The Importance Of Keywords And Content In Blogging

Written by Emil Yau Thursday, 14 July 2011 03:54

Today I wanted to write about a big misconception in blogging and search engine traffic.

Today I wanted to write about a big misconception in blogging and search engine traffic.

If you blog just for fun and don't care how people find you or if they find you, then this article may not apply to you.

However, for those bloggers (or website owners) that want to get their site found via search engine searches, then this article is for you. I plan to discuss something I learned the hard way: the importance of keywords over content.

Many people will put up sites and domains that are put together very well with a lot of good content. However, content won't always be the way people find you. Content is what will keep them there ONCE they find you. That is an important distinction to make

Let me make sure you know: content is important. People will not keep coming back to your blog or site unless you provide "value added" content. Think of your readers as your customers and that you want to keep them coming back.

Also, when I say content is important, it's not just quality but it is also quantity and frequency. Keeping your blog updated is very important in both the eyes of search engines and your readers. Writing about current topics also helps your reputation as a blogger that keeps up to date on news and trends.

Keeping your blog updated can be as easy as a very simple post about your day, or you can make it a long post about some throught provoking topic. Either way, keeping your blog up to date will help you rank higher and help you keep your readers.

Even if you do not write well now, just keep doing it. Over time your blogging skills will improve and your writing will improve. It all works out!

Okay, so let's get to the topics of keywords. Let's use a storefront as an analogy. So for example let's say you are opening a store. You have a great layout in your store, great color scheme and design in the store, and you have a lot of great products. Your store is designed so that when people come in they have the ultimate shopping experience. This is your website layout and content. However, how do you get your customers in? This is the idea behind building backlinks and paying for advertising. However, you may have heard that stores can benefit greatly from a large amount of pedestrian traffic. In other words, one important aspect of a store getting "spontaneous" traffic is "Location Location Location".

For websites, the same ideas hold true. You may have a gorgeous website, but to get a lot of spontaneous traffic you will want to rank high in search engines. Search engines is the spontaneous "pedestrian" type traffic of the internet. So as opposed to "Location. Location. Location." we are talking "Rankings. Rankings. Rankings"

How do your rank high in search engines?

With keywords!

Keywords in your backlinks, and more importantly keywords in your content!

My site which currently generates the most revenue was actually an experiment in blogging. This blog is updated constantly every day with a big focus on keywords and it is amazing how well the site has done AND how well it has ranked.

So, what exactly are keywords?

When someone types in words into google, those are keywords. The sites that come up on the first page are sites that rank for that keyword. Keywords can be very general, such as "dog training", or very specific, such as "how to potty train my dog".

Those would two examples of keywords for a site I would put up about dog training, or selling a dog training manual, or selling dog training services.

To determine what keyword you should target, think about what you want people to type into a search engine to find you. From there, you need to rank your site for those keywords. That will help your "Location. Location. Location." aspect of your online business or blog.

There are two very important aspects to keywords, both of which merit their own article. Briefly, you want to make sure your keywords have a high number of searches, and you also want to be aware of the competition.

For search volume, as an example, why spend your time ranking for a keyword "jibbleshmitz" if it happens that this keyword only gets 1 search a month? Sure you will rank, but you will only get one visitor a month. Instead, you may find that the keyword "jibbleshmitzhowdy" gets ten thousand searches a month. That would be a better keyword to target.

For competition for those keywords, now imagine if you put your frozen yogurt store on a block that has only one other frozen yogurt store versus having twenty frozen yogurt stores. The more competing sites for that keyword, the longer it will take to rank (if you do at all). As an example, say there are two keywords you are looking at: "widget abc" and "widget abcde". "Widget abc" gets 1000 searches a month while "widget abcde" gets 3000 searches a month. However, you then look up competing sites and find "widget abc" has 1000 competing sites but "widget abcde" has 13,000 competing sites. You can think of it as how many stores are competing for your business.

There are two ways to think about this: with fewer competing sites, obviously you will have an easier time ranking higher. With more competing sites, it will generally take longer to rank, if you are able to at all. On the other hand, you are maxed out at the number of searches a month. So if you rank for a keyword that only has 1000 searches a month, you are stuck at that number. If you convert 1% of 1000 searches that is 10 sales a month. If you convert 1% of 10000 searches that is 100 sales a month.

Of course you can always go for more than one keyword, and you should. But at the beginning you want to target just one keyword first and then as your blog develops you can target other keywords. I hope this has been helpful. Articles to follow soon: How To Search Keywords, and How To Target Keywords.