Arguably, the most important aspect of search engine optimisation (SEO) is keywords. But before you can identify the right keywords for your blog posts or webpages, you need to know your audience. You need to understand who your reader/market is, what they search for, and where they look for the information. Your keyword research starts with your readers.

But don’t stress, you will likely already have a good idea of the kinds of keywords your content should be targeting. Start by asking yourself how you would search for the kind of post you are writing or book you are publishing. You can always ask readers who have already found your work how they went about it (which is also a great idea for engagement on social media 😉).

What makes a good keyword?

• Volume: The number of searches for the keyword in a given month.
• Difficulty: How much competition there is for the keyword. Aim for keywords with a difficulty rating under 40.
• Organic click-through-rate (CTR): The predicted percentage of clicks available to organically listed search results outside ads and feature placements.
• Priority: Identifies whether it is a good keyword to target, meaning it has high volume and low competition. Usually given as a score out of 100, so the higher this rating the better the keyword is.

The benefits of long-tail keywords

While the term is ‘keyword’, it would more accurately be described as key phrases. Keywords are generally several words, rather than a single term. It would be almost impossible to rank for a single term unless you were a well-established brand or personality with a very singular name.

Long-tail keywords are, at the most basic level, even longer key phrases than you might expect. These sorts of keywords indicate a very specific intention from the user looking for a highly specific piece of content. Think of them like fan community tags like ‘enemies to lovers’, but even more specific (and longer!)… your book is about lesbian enemies-to-lovers in post-war china? Great! That may well be the perfect long-tail keyword for you (assuming anyone ever searches for it – see above regarding keyword volume).

How do you find relevant keywords for your content?

There are many keyword search tools out there, though most of them require a subscription. So instead of recommending paid-for tools for your keyword research, I am going to focus on a few free options to get you started on identifying the most relevant keywords for your work.

Google Search

That’s right – head over to where most people are actually searching!

Start typing phrases that you think someone might try when searching for content like what you have to offer. Google will begin showing you predictive search queries (usually long-tail keywords!). This will give you an immediate idea of what other people are searching for.

Google Trends

Google Trends is a free tool from Google which allows you to see what people are searching across the globe. It will show you interest over time (volume), interest by region, related topics, and related queries (searches). You can also filter results to show you up-and-coming terms or all-time top performers.

Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner lets you drill into individual keywords, once you have already found a few that you think you would like to go for. You can compare search volume with how difficult each keyword is to rank for.

If you do want some recommendations of paid-for tools, let me know!

Never, ever, use keyword stuffing

While I will keep this post mostly limited to keyword research and discuss writing for SEO in another post, there is one important thing I want you to remember when it comes to keywords. 

If you don’t use keywords in your posts, search engines won’t associate your work with that keyword. But you must never overdo it. Think of keywords like adverbs – useful, but use sparingly.

At the end of the day, your post should be written for your human readers. It only does so much to appeal to an algorithm that shows people your post if when they get there it reads like something written by a robot, for a robot. Don’t just get people to your page, you want them to stick around and buy your books!

Search engines will penalise you for what they perceive to be keyword stuffing, so don’t do it!

Keyword stuffing, as articulated by Google, consists of:

1. Lists of phone numbers without substantial added value
2. Blocks of text that list cities/states/locations that a webpage is attempting to rank for
3. Repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural