A major part of the Search Engine Optimization activity and largely revolves around Keywords and Keyword Optimization. If you approach Search Engine Optimization in terms of keywords, it is all about researching and choosing the right keywords and using it in the right manner, in the right proposition in your website content.

Keywords form the basic foundation of your website which helps the search engines understand the theme and topic of your website in detail. This eventually helps in ranking your website on the search results for specific keywords to your targeted audience.

In this article, we are going to present you with three golden tips on Keyword Optimization which can enable you to extract maximum SEO benefits for your blog.

Tip #1: Long Tail keywords

Long tail keywords are regular keywords but contain more keywords in the phrase (more than 3 or 4). Long tail keywords help you in narrowing down your search and enable the search engines to retrieve more specific results, much closer to what you are looking for. Since long tail keywords are searched less, it will generally have lesser competition in the search engines. This gives you an SEO advantage and helps your website rank higher on the search results for those keywords pretty much easily.

As a blogger you must try to incorporate more specific long tail keywords in your content that can draw more targeted traffic to your website. This is only possible through in-depth and highly comprehensive keyword research. A detailed keyword research will help you find out less competitive long tail keywords for your website. These keywords may have a lower search volume but it will certainly attract some highly targeted and quality traffic to your blog.

For e.g., If you are a dealer for air filters for Ford SUVs in Chicago then you must choose a more specific keywords (or long tail keywords) in your website content for drawing more targeted traffic. Some of the examples of such long tail keywords would be “air filters for Ford SUVs Chicago” or “Chicago Ford SUV air filters”. Some of the examples of less specific, generic keywords are “air filters for Ford” or “air filters for Ford” or “air filters for automobiles”

Tip #2: Targeting your Audience

After you have researched and shortlisted your targeted keywords, you must incorporate them in your website content in the right manner. It should be done in such a way that your web pages or blog posts show up in the top slots of the search results when your target audience gives a query using a keyword phrase that matches your keywords of your content.

Targeting your audience is one of the most important aspects of keyword research. You must understand who actually, are going to be your audience and then comes your entire work of keyword research and implementation. If you dont understand and properly analyze your audience, then there in no point of writing content or keyword optimizing your website for them.

The keywords should be sprinkled in your website content in the right proportions in the page title, headings and main content of your web pages that matches the search queries of your audience. This will easily bring up your web pages or blog posts in the top 10 results of the search engine results pages. And this is exactly what Search Engine Optimization is all about if you talk in terms of keywords.

The positions of the keyword in the body of the article is one of the most importan part of on-page optimization. As stated earlier, the page title and headings are the most important places where your keyword must be present at least once. Here are some of the most important aspects about Keyword Placement in a nutshell:-

• The keyword must be present in the TITLE of the pages as it holds maximum importance for the search engines. If possible, make the keyword available at the first position of the TITLE. Various SEO research’s shows that the presence of the keyword in the very first position of the TITLE yields much better results in the SERPS.

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Tip #3: Keyword Density

Keyword density is another Search Engine Optimization aspect that will help your web pages to cut through the competition and stay on top of the search results. The ideal keyword density for SEO for your targeted long tail keywords can be anywhere between 1 to 1.5%. Dont ever try to over optimize your site, as Google and Bing are clever than you and will surely catch you if you do some thing unnatural and spammy.

Let me give you can example, how higher keyword density can make your content look extremely spammy to both the readers and the search engines. Suppose you are writing an article of 3000 words with your primary keywords to be ” Dog Foods”, and you take your keyword density to be 5%. Then you will have to use your keyword “Dog foods” 150 times. Now just try to imagine a situation where your readers will find the same keyword “Dog Food” again and again. It will make the article look extremely spammy to both the readers and the search engines and there are huge possibilities of getting your site penalised for keyword stuffing or keyword cloaking.

You can easily find out the keyword density of your articles and blog posts with the help of any of those free keyword density checker tools available on the internet.

But it’s a good thing to keep note of the formula for calculating the keyword density. Here it is.

Keyword Density = Your Targeted Keywords (Divided by) Total Number of Words in your Article (Multiplied by) 100.

I am sure these 3 search engine optimization tips and techniques on keywords will surely help you attain better rankings in the search results and improve your website traffic in leaps and bounds.

Remember that, the right keywords are the basic pillars of your online business. So always be sure to spend enough time in research to choose the most appropriate and profitable ones for your website, which can easily convert dull, cold visitors into piping hot prospects.

Written by Brendan Egan. Edited by Aritra Roy.