Optimizing your site or page for words that people don’t use doesn’t make any sense. That’s why you have to do proper keyword research. You’ll have to get inside the heads of your audience and find out what words they use while searching. There should always be a keyword strategy behind the keywords you pick. Keyword strategy and keyword research are the most important elements of your SEO strategy.
In this Ask Yoast, we’ll answer a question from Jill Nadeau out of Boston, US. She asked:
Read this transcript to learn more about keyword strategy:
“If keyword strategy is still a thing, is kind of an open-ended question. Yes, keyword strategy is still a thing. Actually keyword research and keyword strategy are still the most important parts of SEO. If you don’t get that right, if you don’t get right what you’re optimizing for, then you really shouldn’t look at anything else, because why are you even optimizing?
You’re probably asking, because Google says they think more about topics and all these things. That doesn’t mean that people don’t still search for keywords. So, even though you have to think about broader topics and keyword research has become slightly harder – because you have to think about a topic better – you really, really, really need to do your keyword research well and keep doing it as you keep on optimizing your site. Because otherwise you will be optimizing
for nothing, which is a shame.
Good luck!”
Ask Yoast
In the series Ask Yoast we answer SEO questions from followers! Need help with SEO? Let us help you out! Send your question to ask@yoast.com.
You want to rank on the words that are used a lot in the search engines, right? Justin Bieber is a term that is used very, very often. So, should we all start writing about Justin Bieber then? The answer of course is: (please) no. In this post, I explain why blogging about Justin Bieber – or other highly competitive terms – probably isn’t the best SEO strategy for you.
Attracting traffic is only step one
Let’s just imagine for a second you would be able to rank for a highly competitive search term as ‘Justin Bieber’. You’d appear in the top of the search results with your post about Justin. Unless you actually are a Belieber and have a site about Justin, attracting traffic on the search term ‘Justin Bieber’ is pretty much useless, though. People searching for ‘Justin Bieber’ want to read content about Justin Bieber. If your website is about flyfishing, barn animals or SEO plugins for that matter, the beliebers won’t stay on your website. They do not want to read your content or buy your products. These people are not your audience. Ranking on search terms simply because they’re popular doesn’t work, unless these terms are popular among your audience and in yourniche.
Competitiveness of terms
Let’s be honest. Not every site will be able to instantly rank for Justin Bieber. Highly competitive terms are hard to rank for. That’s why our advice is to start out with focusing on those long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are more specific and less competitive. If you have a site selling pencils and pens, trying to go after ‘pencils’ as a search term may be a competitive market. You could start out by trying to rank for ‘pencils for drawing’ or ‘pencils for writing’, depending on what you’re selling specifically. If you’re able to rank for those longer and more specific search terms first, you could then aim to rank for the more competitive ones (in your niche).
Another benefit from focusing on long tail keywords is that these terms usually convert better. People using specific terms in their search behavior already have a pretty good idea about what they want. If they find the thing they’re looking for on your website, the chance they buy your stuff is rather high.
Conclusion: don’t blog about Justin unless you are a Belieber
Blogging about highly competitive terms only to rank in the search engines is a completely useless SEO tactic. It will be really, really, really hard to compete with all the others focusing on these terms. Ranking on these highly competitive terms is therefore very hard. More importantly, ranking on these terms will probably not attract the audience you want to attract to your website.
You should do your very own keyword research. Find out which terms are beneficial for your site to rank on. Find out which words your audience is using while searching for your products and similar products. That’ll attract the traffic that will actually stay on your site!
The effectiveness of every content SEO strategy largely depends on the quality of the keyword research that has been executed. If you optimize for words that nobody searches for, you won’t be found. If you optimize for terms that are much too competitive to rank for, you won’t be found either. In this post, I explain why you should start with keyword research and how you can make sure your keyword research generates optimal results.
Optimizing for the right words
Every audience uses specific search terms. It’ll make quite the difference whether you’re selling hair products for teenagers or for middle aged housewives. These two target audiences are likely to use different words to search the internet.
Sometimes a marketing department decides to give their products a certain name. That can be a smart marketing decision. It can be a way to make people remember your product. For example, you don’t sell wine but you sell ‘adult grape juice’. Or, you don’t rent out vacation homes, but ‘vacation cottages’. Be aware that very few people search for ‘adult grape juice’ or ‘vacation cottages’. If you optimize your text for these terms, you’ll probably rank well on these specific terms. However, you won’t generate a lot of traffic with these terms and you’ll miss a large part of your potential audience.
For SEO purposes, you should always optimize a text for the words that are used most often by your audience. You’ll have to get into people’s heads for that. Use tools like Google Trends to find out what people are searching for (and which terms they are not using).
You’ll never instantly rank in niches you’re no expert in. When you’re just starting out in a certain field, optimizing for the most highly competitive keywords is not going to work. You won’t be able to rank on those terms.
If you’ve just launched a site with beautiful new vacation homes in the South of Spain, you shouldn’t aim to rank for ‘vacation Spain’ at first. Find your niche and go for less competitive (and more long tail) search terms like: ‘luxurious vacation home Costa Blanca’. Once you’ve started ranking and attracting traffic on these long tail keywords, you’ll be able to aim for some more head terms as well.
Yoast SEO helps you to optimize your content for a specific focus keyword. In Yoast SEO you can enter a keyword and if you optimize your post or page well, you get rewarded with a green bullet. Whether you’re going to generate traffic to your site largely depends on the focus keyword you choose. Words that aren’t used by your audience will perhaps be easy to rank for, but won’t generate a lot of traffic. On the other hand, choosing very popular keywords and trying to rank in a highly competitive niche is hard. You don’t just get there by getting a green bullet in Yoast SEO.
Sadly, a green bullet in the SEO analysis of Yoast SEO doesn’t guarantee traffic. If your focus keyword is badly chosen, you probably won’t generate that much traffic with it. That’s why the most important step in your content SEO strategy is to execute proper keyword research and to make smart decisions on which keyword to tackle first.
At Yoast, we’re currently developing new metrics to better assess the readability and the SEO score of your text. In the latest update of Yoast SEO Premium, you’ll find Yoast Insights. You can see which words are most prominent in your blog post. These words can be a great source of inspiration for your keyword research. Perhaps you could write another post about one of these key phrases. Perhaps you could try and optimize this current post, adding one of these phrases to our multiple focus keyword functionality box. As long as you won’t forget to start with keyword research and focus on the words you want to be found for most, Yoast Insights can provide useful additions to your keyword strategy.
Get help to start with keyword research!
At Yoast, we do our very best to help you optimize your site for the search engines. Keyword research, however, is something you’ll have to do yourself. But we can help you to start with keyword research!
Our SEO copywriting training, contains a module about keyword research. In this module, you’ll learn how to execute proper keyword research. As part of this module, you’ll have to complete an assignment in which you’ll execute your very own keyword research. You’ll receive personal feedback afterwards. From now on we’ll offer this module (including the assignment, and some extra material) as a separate course as well! Check out our Keyword research training for more information.
Keyword research is the very first – and most important- step in any content SEO strategy. It’s also the one thing we can’t automate or execute for you. On top of that, it’s super hard. What we can do, is give tips and feedback on how to execute proper keyword research. That’s why we launch the Yoast Keyword research training today.
The Yoast Keyword research training is part of the SEO copywriting training as well. We decided to sell it as a separate course to serve those of you that know how to write properly, but could use some help with their keyword research.
The Yoast Keyword research training is a small course. It contains 3 modules (Introduction to keyword research; Executing keyword research; Beyond keyword research) and costs $99. You’ll receive 4 training videos, lots of accompanying texts, and challenging questions to make sure you understand everything.
In one of our training videos, Joost de Valk explains step by step how to execute your keyword research and how to prioritize the keywords you would like to tackle first. After this video, we’ll ask you to do an assignment. You’ll receive feedback of one of our Yoast team members.
After finishing the Yoast Keyword research training you’ll be totally able to execute your own keyword research.
Certificate and badge
If you finish the Keyword research training successfully, you’ll receive a certificate and a badge to put on your site.
Copywriting is a crucial element of every SEO strategy. High-quality content is what helps you rank and sets your site apart from all the other sites out there. So, you’ll want to do SEO copywriting the right way. Preferably without making any fatal mistakes. Want to know what not to do when you’re writing SEO copy? Let’s have a look at five mistakes to avoid!
Are you struggling with more aspects of SEO copywriting? Don’t worry! We can teach you to master all facets, so you’ll know how to write awesome copy that ranks. Take a look at our SEO copywriting training and try the free trial lessons!
1. Not starting with keyword research
SEO copywriting always starts with keyword research. Now, it may be tempting to skip this time-consuming task and just wing it, but that can seriously harm your chances to rank! You can write tons of awesome content, but if it’s not optimized to rank for realistic search terms that people actually use, it won’t help you one bit. So, always take some time to think about the terms you want to be found for. Take keyword research seriously, it’ll definitely pay off.
2. Forgetting about search intent
Before you start writing, as you’re doing your keyword research, it’s also crucial to take a good look at search intent. You need to have a clear idea of the kind of intent that’s behind your keywords. People could be looking for information, a specific website, or they might want to buy something. Why is search intent important for SEO copywriting? Well, for example, if you write sales-oriented, persuasive copy for a keyword that only has informational intent (rather than transactional) odds are you won’t rank. You simply won’t answer the searcher’s needs. Or, even if you do rank, visitors will likely leave instantly because they’re looking for other types of content. You don’t want that!
The solution: as you’re doing keyword research, analyze the SERPs, so you have an idea of the intent behind the keyphrases you’re targeting. Write your content accordingly, giving some thought to your text purpose, tone of voice, length and call to action, for example.
3. Not using synonyms
Search engines these days are incredibly smart: they understand that some words can have the same -or similar- meanings. Use that to your advantage! Don’t stuff your text with contrived occurrences of your exact focus keyphrase. Instead, make sure you use synonyms of your keyphrase. Not only will that help avoid repetition – which makes texts boring and hard to read- but you’ll also increase your chances to rank for related keywords!
In short: don’t make the mistake of neglecting synonyms and related keywords or keyphrases. Did you know that Yoast SEO makes optimizing for synonyms and related keywords a lot easier? The Yoast Premium plugin finds your focus keyphrase, even if the words appear in a different order in the same sentence. In addition, it allows you to optimize your text for synonyms and related focus keyphrases. That makes the plugin (almost) as smart as Google. I guess the real mistake here is not getting Yoast SEO Premium ;-) .
4. Not thinking about the user’s perspective
Something that often goes wrong in SEO copywriting: content that’s solely written from the site owner’s view, without taking the user into account. No wonder, as it’s very hard to forget everything you know and put yourself in your user’s shoes. Nevertheless, it’s important to try! You’ll soon realize that your user won’t really care about your product-related jargon, or why you think your product is awesome, or your blog post interesting. They want to know what problem of theirs you will solve, or what they will get out of reading your blog post.
Here are two short examples to give you an idea of the difference:
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Which of the two appeals most to you, as a user? It’s probably the second one, right? Think about that when you’re writing your own SEO copy!
Bottom line: don’t make the mistake of neglecting your visitor’s perspective in your SEO copy. That also includes writing too much ‘I’ or ‘we’ in your content. Make it about your user, not yourself!
A final SEO copywriting mistake that people often make, is that they write posts that are hard to understand. A huge missed opportunity! If you make sure your it’s easy for everyone to understand the message of your text, you’re opening up your content for a wide audience. That’s why writing a clear and readable text is a considerable part of your SEO copywriting strategy. People should be able to understand what you want to tell them. If you create copy that’s easy to comprehend, people will be less inclined to leave your site. They might even want to read your next post.
We know writing is hard. But there are things everyone can pay attention to to write a nice, clear text. Don’t use too many long sentences. Avoid using many difficult words. If you write for more than one region, check if you didn’t make any confusing mixups. Check whether the structure of your text is clear. The Yoast SEO plugin helps you with the readability analysis, which includes the Flesch reading ease score. And there are other tools out there to help you write texts that are nice to read, such as Hemingway. So, there are no more excuses not to write a lovely, readable text!
Conclusion on SEO copywriting mistakes
SEO copywriting mistakes are made when people focus too little on the quality of their texts and skimp on preparation. But your rankings will soon pay the price… So make sure each text has an original idea, a story, that’s well-thought-out, factoring in the site’s visitors. And, your copy should be nice and easy to read. It’s a lot of work, but Yoast SEO can help you get on track! And, if your copywriting is starting to look good, you can check for other common SEO mistakes!
Copywriting is a very important element of every SEO strategy. High-quality content is THE thing that’ll help you rank and that’ll set your site apart from all the other sites out there.
You probably want to do SEO copywriting the right way. Without making any fatal mistakes. So what SEO copywriting mistakes should you definitely avoid? I’ll tell you all about it in this post.
SEO copywriting always starts with keyword research. Take some time to think about the terms you want to be found for. You should take keyword research seriously. It can be rather daunting, but it’ll definitely pay off.
One of the biggest SEO copywriting mistakes people make is to write content purely for SEO reasons. Content is King. Content will probably help you rank the fastest way possible (providing you have some important technical issues covered). But content should NEVER be written only for SEO purposes.
Think about what you want to write about. Consider your audience. Define a message. You should write high-quality content based on original ideas. That’ll be the content that will drive traffic to your site. That’ll be the content that will convert visitors into customers!
Learn how to write awesome and SEO friendly articles in our SEO Copywriting training
Do not go overboard with mentioning the term you want to rank for. Do not mention your focus keyword in every sentence. Your text will become really awful to read and your audience won’t like that. Above that, if you over optimize your text, you’ll also risk a Google penalty. In our SEO plugin, we allow 2.5 percent of your text to be your focus keyword. More than 2.5 percent focus keywords will result in an orange bullet. A keyword density higher than 3.5 percent will give you a red bullet. So, we’ve got your back in this one :-).
4. Focusing on only one focus keyword
Don’t focus too much on one focus keyword. Try to rank for multiple keywords, key phrases and synonyms. Especially if you’re trying to rank for a certain long tail key phrase (like ‘vacation home Southern Florida’) try to use a different word order every now and then. Otherwise, your text will become really weird to read. The Yoast SEO premium plugin actually has great functionality, helping you to optimize your text for multiple focus keywords.
A final SEO copywriting mistake that people often make, is that they write difficult or dull posts. We know writing is hard. Nevertheless, copy should always be nice and easy to read. Don’t use too many long sentences. Avoid to use many difficult words. Check wether the structure of your text is clear. Make sure people understand the message of your text. A big part of your SEO copywriting strategy is making sure you are writing a clear and readable text. People should be able to understand what you want to tell them. If you succeed in creating copy that’s easy to comprehend, people will be less inclined to click away. They might even return to your site to read your next post.
Conclusion on SEO copywriting mistakes
SEO copywriting mistakes are made when people focus too little on the quality of their texts. Text should have an original idea, a story. And, texts should be nice and easy to read. You should optimize your text for the search engines without making any concessions to the quality of your text. Perhaps it’s possible to mention your focus keyword yet another time. However, if the sentence becomes awkward, you should decide to leave that focus keyword out.
It can be hard to pick the right tags for a post. But they are important and that’s why we’ll explain how you can choose them. One of the most difficult things to do, as your site becomes bigger, is creating and maintaining a logical site structure. Tags and categories can help create that structure, allowing people to easily find posts that interest them.
When you use tags the wrong way, you can even make it harder for people to navigate your site. This isn’t just bad for users; using tags in the wrong way can be detrimental for your site’s SEO as well. Here, we’ll first dive into what tags do, followed by a good process for choosing them.
What happens when you add a tag?
When you add a tag to a post, that post is added to that tag’s archive. For instance, we have a tag page for keyword research. When we add a “keyword research” tag to this post, it’s added to that archive. That is, of course, very useful: when people click on the keyword research tag, they’ll find a complete overview of all posts on that topic. Also, Google will understand all the posts in this archive belong together.
When you add a tag that hasn’t been used before to a post, WordPress automatically creates a tag archive. If you tag very liberally, adding 10-20 tags to each post, each of them unique to each post, you’re creating dozens of archive pages.
If each of those archive pages only has 1 or 2 posts on them, they’re not very useful. First of all, they won’t help users find other related posts. And, secondly, they won’t help Google understand what your site’s about. In the past, we even saw plenty of sites that had an overload of tag pages get hit by Google’s Panda update.
From this we can conclude:
You shouldn’t add too many tags to a post.
You shouldn’t use tags that don’t relate the current post to any other post on your site.
You shouldn’t make up tags; they should be existing words or phrases. Words or phrases people search for. That’s why we’d advise performing keyword research first. In our Ultimate guide to keyword research, you can read how to go about that, step by step.
Optimize your tag page
You can even optimize your tag pages to try to make them rank well too. Our Yoast SEO plugin will help you with this. The content analysis will not only check the content of single blog posts or pages, but it ‘ll also run a check on your tag page. As a result, you’ll get detailed instructions on how to improve the content on it.
How to further optimize tag and category pages we explain in this extensive article on category SEO, so please check that out too. What you should remember is that when you’re doing your keyword research, deciding that something is going to be a tag is a valid choice!
Find related content with tags
There’s another advantage of tagging posts properly. When you’ve written a post and you’re wondering which other posts to link to, you can quickly browse through the tag that new post belongs to. This will help you find posts that you can link to from within your current post, to help visitors find related content even more easily. (If you think that’s too much work, you might want to consider using our Internal linking tool for that)
Go through them regularly
When you’ve chosen the right tags and tagged your posts nicely, you’re done for a while, but not forever! Your site structure, just as everything else on your site, requires regular maintenance. You might think of new topics to write about or the focus of your business might shift. So make sure to go through your tags regularly, remove redundant ones and check if you’ve added any new topics you’re writing about.
Choose your tags carefully
When you write your blog post, think about your tags thoroughly. Don’t make it a 2-second afterthought. They’re important for visitors and Google! The good thing about thinking about your tags is that it also immediately helps you find other posts to link to. Good luck with your tagging!
Thinking about the keywords you want to rank for is really the first and foremost step you need to take for your SEO strategy. Still, keyword research can be quite daunting. So, which keyword research mistakes should you avoid at all times? In this post, I’ll take you through the most common keyword research mistakes people are making. Being aware of these mistakes helps you set up a successful keyword research strategy and avoid practices that harm your rankings.
Some people seem to think that they can forego keyword research, or that it’s no longer important. Doing proper keyword research can indeed be a tough, time-consuming process. And it’s true that ranking high isn’t just a matter of stuffing the right keyword in your text, and it hasn’t been for a long time. But skipping or winging your keyword research means you create content without a single idea of what your potential users are looking for. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you’ll just instinctively know what your audience wants.
It’s still crucial you take some time to really dive into the language of your audience. Which words do they use? What terms do they search for? Which terms are competitive and which less so? The result of your keyword research should be an extensive list of keywords you would like to rank for. Make sure to update your keyword research list or sheet regularly. Your audience may change, as could your business focus and business needs. That has implications for your keyword strategy as well.
Make sure you aim for realistic keywords. Some niches are very competitive. Ranking in competitive niches is hard, especially if you’re just starting your website or business. If you’re just starting out, you shouldn’t aim for the competitive ‘head’ keywords (yet). Instead, focus on long tail keywords (which are easier to rank for and have a higher chance to convert).
For instance, if you have a fitness center and start a blog about fitness, it will be too hard to start ranking for the term [fitness]. Find out which aspects of your blog are unique and try ranking for those terms. Perhaps you write about fitness exercises for retired people. Aiming to rank for [fitness routines for retired people] could be a good strategy. In that case, you should also aim for [fitness tips for seniors], [fitness exercises for retirees] and so on. If you have been around in your niche for a little longer and you successfully rank for long-tail keywords, you could aim to rank for more head terms as well. Ranking for competitive keywords should be part of a long-term successful keyword research strategy.
More than ever, taking a good look at search intent is a crucial part of keyword research. You need to have a clear idea of the kind of intent that’s behind your keywords. People could be looking for information (informational intent), a specific website (navigational intent), or they might want to buy something (commercial or transactional intent). And that’s not all there is to it, as search engines aim to give users the exact answer they’re looking for. In other words, if your content doesn’t match searcher’s intent, it probably won’t make it to the results pages, no matter how great and well-optimized it is.
So, it’s important to evaluate whether the content you plan to publish for a certain keyword is in line with what people are looking for. You can do that by looking at the search results. Do the types of intent match? What answers do people want? Is your content in the right form? For instance, if you wrote an extensive DIY post to rank for the term [wedding decorations] and all you see in the results pages is online stores selling wedding decorations, it’s time to rethink your strategy. Check out this post about writing intent-based content for your keywords for more information on how to do that!
4. Using irrelevant keywords
This mistake is partly related to the previous one. If you don’t look at search intent, you’re more likely to optimize for words that potential visitors or customers won’t use. Two things can happen: either you do offer something people are looking for, but these potential visitors simply use different keywords and therefore won’t find you. Or, your keywords are too long tail and don’t get any traffic.
The keywords you aim to rank for should be the same words your customers use. Always try to use the language of your audience. Imagine yourself selling dresses for gala events. In your marketing, you refer to these dresses as ‘gala dresses’. However, most people do not search for [gala dress]. They search for [gown] or [evening dress]. You won’t get much traffic for the search term [gala dress] compared to the search terms [gown] or [evening dress].
As you can see, a lot more people are looking for [gown] and [evening dress] than for [gala dress]
The second problem could occur when you focus on long tail keywords that are so obscure they simply don’t generate any traffic. Long tail keywords are a great way to start your keyword strategy. These words attract less traffic, but you’ll have a higher chance to convert your visitors into buyers or returning visitors. People that use specific terms, to search for exactly that thing you’re writing about, are just a very good match. However, if your keyword is too specific and doesn’t bring in any traffic, it won’t help your SEO. So make sure you aim for long tail keywords that actually generate some traffic!
5. Focusing on only one keyword per post
If you write a nice blog post, its ranking opportunity may not be limited to one exact keyphrase, but includes related terms as well. So, if you can optimize for related (long tail) keyphrases without stretching it, you should definitely do so. For example, we have a post about timeless SEO tips. It’s optimized for [timeless SEO tips], but also for the similar phrases [universal SEO tactics] and [universal SEO improvements], and it’s doing quite well for each of these keywords.
Not sure how to optimize your content for related keywords and synonyms? Our Yoast SEO Premium plugin can help! It allows you to optimize for related focus keyphrases, and also gives you the option to define synonyms for your focus keyphrase, so that it can take them into account. Awesome, right?
6. Not checking whether you should use singular or plural
Always check if you should target the plural or the singular form of a specific keyword. Should you aim to rank for [ballet shoe] or for [ballet shoes]? Do people search for [holiday home] or [holiday homes]? While Google can recognize that the plural and singular versions of a word refer to the same thing, the search result pages and the number of results are often still different, because what users are looking for differs slightly.
In this case, again, it’s important to think about the intent of people searching for your keyword. Someone looking for the singular version of a keyword may be looking for information, while someone looking for the plural version could be looking to compare products and/or buy something. In any case, whether you should use a singular or a plural depends on your specific keyword and its intent, so take that into account.
7. Forgetting to evaluate
If you aim to rank for certain terms, make sure to check whether you succeed. You need to evaluate regularly if people actually find your articles. One way to do that is googling your proposed focus keyword every now and then. But be aware that your search results may be biased because Google has personalized search. So, use a private browser session, or a tool like https://valentin.app/ and check if your article turns up in the results. If you forget to evaluate, you won’t know whether you could aim for more competitive keywords or you should focus on long tail variants.
Conclusion: avoid these mistakes for a successful keyword research strategy
Executing keyword research takes a lot of time. It’s important that you take that time and really think about the terms you want to rank for. Read Keyword research: the ultimate guide for lots of practical tips that’ll help you to set up a successful keyword research strategy. And if it’s starting to look good, you can check for other common SEO mistakes as well.
Keyword research is the first step in the SEO copywriting process and an essential part of your SEO strategy. Before you create your website’s content, you have to find out which search terms your audience use. Their search terms are your keywords. Based on these keywords you can start writing useful and high-quality content. Here, we’ll take you through the many steps involved in keyword research.
Keyword research is part of SEO (search engine optimization). It’s the work someone does to come up with an extensive list of keywords for which one would like a website to rank. To obtain such a list, website owners need to dig into their desired audience and search engines: Which search terms do people type into Google when looking for their products, service, business or type of organization? And what do they expect to find? With this list, website owners can create content on their site that will attract more, high-quality traffic. Keyword research is never finished: repeating it regularly is essential to stay up-to-date!
Proper keyword research is important because it will make clear which search terms your audience uses. At Yoast, we frequently came across business owners who used one set of words when describing their products, while their target audience used a completely different set of words. As a result, potential customers couldn’t find those websites, because of a mismatch in word use.
For instance, sometimes, a marketing department decides to give a product a not-so-common name. This can be a smart marketing decision: People could remember your product more easily. If you rent out vacation cottages instead of vacation homes, you might stand out. But beware: Very few people search for [vacation cottages]. If you optimize your text for these terms, you’ll probably rank well on these specific terms. However, you won’t generate a lot of traffic with these terms and you’ll miss a large part of your potential audience because your audience uses other words.
You’ll understand that it doesn’t make any sense to optimize for words that people don’t use. Thorough keyword research makes sure that you use the same words as your target audience and this makes the whole effort of optimizing your website far more worthwhile. In addition, by looking at search intent, you find out what exactly your audience is looking for. Those queries should get an answer in the form of quality content.
A focus keyword or keyphrase is the word or phrase you want a certain page on your site to be found for in Google. You’ll determine a set of focus keyphrases by doing keyword research.
If you want to easily optimize a post or page for one of your keyphrases, you can enter this phrase into the focus keyphrase input field for a post or page with the Yoast SEO plugin. It will provide you with feedback on how to optimize your content for this phrase to improve the chance of ranking.
Long-tail keywords are more specific and less commonly searched for than, so-called, head keywords. They focus on a niche. The longer and more specific search terms are, the easier it will be to rank for them since there will be less competition. Even though there are less people searching for these terms, they might be more motivated to buy, subscribe, sign up or whatever you’d like them to do.
Your keyword strategy is about the decisions you make based on your keyword research. For instance, what content are you going to create first? Will you focus on the head or tail? How and where will you publish it? Will you create a piece of writing, a post or a product page, a video tutorial or an infographic?
Digging into search intent is key here: you have to discover what a searcher actually wants or needs. You’re not just looking at keywords, but the underlying goals of what a searcher wants to know, do or buy. Your content should provide a solution to the searcher’s “problem”. This is also known as content design.
How is keyword research done?
We believe there are eight crucial steps while carrying out keyword research. Here, we’ll guide you through this process step-by-step, and we’ll give you practical tips to easily start your own keyword research.
Determine your mission
Before starting anything, think about your mission. Reflect on questions such as: What is the main goal of your business or organization? What makes it special? Who exactly are you trying to reach? And, what promises do you make on your website? Take your time and literally write down your mission. Once you’re able to answer these questions in detail, you’ll have taken the first and most important step in your keyword strategy.
The market you’re in determines whether your mission will prove genius enough to rank high. Some markets are highly competitive, with large companies dominating the search results. These companies have huge budgets for marketing in general and SEO in particular. Competing in these markets is tough, so ranking in these markets is also going to be tough.
Perhaps you sell cruises to Hawaii. You offer great facilities for children, making the cruises especially suitable for young or single parents. Offering the best cruises to Hawaii for young parents could very well be what makes your service unique. So, look for the thing that makes your product stand out from the competition. This should be your mission, your niche – and this is what you have to offer your audience.
If you’re launching into a competitive market, your best bet is to start out small. Once you ‘own’ a small part of that niche and become a bigger name in the business of cruises to Hawaii, you could try to level up and sell your cruises to a larger (more general) audience. Your mission will then become more general as well.
Make a list of keywords
The second step is creating a list of your keywords, preferably in a spreadsheet, such as Google Sheets or Excell. With your mission in mind, try to get into the heads of your desired audience. What will these people be looking for? What kind of search terms could they be using while looking for your amazing service or product? Which of their “problems” does your product solve? Write down as many answers as possible. If your mission is clear, you will have a pretty clear image of your niche and unique selling points (the things that set your business apart from others). These are the terms you want to be found for.
Research your keywords
After you’ve created this first list, it’s time to dive a bit deeper into your keywords. Luckily, there are some tools that make your keyword research a bit easier.
The first is Google itself. Google the keywords you already came up with and check the searches Google suggests while you are typing. Those are the questions people actually asked Google! You can also check out the “related searches” on Google’s results page. Or, have a look at our Yoast suggest tool or Answer the public. These tools will provide you with all kinds of variations of your keyphrases, synonyms and related keyphrases. In our post on keyword research tools you’ll find more details on how to use these and other tools.
Check these tools out and add all the keyphrases to your list!
Don’t forget the long-tail
When people start out with keyword research, they tend to focus on very popular “head” terms. Unfortunately, those head keywords are mostly taken by large businesses. Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, get less search traffic, but there’s less competition too. Therefore it’s easier for you to rank on those keywords. Moreover, long-tail keywords even have a higher conversion value, as they focus more on a specific product or topic: a niche!
A long-tail keyword often is longer and more focused than a head term. If your head term is [puppy training], a long-tail keyword could be [positive puppy training for Labradoodles in Amsterdam]. Using the tools mentioned in step 3 will also help you find more long-tail variants of your keywords.
Don’t forget to add the long-tail keywords to your spreadsheet too. Put the head terms in the first column and add (multiple) columns for more long-tail keywords. This will help you with creating a proper site structure later. The more long-tail your search term is, the further down into your site structure the term’s landing page belongs.
Analyse the competition
Whether you should go after long-tail keywords largely depends on your competition. If the competition in your niche is high, you’ll have a hard time ranking on competitive head terms. If you have little competition, you’ll even be able to rank for head terms. So you’ll need to do some benchmarking for SEO.
Google the keywords that came out of your keyword research. Start with your most ‘head’ term. Check out the search engine result page (SERP). These are the websites you’ll be competing against once you optimize your content for such a keyword. Take a closer look: Do you see professional websites? Company websites? Are you ‘equal’ to these companies? Does your website fit among these sites? Is your company of similar size and does it have as much influence in your niche?
It’s harder to rank when you’re competing against sites with strong brand-names. If brands are known from TV or radio commercials, your chances to rank high will become even smaller. But it won’t hurt to take a look at their content. Is the content well written and well optimized? If your competition really has poor content, you might have a chance to outrank them!
Also, take a look at ads in Google. Are there any? If you have a Google Adwords account you can check the pay-per-click. Search terms that have a high pay-per-click are usually also harder to rank for in the organic results.
Make sure to make notes in your spreadsheet about your findings for the keywords you’ve investigated!
Take a closer look at search intent
Today’s SEO strategies should, for the most part, revolve around answering the questions people have or providing the best solution for their “problem”. Whenever someone enters a search query into a search engine, they are on a quest for something. Every type of question needs a specific answer.
Try to find out which intent your audience when they type a certain keyphrase into Google: Do they have an informational intent (try to find information on a specific topic), navigational intent (want to access a specific website), commercial intent (want to research something before buying) or transactional intent (looking to buy something right now)?
You can learn more about the search intent of certain queries by looking closely at the type of pages that already rank for that query. Do you mostly see product pages? Do you see a lot of informational blog posts? Do you see videos? Or, do you see a mix? These are all hints to what Google assumes the search intent of a certain query is.
Find out which kinds of intent apply to your keyphrases and, again, add your findings to your spreadsheet!
Determine a keyword strategy
Based on the data you’ve collected now, you can determine a keyword strategy. If you’ve followed the steps above, you should have a spreadsheet with a substantial amount of keyphrases, and information about the competition and the search intent of your audience for those keyphrases.
Now think about this question: how does my website hold up, compared to the websites in the SERPs? Are you of equal size and marketing budget: go ahead and focus on those head terms. If not: try more long-tail keywords first. Focusing on a whole bunch of long-tail keywords combined could very well attract a lot of traffic. Once you’ve managed to rank for those long-tail keywords, aiming for more head terms will become a bit easier.
When you’ve decided where to jump in, think about the type of content: What was the search intent for my keyphrases? What is my audience looking for? But also, which content can I create that isn’t there yet, and how can I stand out, in terms of quality or providing solutions? This will help you decide on the type of content you’re going to create.
Start constructing landing pages
In theory, this step is out of the scope of keyword research itself. Nevertheless, creating awesome landing pages is, of course, essential if you want to get traffic to your website. So, you’ll need to build landing pages for your search terms, but you don’t have to create all these pages immediately – it can be a long-term effort. Your keyword strategy will help you prioritize.
This all might sound pretty straight-forward, but we know it’s a lot of work and easier said than done. When put to practice, you might bump into some common issues or questions. Here we’ll give some tips to make it work!
Want us to guide you through keyword research step-by-step? With videos, quizzes and other training material? Take a look at our keyword research training, part of our online SEO training subscription, and let us help you carry it out!
Prioritize your keyword list
How many keywords should you have? Well, we can’t tell you the exact number of keywords you should have, but we can tell you that you need a lot of them – as many as you can think of. However, more than 1000 keywords are probably too many! Even if you’re a reasonably small business, you’ll probably end up with a couple of hundred keywords.
But there’s no need to create pages for all of these straight away. You can add content bit by bit. Think about what keywords you want to rank for now – perhaps the more long-tail ones? – and which ones aren’t as important right away. Understand your priorities and plan the creation of your content.
A focus keyphrase and its synonyms only need one page
In the past, each of the keywords you wanted to be found for, got its own landing page. Today, however, search engines are so smart that they mostly use search intent to give searchers the best answer to their questions. The page that answers those questions best will rank on top. Search engines also understand subtle differences between keywords so you don’t have to create landing pages for all subtle variations, like synonyms, of a keyword.
Check out results for singular and plural keywords
Should you aim for the singular or the plural keyword? Well, this depends on the query. As Google is learning more about search intent of your query, it is able to better guess what you’re looking for. For instance, if you search for book, you get a different result than if you search for books. Apparently Google thinks that in the first case you’re looking for a definition or certain stories, in the second case it believes you’re intending to buy a book. So make sure you know what you offer on your page and that it fits with the query and results Google gives on that query.
Yoast SEO Premium has word form support, so it automatically detects all the different forms of your focus keyphrase (known as keyword stemming). So, you no longer have to optimize your post for a specific word form. Optimizing your post has become a much more natural process. However, there are reasons why you’d still want to optimize for a very specific word form of a keyword. In this case, you can put your focus keyphrase in quotes: “best books ever”. Yoast SEO will now only take that exact focus keyphrase into account when checking your content.
Use a keyhrase only once
Beware, you should not use your exact focus keyword more than once. If you do, your rankings might suffer from keyword cannibalization. Google has a hard time distinguishing between content that’s very alike. Therefore it might rank very similar posts or pages lower.
Did you find out you’ve already used the same or very similar keywords or keyphrases on various posts and pages? Then, it probably makes sense to audit your content and perhaps merge/delete/redirect some of it. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to solve keyword cannibalization issues.
Try, evaluate and try again
Once you’ve done a thorough analysis of your chances to rank on a specific term, the next step is to write an amazing article and optimize it accordingly. And hit publish, share it on social media and in your newsletter. Make sure you’ll attract some nice backlinks. And wait a little while. Check out your rankings. Does your article pop up? Did it hit the first page of Google’s SERPs? Or is it hidden away on page 2 or 3? Make sure to evaluate your articles in the SERPs. Google the terms you’ve optimized your articles for. Check whether or not your efforts are paying off!
If you’re not able to rank on the first page, try to write another article, focused on an (even) more long-tail keyword. Make it a little bit more specific, more niche. And see how that goes. Evaluate again. Continue this process until you hit that first page of the SERPs!
Quick keyword research
In an ideal world, you would do your keyword research, make a beautiful table and create landing pages for each one. Your site structure would be flawless and you would blog and write every day making your site rank higher and higher in Google. But, we live in the real world.
Of course, your keyword research will not always be as extensive. And some posts or articles aren’t written as part of an awesome strategy, but just because the topic was in the news or something inspired you to write it. That’s just how these things work. But this doesn’t have to be a problem.
If you’re writing something that doesn’t exactly fit your strategy, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to make that content rank. You could still use it to rank for something related to the terms in the list of your keyword strategy. Use tools mentioned in step 3 and Google Trends to quickly check which keyword you’d like to rank for. At least, take some time to think about how to make your article or blog fit your strategy. After all, if you are writing valuable content, you might as well make it rank! In our focus keyword article, you’ll find more tips on how to do keyword research on the fly.
Keyword research should be the start of any sustainable SEO strategy. The result will be a long list of keywords for which you’d like to be found. But the hardest part is still ahead: writing all that content. You should write articles and blog posts on every single keyword you would like to be found for. That’s quite a challenge. Check out our Ultimate guide to SEO copywriting to get started!
SEO copywriting can be a daunting process. What are the things you most definitely should do in order to write readable and SEO-friendly content? And, what are the things you should definitely avoid? In this article, I’ll present the most important do’s and don’ts in SEO copywriting.
SEO copywriting do’s
Do: Use Yoast SEO content and SEO analysis
We’ve made a tool that’ll make SEO copywriting that much easier. We check both readability as well as the SEO-friendliness of your text in our Yoast SEO plugin. Make sure to use our tool if you want to write great content that ranks.
Do: Use synonyms
Don’t use your focus keyword over and over. Your text will become unreadable and you will be risking a Panda penalty if you are stuffing your text with keywords. Make sure to use synonyms of the keywords and keyphrases you want to be found for!
Do: Adapt to the language of your audience
Make sure your text is adapted to the audience you’re writing for. If you write about LEGO and focus on kids, your text should be easy to read. But, if your audience consists of scientists with a Ph.D., it would be ok if your text is much more difficult. Also, think about your use of words, whether or not you’ll address your audience directly. Adapt the tone of voice of your article in such a way that it fits your audience.
Do: Balance your focus keyword
Balance the use of your keywords throughout your text. You should definitely mention your focus keyword a couple of times (don’t overdo it though). Usually, a keyword density of 1 to 2 % is fine. On top of that, you should make sure your use of keywords are balanced throughout the text. So, don’t put all your keywords in the first paragraph, but mention it a few times throughout the article.
Do: Use internal linking
Make sure to think about linking to similar articles. Maybe you have a cornerstone content article on a similar topic. Link from your new blog post to that cornerstone article. Perhaps your new article is the best one you have written in a long time. In that case, make sure to add some links to this new piece in your previous articles.
Learn how to write awesome and SEO friendly articles in our SEO Copywriting course
Make sure your call to action is clear and that people will be able to click from your article to other places on your website. What do you want people to do after they’ve read your article? Do you want them to buy something? Do you want them to read another article?
Of course, your keyword research should be leading in deciding what to write about. However, don’t try to write an article about a certain topic and try to rank for it by optimizing it for a totally different keyword. Topic and keyword should be pretty much the same. It shouldn’t be too hard to optimize for a certain keyword. If you’re feeling awkward about using a keyword too often, perhaps the topic of the post and your focus keyword aren’t aligned.
Don’t: write boring
Make sure you have a writing style that’s appealing to your audience. Don’t start every sentence with the same word. Mix it up a little! Try to vary between long and short sentences and long and short paragraphs. Use synonyms. Adding examples and jokes could also help to write a text that is fun to read.
Don’t: too many characters in one line
You should really limit the length of your text lines. In Readability: the Optimal Line Length, Christian Holt mentions a number of suggested text lines, stating these should be 50 to 65 or 75 characters. That’s about 10 tot 15 words, which from our experience, is indeed a good read.
Keyword stuffing is a definite don’t. If sentences start to read really awkward because of the use of your focus keyword: stop! You are using it too often. If it doesn’t feel natural to use the word you would like to be found on in a text, then you are over-optimizing. Never do that! Your text should always be nice to read.
Don’t: create duplicate content
Never use the same content on your website twice. That is, not without using a canonical URL. Otherwise, search engines will get confused and will not know which location to show. It could really hurt your rankings. A canonical URL allows you to tell the search engines that certain similar URLs are actually one and the same. If you do it this way, your ranking will not be harmed by duplicate content
