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| The Importance of Keywords in Search Engine Optimization: A Beginner's Guide |
Use the right keyword and you'll get more search engine traffic...
Optimize your website/blog keywords and you will rank faster...
How many times have you received advice like this when you first started learning about SEO?
Probably a lot.
That's because keywords are the first things you should learn when optimizing your blog for SEO.
This guide was written for beginners like you to understand the most basic concept of SEO keywords.
Let's start with the basics...
If you've blogged for a while, you probably know that 95% of your traffic comes from 5% of your posts. In other words, you're likely getting maximum search engine traffic from a few hand-picked posts.
Have you ever wondered why these posts get so much traffic? Well, the answer is that you must have done something right.
Correct?
The reason for this is that some of your posts have been ranked on the first page of a search engine for keywords that are very searched by users.
So here is the main question to think about:
Who is the one rating your content?
Ultimately, it is a machine (algorithm) that looks for certain signals in order to rank the content accordingly.
What do I mean when I say "ranking" of the content? Ranking in this context is the order in which pages appear on a search engine results page (SERP).
You can go to the SEMrush website and type in your website address to see which keyword you are ranking for.
Here's an example from one of my popular blogs:
Keyword Position in Google
Let's try to understand what is going on in this picture. (Even if you don't understand 100%, don't worry because it's normal for beginners.)
Keyword: This is the specific phrase that directs traffic to a specific URL. In search engine optimization, this is the phrase we aim for. That's why we often call it the target keyword.
Pos.: This is the ranking of the keyword in Google search (i.e. position). For example, if it's number 1, it's the first result Google shows. If it's number 4, it's the fourth. And so on... Your goal should be to rank on the first page of Google for your target keyword (pos. 1-10).
Volume: Here you can see roughly how many people are searching for that particular keyword in a given month. This is a very important thing because even if you think a search term will be popular, Google's data will tell you otherwise. In the example above, you can see two similar keywords that have significantly different monthly search volumes:
- Free professional email address: 110 searches / month
- Free Professional Email: 70 searches/month
- Let's look at two other important terms as we define things:
- Short Tail Keywords: Short keywords of 1-3 words.
- Make money online, professional email, lose weight
Long Tail Keywords : More specific keywords, usually consisting of three words or more.
How to make money blogging, how to get professional emails from google, how to lose belly fat in 6 weeks
Note: All words and phrases are considered "Keywords" if they have a significant amount of searches (volume) in a month.
Long-tail keywords are more profitable because they get more targeted traffic and are more likely to rank on the first page. For more information on how to do this, see this post.
First, try to understand all the terms mentioned so far.
CONTENT
- What is the importance of keywords from an SEO point of view?
- How to start keyword research
- Keyword Density and Keyword Placement
- What is the importance of keywords from an SEO point of view?
- Now that you understand the basic concept of keywords, let's dig a little deeper.
When we optimize a blog post or webpage through SEO, we have the opportunity to define our target keywords. This type of keyword is called a meta_keyword.
In 2012 it was important to include meta keywords, but in 2017 this is of no use. The search engine algorithms have become much smarter. They now automatically recognize keywords and rank pages automatically.
Google has already made it clear that meta keywords are not taken into account when selecting keywords. This makes sense as it is not beneficial to anyone.
For example, the following meta keywords can be specified for this post: “keyword tips, SEO, keyword research”, etc.
Now anyone searching for "keyword tips" would end up on this page, not seeing anything useful.
