Relationship Marketing | Build Your Online Business

One of my readers recently asked why there was so much emphasis on keyword research when writing content for your blog.

To an experienced marketer this question may seem redundant, but my target market is for beginners or “Newbie Internet Marketers.”  I love questions like this because it was not too long ago that I did not understand the importance of doing keyword research, and even after I understood WHY, I did not understand HOW to do it effectively.  Let’s start at the beginning:

• What are keywords?

Keywords are words or phrases (often called long tail keywords) that people use to search for information online, in any niche.

• How will people find your information (your blog) using keywords?

Search engines use robots to crawl the internet 24/7.  While there are various search engines I’m going to focus on the largest of them – Google – with its Googlebot.

Online marketer, Kathryn Griffiths wrote a Post “A Simple Explanation of How Search Engines Work” that provides a clear and concise summary of this process.

Since the primary way that people find content on the internet is through search engines, you must use the keywords and keyword phrases or long tail keywords that people are using to find information relevant to what you’re writing about in your posts and articles.

• Checking keyword density

You’ve heard the expression “Too much of a good thing?”  This is true of using keywords.  In your effort to increase the likelihood of your post and blog being found among the millions of blogs, you may decide to include your keywords numerous times.  This could have the opposite effect as your keyword density could cause your information to be rejected by the search engines as being “stuffed” with keywords.

Keyword density is the use of a certain keyword per 100 words.  Your goal should be a keyword density of 1%, but nor more than 3%.  Using this as your standard will insure that your readers can enjoy what you write, and at the same time you’ll be optimizing your content for the search engines.

Google’s SEO Starter Guide sums it up nicely, “Search engine optimization is about putting your site’s best foot forward when it comes to visibility in search engines, but your ultimate consumers are your users (or readers), not search engines.”

We will next discuss how to do keyword research.

What else do you think a beginner needs to know up to this point?  Please share your thoughts.