One of the most basic, yet highly effective things you need to consider when doing blog optimization is using keywords to indicate search engine spiders what your posts are about. The more relevant to the page’s content, the better the search engine ranking.
Keyword optimization is part of on-page SEO, which means that it is a part of the optimization you’ll make on your blog’s code.
What you should know right from the start is that keywords can give your blog posts a boost in rankings or get your blog out of the first and most important search results. It all comes down to how well you’re using them and how relevant they are to your content.
Rules of keyword optimization
Since you’re reading this, I have no doubt that you understand how important well-researched keywords are and that you’re willing to make better use of them. These are some of the most important things you need to consider:
Things to do
- Consider using keywords relevant to your article;
- If the keywords are somehow related to each other, that’s a plus (for example: internet marketing, online marketing, search engine marketing);
- Use different keywords for different blog posts. In most cases, search engines will return two results from you blog at most, so having five or six posts optimized for the same set of keywords would be a waste of content;
- Write your article first, but with the right keywords in mind, not the other way around;
- Use your most important keyword(s) in the title tag. If you’re using a SEO plugin, you can set a different page title than that of your blog post;
- Use those keywords in the META description too;
- Use the keywords in the title of your blog post and preferably in the first phrase or paragraph of your article;
- Edit the post slug (permalink) so that it contains the most important keyword and also try to keep it as short as possible;
- Place the keyword(s) a few more times (don’t overdo it) throughout the article in a humanly natural order and context;
- If there are other older relevant posts on your blog, try to create backlinks from them using the selected keywords as anchor text (same goes for external incoming links).
Things to avoid
- Don’t target too many keywords. Use as many keywords as you feel that are relevant to your content which means they are present on the page and have value to a visitor. A list of 50 keywords means that most probably at least 40 of them are almost totally irrelevant;
- Don’t use irrelevant keywords. If your post is about NASA’s recent trip to Mars, I don’t know how Demi Moore or Vi*gra would fit in the picture;
- Using text formatting on some keywords in your content is OK. Bolding everything out is not;
- Avoid duplicating keywords in your META tags;
- Placing a list of comma separated keywords in your title tag and META description is a big NO. Write something natural and appealing to humans;
- Avoid keyword stuffing. Don’t fill your blog post with keywords only to increase the keyword density. It is unnatural, provides a negative user experience and will probably get you penalized by search engines.
Conclusions
Some say that keywords don’t really matter when it comes to search engine rankings, and since everyone is entitled to an opinion, I will disagree with that. Same people say that their blogs or websites rank high even if they neglected keyword optimization. That is true, but I’d like to see how well they perform when they’ll be competing with a well optimized blog or website when similar factors are on the table, like: almost same age (possibly younger), number of indexed pages, number of backlinks etc.
Keyword optimization is part of a much bigger and complex process. Acting blind in front of it is like sticking your head in the sand, hoping that if you don’t see anyone, nobody will see you.
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{ 71 comments… read them below or add one }
You write the must remember points when do keyword optimization in this article. If follow it, we are surely safe.
Including targeted keywords is one excellent way to ensure that your site is deemed to be relevant. Too much keywords will have their sites labeled as spam, whereas not enough instances of the appropriate keyword means you won’t receive the desired results.
Good article on general rule of thumb for keyword usage and proper usage vs abuse. Title and Slug are big ones to make sure your keywords are used, get out a Thesaurus and toss in some synonyms for your keywords too inside your article can help. Also use the Keywords Tool from Google and see how many searches your “keywords” are getting and try variations that have less competition but a high number of searches still.
Do not loose focus on the objective of the content. Keywords are good, but do it moderately.
You are right, too many keywords sometimes made irrelevant, and sometimes the reader does not like it. Because they need the information rather than a set of keywords
Also using the wrong keywords is a problem. Like google webmaster tools telling you that they have found heaps of the work “example” in your blog and its something that you don’t even want.
Thanks for sharing this useful post, Hieu. This will be most useful for newbie bloggers. You’re right, it is not wise to do keyword stuffing as it might not only drive away readers from your site, it will get you penalized by the search engines as well.
Keywords rocks especially when meta tags never works at least with Google. Choosing the right and relevant keywords will explode your SEO and boost your traffic too
Awesome Post, I mostly do everything for my Blog without Knowing its Importance & Most of the time I waste my alot of Effective, Thanks alot for Providing me Instruction, Great Work !!!
I think it is also really necessary to keep keywords are still focus but not too flooding. However..very inspirative post..
Very Effective & Informative Post, Very Well Written – Good Work !!!
The meta keyword tag has been obsolute. Do you still think meta description is still effective? I’ve left entering keyword and description for posts rather entering category and tags, I’m I doing wrong?
I would add just one thing to this excellent article:
* If you use keywords as tags and “meta tags” be sure they are actually appearing on the page within content, otherwise they will be considered a keyword spam
Cheers
nice post,thanks for sharing valuable information about keywords.I think its really helpful for me.
Worthy few mins
thanks for the great article and SEO is everything for me these days. @alex, i experienced that once and not doing that mistake anymore.
Putting the keywords in the post slug is a great idea, I have been doing it on my Corporate photographer London blog and my rankings are improving
nice blog….
good tips!
gonna implement them soon!
Awesome article – great tips and straight to the point. I’m not that good when it comes to finding the best possible keywords, so the tips will definitely come in handy. The trick with permalinks was something new to me as well. Will try to make some modifications to my code and hopefully for the better.
helpful tips
i use your tips and see what happened .
Thank you man .
This blog Blog — SEO Tips: Using Keywords for Blog Optimization, is very interesting. I am interested for the SEO thingy for my site to gain ranking in Google.
Very Helpful Post – Thanks for Sharing Valuable Knowledge of Keyword – Great Tips
Keywords plays an important role in blogging. Without choosing the right keywords for your blog, you can’t be successful. Thanks for writing an useful post.
Thanks for the things to avoid, I did them, and will fix it now.
Hey Hieu,
I agree with you, keyword optimization is very important. At least that’s what I’ve learned from building my mini sites. On-page SEO is also (if not more important) than off-page SEO.
It’s so tough to encounter right information on the blog. I really loved reading this post. It has strengthen my faith more. You all do such a great job at such Concepts… can’t tell you how much I,I want to thank you for this informative read, I really appreciate sharing your post
Typically single keywords are very difficult to compete for while keywords phrases are more apt to be found by people searching for your subject matter because they are more likely to show up on the first pages of search results.
Great Blog.This is like a gold dust for the beginners of the blog.Thanks for sharing things………
Definitely right. It’s really important to optimize keyword for blog optimization.
I will use your tip in my site. thanks.
On-line and off line optimization are two parts of a coin. These are might and main for good position of a site under a particular keyword.
This is quite helpful post. I too do add a some good amount of related keywords too my post since I think keywords are still quite important for ranking in other engines if not in Google
Thanks for the tips of efficient use of keywords.
One thing I do to make sure I’m not overdoing it with keywords is that I write my articles first the way I would for a general audience. I don’t even think about keywords at this stage. Then I’ll review my article and spruce it up for seo in the editing stage. If it doesn’t read well when I add my keywords I’ll take those out in favor of better readability.
I know that I’m mostly likely not the ideal candidate for the Ivies but I’d like to get more of an idea of just how far of a stretch this is. My theory is, there’s no harm in trying…
Very comprehensive post. I think that simple is the right answer when it comes to SEO (in my opinion, it is what Google wants) – some meta tags with primary keyword, next – primary keyword in title, first and last sentences and once in each 125-150 words. Then alt tags with primary keyword for images and at least one link with anchor text of the primary keyword. Anybody who will follow these rules will be fine in terms of on page SEO.
Content that makes sense and uses keywords effectively is important. Good article with some basic ideas that just make sense.
Thanks for the tips, Hieu. Including secondary keywords, synonyms, stems and thematically related keywords is what I find helpful. Also, it’s important to link to authority sites and pages with relevant keywords from within your article so that search engines are given a hint about the topic of the article/post.
I see many pages that still doesen’t use right keywords to go with their content. I see many people making pages without any knowledge of SEO, but some of those pages are still quite high in ranking. But those are mostly 4-6 ages old as at that time there wasn’t so much competition than today. So I guess domain age really has some value still.
Hello,
Nice Post it acknowledge me a lot, thanks for sharing it
Great article and helpful tips. It’s nice to see that people still take the time to teach others by offering free advice and information. That’s what keeps ‘em coming back!
Targeting too many keywords is not going to work. I agree with your poing, however make sure to target at least 2 or 3 keywords.
The idea is really considerable. But it is gone to be the most difficult thing for sure. Because it is easy to research keywords for a site but a blog has on multiple theme so you have to do a lot of research task for finalizing the keywords.
It is the keyword that will help you in your promotion process. If you go for high competitive keyword then result = 0.1
But if you go for non competitive keywords then the result will be 99%.
so the tips will definitely come in handy. The trick with permalinks was something new to me as well. Will try to make some modifications to my code and hopefully for the better.
I think paying too much attention on keywords kills the blogpost. Actually, blog is a little different from other websites. Blogpost must be a delight to read, so that blog gets more subscribers.
Thanks for the tips. Going to test them out.
Google wonderwheel is best options to explore new keywords and check what others are writing related to your niche . It gives you good information as well as other keywords list related to main niche keyword you are targeting .
yeah, right, the power of keywords is great…
but it needs an extra effort to research a keyword…
great info, then…
thanks…
I am working on Search Engine Optimization. I want to know the formula to speed up on Unique Article writing.?
Kudos for a great article. I will follow your tips about keyword optimization. Thanks. XD
I try to incorporate a lot of relevant keywords into my own blog and backlink them to my main site, I hope this is the correct thing to be doing?
I would also like to know how I stop so many of the spammy comments coming into my own blog.
Good article with useful tips. Especially about not choosing too many keywords. I think a lot of people have a hard time drilling down a new article to one or 2 keywords and because of this they water down their content.
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Great Post Martin. Very Good checklist in section “Things to avoid”.
Thanks for sharing this great post. It will be very useful for new bloggers. I agree with you, it’s not wise to do keyword stuffing as it might not drive away readers from your site, Google will penalize you.
Good article on using keyword in for blog optimization. I really agree with you. Keyword optimization definitely help increase your site’s PR. Once the keyword is related to the site, the better. Your keyword is a part of optimization process, therefore you should consider it all the time. Thanks for sharing this informative blog.
Thanks for sharing this awesome post. Superb post that is very relevant to both new business bloggers and those of us who have been doing it.
Keywords matter a lot and specially now in such a competitive experiment. Low competitive perform very well these days.
The best Option is to do a keyword research through adwords keyword research tool. choose a keyword with almost 20,000 search queries per day and pick no more then 3 keywords. Now Keep the Keyword Density to about 3 but not more then that. It is high probability that if the page has around 200 backlinks and these keywords the page will rank higher in google
Thank you for this great articles. I will try update my blog with as much of your advice as possible. Thanks
Great job ! Friend. Keywords alway the most importing thing for us to find out how to work effectively.
Thank for your sharing
Is there any tips to boost your traffic for free, thanks for this article. It’s a good one.
Very useful article.Right keyword can only bring targeted visitors to our website.Learn lot of new things from your article.
thanks for the great info, i made a mistake on targeting too many keywords on a single post.
Yes Keyword Optimization is a complex issue and a blogger needs to take care of keywords in his post.
Very Effective & Informative Post thanks
Awesome blog
Great tips for blogger’s 
Interesting post, thanks for your tips and insight.
Moderate attention on keywords is alright. But, too much attention on keywords can kill the blog because blogs are little different than normal websites and search engines treat blogs differently.
Reading this post of yours again has made me realize that there are blog owners who do not care about keyword optimization. They just put in the words they like and you know, there are others who put in irrelevant keywords!
The recommended keyword density is 3%-7% according to SEO gurus. And also meta tags seems to be an indicator of being a spammer nowadays so I don’t use them.
I’ve found that putting your keywords in the URL of your blog post is probably the most effective technique you can use.
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