How and why you must research and use keywords in your content – Part 2 of SC’s foundation level copywriting skills.
Keywords and SEO. Love them, hate them, understand them or slip into a coma at the very thought of them? Keywords and SEO are an absolutely essential part of your pre-writing research and your content once it’s written. If you really can’t bear the thought of getting to grips with them, well now is the time to give up writing your own content and pay some one else to, but if you’re still determined, here’s what you need to know and think about as you sit down to write your copy.
1. What are keywords?
Well I’ll presume most of you have a fair idea about this. Keywords are of course the words or phrase you’d type into a search engine if you’re looking for something. And in similar measure, that means that search engines use keywords in order to rank your content. Sometimes the keywords for a particular piece of content may seem obvious but more often than not, keywords are highly competitive (in other words, lots of other people are trying to rank well in the search engine results for those keywords) or not obvious at all and under used.
2. Why do you need keywords?
I hope from paragraph 1 the answer to why they’re important is clear. But so often I hear people say that they don’t want to use keywords in their content because its going to look salesy or “crowbarred” in and artificial. Or they say that they’ve tried that PPC (pay per click) stuff, spent a small fortune and they don’t want to go there again! But optimising your content is quite different from PPC and if it looks artificial and crowbarred, then frankly you’re doing it wrong.
The better optimised your content is with your keywords, the easier it is for search engines to rank it and for people to find it. Or put another way, the more relevant your content is to your keywords and the more skilled you are at sewing keywords naturally and unobtrusively into all the right places of your content, the better optimised your content will be and the better that content will perform in the search engines results. And although it does take skill and some know how, it’s free and it’s a crucial.
Keywords tell the search engines what your site is about and without them, how are the search engines or anyone else supposed to find you? And what’s more, thinking about and researching your keywords will actually help you, the writer, refine and focus on the aim of a particular piece of writing and that, in my experience, can only be a good thing. Good, natural optimisation combined with content that is interesting, of value and relevant to your keywords is not only going to help your search engine results, it’s also going to ultimately mean more readers find you and that in turn can ultimately help with backlinks and social media shares. And guess what? That means better search engine results. It’s win, win.
3. So where do I find my keywords?
Well the good news is that there is lots of help available for this. Start by thinking about what you would use if you were searching for your service or product. Remember, depending on what your business is, some people may not even know that it’s you they’re searching for. So what is that issue that they’re looking for the answer to, the answer that you can provide?
Check out your competitors and see what they’re using and then you probably need to narrow the field. For example, the chances are that there are an awful lot of estate agents in the UK, so it’s going to be hard to rank high up for the term estate agents UK. But if you’re an estate agent in the little town of Horsham in Sussex, there’ll be much fewer, so you might want to use the phrase West Sussex estate agent instead or even Horsham estate agents.
Then there are lots of online tools which are really helpful as you get down to the nitty gritty and they’ll tell you all sorts of information, like how many daily searches for a particular keyword as well as suggesting alternatives. Check out the free tools at Wordstream or Google Adwords as a starter and don’t rule out the many paid for keyword research services available both online and offline if you still don’t feel confident.
4. How to use your keywords.
It goes without saying, I hope, that once you’ve established what your keywords are, you need to use them. It’s a good idea to have one lead keyword per page of content with maybe a couple of others too. Try to use them in your heading and URL and then naturally throughout the body of your content. And the yard stick which you need to measure it against – well does it read naturally? If not, start again. This part should be easy if your content is well written and relevant but don’t forget to try and include keywords in links and formatted copy like bold and sub headings as well as at the beginning and end of your article. And above all else don’t neglect your Meta Title which really must include your keyword, (if you’re not sure what this is, just drop me a line).
I don’t pretend to be an SEO expert and I appreciate that SEO is a world that can seem technical and intimidating. But there are steps which you can take as I’ve outlined above which aren’t complicated and can make a difference and it’s an area you really can’t afford to neglect. If you’d like me to have a look at your website or blog and audit and review it for you, just drop me a line or feel free to share your favourite keyword tools in the comments section. Next week, I’ll be looking at content and not only why it’s so important but how to get it right but in the meantime, keep warm and happy researching!
