If you’re new to SEO, this piece is for you. While not an advanced guide, we will cover all the basics of keyword optimization as well as other primary SEO tactics.
Yes, it’s not as hard as it sounds. However, the ease of SEO optimization is also what makes it hard. This means, anyone can do it, but not everyone can do it right. That’s what we will focus on. Not just optimising your site, but optimising it right, without making mistakes which is what you’d need for a successful SEO campaign.
Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
Keywords- An introduction
Keywords are the soul of any text-based article. That’s the strongest metric for search engines to know what any article is about.
While it’s primarily a descriptive metric (describes the content), it has massive impacts on SEO. In fact, a few years back, it was almost the primary SEO metric. This led to it being abused and hence Google started penalizing sites that didn’t do it right.
How to use Keywords right
Yes, there’s a right and a wrong way to use keywords.
The right way includes:
- Finding the right keywords: Before you can use keywords, you need the best keywords you can work with. You need something with low competition yet high search volume.
- Keeping it natural. The keyword should only occur where it’s actually required.
- Keyword density: This is the number of times your keyword appears in your post. Now, this can not be too high or too low. 0.3% is a universally accepted yet also largely debated good density ratio.
- Using LSIs: LSI stands for Latent Semantic Index. In simpler words, it uses the “context” of the words around a keyword to make more sense of keywords. This gives SEO professionals more room to branch out and use variations of the keyword.
- Long tail keywords: These are more specific, longer versions of your primary keyword. E.g. if your primary keyword is “Android game”, a long tail keyword for this is “best android game in 2024 for androids below $1000”. Long tail keywords are one of the best ways to tell search engines what your content is about, and get more traffic that may potentially convert. ‘
How NOT to use keywords
You can only do things right, when you know what’s wrong.
So, using keywords repeatedly, unnaturally, or just spamming it throughout the article is the best way to kill your website.
Also, using keywords just for the sake of using them or as anchor texts is a no-go either. Basically, anything that’s not natural isn’t accepted.
It’s best to hire a SEO service as they take care of not just proper keyword optimization, but everything else that comes with SEO. The most important part is, they’re much less likely to make mistakes as compared to you (or any individual working on their own).
Using keywords for competition analysis
Keywords are a great way to analyze your competition. You can either research manually or use SEO tools to do so.
Basically, you can analyze exactly which keywords your competitors are working on. This often gives you keywords you may have missed.
At other times, you can follow a competitors’ keywords to their backlinks and then secure better backlinks for your content.
Keywords are what define any article’s potential to rank, the time and links it would take and everything else.
Hence, with proper analysis, you’d know which keywords are worth your time/energy and money and which are better left alone.
This helps you invest your resources where it would matter most, instead of simply covering every word that may be related to your primary niche.
Just because your competition is ranking on a keyword, doesn’t mean you must target the same keyword as well. This is where you can shine. The trick is finding related keywords that your competition may have missed, on doable difficulties and grinding them till you outperform your competition .
Define your website and niche
Keywords basically define your entire niche and website. It’s best to stick to one particular industry but I bet you knew about that already.
However, what many don’t pay attention to is URL structure! Make sure to include the best keywords in your URLs. Change them manually if you have to.
Secondly, try to give and receive links only on related keywords. Sure you’re free to use any anchor you like but that’s just not the best strategy.
Other SEO metrics you should pay attention to
Keywords sure are one of the most important SEO metrics, however, they’re not “the only thing” that matters.
You must also pay attention to the following:
- Backlinks: Of course, get links to your articles from other high authority sites, within the same industry & niche.
- On-page optimization: Each article needs to be perfect. Not just the keywords, but the images, alt texts, headlines and everything else.
- Frequency: You may publish the best article on the planet, but if it’s not updated frequently with latest information, it wouldn’t rank. Search engines like fresh data, that’s the core.
- Keep up with SEO updates: Search engines frequently update their algorithms to prioritise one or the other type of content. Keep up with the latest requirements.
Final words- The Benefits of Using Keywords in SEO For Strategic Optimization
I wouldn’t call this a SEO “guide” but I hope you got at least some information here, didn’t you? The trick to tricking Google or other search engines is simple- original, high quality content.
With the advent of AI, you may feel tempted to use AI for content creation. Do not do that. You got AI also means Google got AI, and theirs is way better and smarter. Your AI use will be discovered and may even be penalised in the future.
That’s it folks. Go use some of these tips and see if some difference can be made.
