How to Find the Right Keywords for Your Articles
When you write articles to promote your business, it’s important that your market is able to find those articles. What’s the point of writing an informative and interesting article if no one ever reads it?!
This is where keywords come in.
Keywords are the words people type into Google or other search engine to find information. If you’ve included the right keywords in your article, then your article will probably show up as one of the results.
When I ask my article writing clients which keywords I should optimize their articles for, sometimes they’ll give me a single word like “widget.”
Now, that’s not a very good keyword for anyone to use (even if you really do sell widgets) because there are lots of different kinds of widgets. Let’s say you sell small blue widgets. If someone is looking for a large green widget, they’re not looking for you! Your article will bring much better results if you optimize for the specific widget you sell.
Instead of writing with single keywords, think of writing with ” keyword phrases,” groups of words that specifically describe what your article is about. In the above example, you would want to write with the keyword phrase “small blue widget.”
One more tip: Stick to only one or two keyword phrases in each article. Anymore than that and your article probably won’t make sense, or it won’t rank well for any of your keywords.
Next week, I’ll have some more tips to help you use your keywords wisely. Until then, though, here are two free sites where you can start looking for the right keywords for your next article:
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
www.loweryourbidprice.com/freekeywords/
January 9th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I like how you make keywords so easy to understand. Simple and to the point. Would you be able to possibly post about how you keep keyword phrases that you use organized? For example, I use keyword phrases for many of my blog posts however I haven’t been writing them down or keeping them in a file. What is the best way to go about doing that so I know what I have used before. Thanks
January 9th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Angie, that’s a great question! I’ll do a post on that for next week.
Basically, though, I like to use an Excel spreadsheet for that kind of tracking. A spreadsheet is easy to sort, and I can create columns to help me keep track of how competitive each keyword is, and when/where I’ve used it.
January 9th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Great! I look forward to that post. I have no clue how to use Excel and hubs has tried to teach me before but I can’t seem to grasp it but I do need to know it so I can keep track. I really need to know where I have used those keywords/phrases, that is for sure.
January 10th, 2009 at 11:42 am
I’m back! Would it be possible for you to share a blank copy of your excel spreadsheet with me via email? Or if you could share what I need in columns, hubby can help me put it together. Thanks!
January 12th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
[...] week, I wrote about the importance of using the right keywords in your [...]