Keyword Research for Blog Posts

Before we start in on today’s topic, we want to make a little disclaimer. The point of blogging, or any content creation on the web, should not be to draw in search engine traffic. You are creating this content, whatever it is, for people. Keyword research and other SEO considerations are secondary to the purpose of entertaining, informing, or otherwise helping real humans.

That said, let’s talk SEO!

Depending on the type of blog post you’re writing, the focus of your research will be slightly different. For an informational post that seeks to educate and answer potential customer questions, you will be trying to figure out what kind of questions people have with regards to your products (probably things like price, quality, options, availability, alternatives, etc.). For a news-focused blog post you will be trying to discover what type of news people are most interested in. For a lifestyle focused or personal post you may want to look for popular queries within your area of experience (fashion? home remodeling? personal development?).

In any case, you are providing information to an audience. What does your audience want to know? What do they need to know? What words are they using to try to find that information?

Here’s how you figure that out:

• Start with the basics - For most products or services, the most common questions will revolve around how and where to get it, and how much it costs. Answer those questions clearly.
• Use your own analytics - It’s not uncommon to see traffic coming to your site from people searching for information related to your products even when you aren’t specifically providing it. You might see people searching for a helmet sizing chart, for example, even when you only provide some basic sizing information. That is a clear opportunity to create the resource people are looking for and capitalize on traffic you’re already getting.
• Check out your industry’s main news sources - Where do insiders in your field go for news about the industry? Chances are, there are blogs, online magazines, and other industry publications available online. What are the hot questions or customer concerns being addressed there?
• Visit forums or other online communities - Search Google for, “your topic” + “forums” should uncover a good number of online communities dedicated to your area of interest. BoardReader.com is another good option for finding active groups. Checking forum threads for questions and active topics is a great way to develop content ideas related to a niche industry.
• Look at what the competition is providing -  There are probably more than a few companies blogging or otherwise creating content in your space. An easy way to analyze their content and see what is playing well with their (potentially your) audience, is to use BuzzSumo. Just input the site you would like to research and it will show you the posts that are getting the most social media exposure:

Titles Carry Weight

You want to put your most important (relevant) keyword right in the title. A lot of people just type their question, or at least an abbreviated version of it, right into the search box. Using their question as your title is a good way to match up with those searches (and it implies to the reader that you are going to answer that question - making them more likely to click).

Returning to the motorcycle example from past emails, let’s say you sell helmets and you want to write a blog post about how much someone should expect to spend on a new one. Two good titles for that post would be:
“How Much Should I Spend on a Helmet?” OR “How Much Should a Motorcycle Helmet Cost?”

A quick check with Google Keyword Planner shows the people don’t really use the word ‘spend’ very much when searching for helmet pricing info (and more extensive research would bear this out):

Using that information as a guide, you would probably want to use the second title: “How Much Should a Motorcycle Helmet Cost?”

Of course, there’s a good chance that people are also searching for question phrases like “how much should I spend on a helmet”, but they just don’t get enough traffic in an average month to appear in Google’s tool. In this case, adding that phrase as a subhead (and using an H2 or H3 tag in the HTML of the page to highlight it) in your post would be a good way to include that keyword.

By doing this your post would address the issue of helmet prices in general, and also include advice on how much people should be looking to spend depending on the performance and safety levels they are looking for. That way all of your customer questions, and keyword bases, are covered.

Within a blog post you have a number of options, aside from the title and subheads, to work in a few keywords. Within the body of your content is probably the most obvious. But you also have things like tags (if your blogging platform supports them), and image names and alt text.

If you happen to include a link to another piece of content you’ve written within your post, linking to that page using relevant keywords is another good opportunity (just don’t go link crazy and over do it - use natural language).

As we mentioned in the last email, generating ongoing blog content like this is a great way to target new keywords. But how do you make sure you are maintaining the rankings you already have?