your blog to the next level and start attracting more readers, let’s dive into the world of keywords!
Contents
What is a keyword in blogging
Simply put, keywords are the specific words or phrases that users submit while searching for something on search engines (Google, YouTube, Bing, etc.). And based on the keyword, search engines provide results.
Normally keywords are in two types- long form (long-tail) and short form (short tail) keyword. A long tail keyword comprises more than three words and thus targets a specific audience. However, keep in mind that long-tail keywords have a lower search rate compared to short-form keywords.
Short-tail keywords, on the other hand, bring more results as it’s widely spread in web content. But you should remember that these keywords are highly competitive.
Why keywords are important for SEO
Keywords are essential to SEO because search engines use them to understand the content and context of your blog posts and web pages. By including relevant keywords in your content, you help Google understand what the content is about. And it makes it easier for search engines to match your content to relevant search queries.
Later, search engines display your content (blog post) on search engine results pages (SERPs) depending on the searcher’s query. And This is how you can increase your blog’s traffic and visibility. Therefore, proper use of keywords can help improve your blog’s SEO and ultimately help your content reach a wider audience.
Short tail keyword vs long tail keyword
As a blogger or content writer, you should understand the difference between short-tail and long-tail keywords. It will help you optimize your content for search engines.
As I said earlier, short-tail keywords are typically one or two words and are more general in nature. They are often highly competitive and may have a high search volume. Examples of short-tail keywords include “blogging” or “content writing“.
On the other hand, long-tail keywords are more specific phrases that contain three or more words. They are typically less competitive and may have a lower search volume, but they are often more targeted and specific to a particular topic.
If your blog is new, optimize your content with long-tail keywords specifically. Because they are much better at ranking early. However, as a content writer or blogger, it’s better to use a mix of both short-tail and long-tail keywords to target a wider audience and improve your search engine rankings.
How to insert keywords in blog posts
Alright, so now let’s see how you can place keywords inside your blog post. But before we proceed, let me tell you that the given points are derived from my personal experience and based on research from trustworthy sources.
1. Understanding keywords
The first and most important thing in blogging is understanding the keywords relevant to your niche. There are both short and long-form keywords, as said earlier. And you need to optimize the content with both of them.
While researching keywords for your blog, make sure it relates to your searcher’s intent. Because it ensures your blog post gets more impressions on SERPs and also user engagement. Besides, optimizing your content with searcher-intended keywords helps search engines understand your blog post.
Now let’s see where and how you can put keywords in the content.
2. Optimize the title, headings, and subheadings
As a content writer, I prefer to create the blog outline first before start writing. The outline helps you to walk through the road of blog post writing. It ensures you don’t miss any important aspects of your content. Besides, it also improves the overall readability of your content.
Henceforth, when you create the outline with the headings and subheadings accordingly, input the keywords or synonyms of the keywords among them. The reason is, google’s crawlers mainly examine titles, headings, and subheadings more deeply. And if your blog post contains keywords, the content will likely get more page impressions and clicks.
3. Place the primary keyword in the introduction
If you’re a WordPress blogger or content writer, you must have seen the suggestion of using the primary keyword in the introduction. Normally in Yoast SEO, the plugin prefers to place the focus keyword in the first paragraph, which sometimes may not be possible for readability or audience engagement reasons.
But on the other hand, the Rank Math SEO plugin asks you to implement the keyword in the first 10% of your content. Well, the matter is still debatable whether you should place it in the first paragraph or anywhere in the introduction. However, my concern is to use it in the introduction wherever it suits well for better audience engagement.
4. Consider the Permalink, Alt text, and Meta Description
It’s nothing new that using the focus keyword in the permalink (slug or URL), meta description, and featured image is very important. Since meta descriptions give the search engines a concise idea about the blog post or the web page, you should optimize it with the keyword. However, try to place the keyword at the beginning of your meta description for better SEO ranking.
Talking about the image alt text, as we all know that search engines don’t understand visuals. That’s why we need to provide an alt text with the keyword so that Google can understand what your image is about. Later, when users search the keyword on Google Images, your picture will be shown based on the searcher’s intent.
5. Use keyword variations
This one, I’d say, is the most important aspect you should know about while writing a blog post. Nowadays, Google has become much more intelligent than it used to be a few years back. It understands how real human reads and think. And therefore, google tries to provide the best result possible.
If you’re placing the same keyword, again and again, the content seems overly optimized. To make people-first content, use variations of keywords, which you can easily find in Google search. Besides, use synonyms of the keyword so that users can relate to your content which feels made for and made by a human writer, not AI.
6. Anchor text
We all know that there are two types of anchor text or links in a blog post; internal and external. Search engine crawlers mainly focus on the links included in your content. And if the anchor text you’re using for linking matches the primary keyword of the destination post, it becomes a plus point.
However, always remember that you should not use the same keyword for different internal linking. This can make search engines confuse about indexing properly. However, this only applies to blogs with multiple similar posts.
Conclusion
Undoubtedly, keywords are the key to SEO for blogging. If you have optimized your blog posts with relevant long-form keywords, they will likely get better SEO ranks. Although ranking doesn’t only involve keyword optimization, one must also do backlinking, technical SEO, and some other important things.
I hope you’ve got an idea of how to use keywords in blog posts. I’ve pointed out every possibility I know. But you should never completely rely on mine or any other blog. Instead, do your own experiment with your SEO content and ket knowledge from experience.
If you got any queries, feel free to reach out.