Understanding Keywords and Phrases for Beginner Bloggers

Understanding Keywords and Keyword phrases is a very important factor when we are talking about online content.  Although quality content is king, if we do not correctly use keywords and keyword phrases, we will be left without any pages views.  For some of you that will not matter, but for the majority of Bloggers out there, it is of paramount importance for us to be found and read.  And found for the correct niche topic.

So what are Keywords?
Keywords are describer words that search engines will use in order to properly categorize your content within the search engines result page.  What this means is, words like Football or Fishing, or a billion other possibilities are basic keywords.  And if your Blog has a specific niche, you will need to be conscious of the fact that some of these keywords will need to be in your content.

Then, what are keyword phrases?
Keyword phrases, also known as longtail keywords are statements, questions or other groupings of words to help describe your Blog or website.  Phrases tend to be much specialized or focused.  For example, Fishing is a very broad term, but river fishing is much more focused, and river fishing for beginners, is even more specific.

So why use keyword phrases?
If you try to search the term “Fishing”, some very heavy competition is going to show up.  Competition that a beginner Blogger is not going to be able to compete with.   But a term like river fishing for beginners, there is a word with much less competition.  One that a Blogger is going to have much better luck with ranking well in search engine results.

So, how do I find Keywords and Phrases?
Google just so happens to have a very useful tool called Adwords Keyword Tool.  With this tool, you are able to punch in your basic keyword, and from that, Google is going to generate for you, how many times that keyword is searched, and will also give you a whole list of alternate keywords and short phrases, with their traffic values.

So, how does this all work?
Ok, so you now have a basic understanding of what keywords and phrases are, but how are you supposed to use this information?  It is tricky.  I will explain how I usually use keywords as best as I can.

When I start a new Blog, I have a specific topic in mind.  Let’s take this blog for example.  This blog is about blogging.  But the keyword Blogging has way too much competition; I would not be able to compete with that.  So I narrow it down.  I make my blog about blogging for beginners, there is much less competition there.  So, I make sure that all my posts draw some focus to the fact that the overriding factor here is “blogging for beginners”, or, my alternate keyword “blogging lessons for beginners”.  So, The majority of everything I write about here will go back to those basic keywords.

But every post is not going to be called Blogging for beginners or blogging lessons for beginners, that would just be ridiculous.  But it will always come back to that.  In this post, I have focused on “Understanding Keywords and Phrases”, and those are my primary keywords for this specific post, all the while referring back to my primary keywords for the entire blog.

Does that make sense?  It was not something I just learned overnight, and it is not something that people really explain in detail.  For one reason or another, since we are all on the Internet competing with each other in one way or another, some tricks are not completely explained.  Understandable, but it makes it very difficult for beginners to learn what they need to know in order to become productive.

So…What did I learn today?
You learned that understanding your goals and Niche topic is very important when establishing keywords.  That there are tools available to us in order to find good core keywords for our blogs, and for out posts.  And you have learned that it is important to include your keywords within your content, in order for search engines to know how to classify your blog.  If you’re writing about fishing you do not want to somehow show up in off roading or something. 

I hope this helps you and gives you a basic understanding of keywords and phrases.  And come back soon to get more blogging lessons for beginners. (See I squeezed it on one more time, and it’s not too forced)