My post How to choose keywords that people really search on led to a few questions that boiled down to ‘Dave, that’s not all you could say about choosing keywords, is it?’.
No. It certainly isn’t. There’s a whole load more I can say about selecting key phrases that really work for your content.
Which key phrases can you write around?
Key phrases with high search numbers can be just what you’re looking for. But you must consider how you are going to use them when you write content.
Here are three key phrases you might have found:
- writing for seo
- writing seo for
- writing for seo uk
Only the first one will work well in copy. The second may be a bit contrived in many situations – think about writing a sentence with ‘writing seo for’ in it. Indeed, what does ‘writing seo’ mean? While the third will lead to pretty clunky copy however you use it.
Finding quality visitors
Let’s pretend you’re an online cake seller. The keyword ‘cake’ will probably bring you more traffic than you’d ever need, if only you could rank for it.
But is it worth the time, effort and money? How many of those searchers are looking for the gluten-free cakes you specialise in? Just a small percentage.
But what about these key phrases?:
- gluten free cake
- gluten free cupcakes
- gluten free easter cake
They’ll have a much smaller number of searches on them, but they’ll be a lot easier to rank for than more general key phrases. But the story doesn’t stop there.
These are the people who are really interested in the kind of cakes you offer. They’re much more likely to buy from you.
What’s more, I find that good focused key phrases often make it easier to write good content. A lot of the uncertainty that can come when developing content is solved automatically, with the direction of the copy looked after by the specific key phrases.
Do your targeted key phrases fit your business well?
Thanks to Ray for allowing me to use his image.