Keyword Strategy: How to Use SEO Keywords Effectively in Every Blog Post

Do the words "SEO keyword research" make you cringe? You hear it all the time, you need to do keyword research. While there are different views as to whether relevant keywords have as much weight as they used to. One thing is still certain, you need to use long tail keywords in all of your blog post. So go ahead and start your SEO keyword research.

Now that you have your relevant, good keywords what do you do with them? You may want to organize your best keywords into a simple blueprint. Placing narrow SEO keywords under more broad SEO keywords to show their relation. This will make it easier for you when choosing which keywords to use in each post. The main focus for each post should be centered around 1 primary keyword. You may include other secondary keywords as well. But these will not be as prominent in the posts. But make sure you are not keyword stacking. Don't use so many keywords that your post does not make sense. This is sure to get you into trouble with Google. It is important for you to write for your readers as much as it is for you to write for the search engines.

OK, so you have your primary and secondary keywords. What do you do with them? The obvious answer is to use them to create keyword rich pages on your blog. There are also other sections in each blog post where your best keywords should be used for maximum search engine optimization.

Let's start at the top of each blog post and work our way down.

The first section - your best SEO keywords should be placed is in you blog title. Your blog title is the first thing people will see in search results, on social media and in your RSS feeds.Your blog title needs to grab their attention. It should make them want to click the link to read more. It is preferable to place your best SEO keywords within the first 70 characters of your title. This is to ensure your keywords show up on search results. If your blog title is too long, some of it may be cut off by Google in the search results. If your keywords are cut off, the person doing the search may not think your site is relevant to their search because they don't see any of their search terms.

Your SEO keyword rich title should also be used in the permalink for each blog post. The permalink is simply the URL for each blog post. It looks like: yoursite.com/blog/post-title. If your blog post title is keyword rich, then the URL for each blog post will be keyword rich as well. This has SEO benefits because it helps in search results. If the post title and post URL both have the long tail keywords people are searching for, they may be more likely to click your link.

For my blog post titles, I like to use what I call a keyword sandwich. When you visit my blog, you may notice most of my blog post titles are structured:

Long tail keyword: Statement long tail keyword

I learned this from EzineArticles as a great way to write article headlines to get more keywords traffic back to your website from search engines. So I decided to use it for my blog post as well.

Next, your best SEO keywords should be used in any headings used in your content. When these sections are bolded and contain good relevant keywords, it adds to the importance of the keywords. But don't force it just to have your keywords in these sections. Your heading and subheadings do need to make sense.

Using headings and subheading allow your readers to scan your content when time strapped. But having the relevant keywords they are looking for in headings will reassure them your post offers a solution or answer to what they are looking for. And they may be more inclined to read the entire post.

Throughout the body of your blog post, you should also be using your best keywords. Your SEO keyword density should be between 2-3%. Keyword density is how many times your keyword appears in your post compared to the number of words in the entire post. You want just enough of your best keywords to show the search engines what your primary keywords are. But not so many that your post doesn't make since. Or you are keyword stuffing. And Google frowns on that.

Also within the body of your post, you may want to use your best keywords as text links. You can link to other articles on your site. Or you can link to other authority sites. Google smiles on internal and external links in keyword rich pages.

If you are adding images to your post, use your best keywords as the alt attribute in your image tags. Alt tag stand for alternate tag. Google does not see images when it is scanning your site. But is does read the alt tags. This is yet another way for your post to be found in the search engines for your keywords.

Alt tags are also used on sites when, for whatever reason, the image can not be displayed. The alt tag will show in place of the image. It lets the reader know there should be an image here and here is a description of that image. One little known use of the alt tags is that they are used for the visually impaired. The visually impaired use software to read the content of your website. This software cannot read images. But it does read the alt tags. So by using alt tags for your images, you are helping the visually impaired have a better experience on your WordPress website.

Now let's talk about the meta data. This is information that is used in the code of your site that Google reads. Don't worry, you don't need to learn code. In WordPress, there are SEO plug-ins that allow you to enter meta data for each post. The two most used SEO plug-ins you can choose from are All-in-One SEO or Platinum SEO.

After you install one of these plug-ins, you will find an additional section added to your edit post page. You should enter in your long tail keyword rich blog post title and a 160 character description of your post in the meta tags sections. There is also a section to enter the keywords being used for each post. It is good SEO practice to enter all the keywords you want your blog post to be found under when searched. These keywords should be specific to that particular blog post. You can enter a lot of keywords here, but don't go overboard. Keep it under 20.

Once you have completed your blog post, you will need to add it to a category on your blog. Your categories should be your best keywords that are subtopics of your overall blog theme. Go back to your keyword blueprint and use the broader keywords as your categories. Each one of your blog post should feature one of your best SEO keywords that fit into at least one of these categories.

The final place keywords should be used is in your post tags for each blog post. Tags are just another name for keywords. But these keywords should be blog specific. Use keywords that are more specific to the overall theme of your site not each post. It's not a good idea to use the same keywords that are used in the keyword section of the meta data.

Here's an example - your blog post talks about how President Obama used social media in his campaign. The theme of your site is online marketing. So you would use President Obama as a keyword in the meta tags section. And use social media as a tag, a subcategory of the main site topic online marketing.

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