How Important are Keywords in Blog Post Headlines?

[Michelle Strait]

I know its important to include keywords in article headlines, but what about blog posts? The headlines on sites like Copyblogger and Problogger never seem to be optimized for a specific keyword. Here's where I'm confused. If the blog post isn't keyword optimized, how will it rank in the search results?

[Joshua.E1]

That is a very interesting question.

For professional blogger like Problogger and Copyblogger, they started off with a different approach.

They go in for the niche of the niche, that is the long tail keywords.

Of course they also write blog post on how to overcome a particular problem on blogging or copywriting.

They have raving fans that will come as long as they provide good quality content, even if they did not really do any keyword research for their post

They will always do, check out problogger asking questions and getting feedback to him. That's how he writes his blog.

Remember that blogging is for you to socialize with others in the first place, that is why there is the comment box for others to comment.

As for putting keywords in the title of the post is still what most Internet marketers who knows some basic SEO will do. Its alright to use keywords in your post title.

The next thing to do is your categories, these are the areas that your major keywords of your niche should be in.

Do your keyword research well initially for your blog an you will rank well very fast.

By the way, I recently bought Keyword Research Pro and it has help a lot in my research, you may want to check out my review on keyword research pro here.

[Paul Hancox]

Hi Michelle

Sites like Copyblogger have the luxury of tens of thousands of subscribers, and lots and lots of backlinks.

However, if you're attempting to build up an authority blog from scratch (as I'm currently doing), then keyword optimization is CRITICAL.

Let's say you wanted to get a Top 10 spot for "dog pooping examples".

Probably your best bet would be:

Title: Dog Pooping Examples - Blah Blah Dog Pooping Blah
Post URL: yourblog.com/dog-pooping-examples/
Keywords: dog,pooping,examples,blah,blah,example,etc
Description: If you want to see dog pooping examples, then this article will blah blah

Use the exact phrase "dog pooping examples" in the first sentence of your description, and in the first sentence of your blog post, and maybe 4 or 5 other times throughout the article.

In my opinion, you'll optimize your chances of being ranked if you do these things. Of course, it will depend on how much competition you have. There was a whole thread which discussed this, it's a crazy long read, but well worth setting aside an hour or two to read the ENTIRE THREAD:

Article on site or EZA first ?

This will open your eyes. Basically, I use the above technique to optimize for EzineArticles, but if you do something similar with your blog posts, you can get them highly ranked, depending on the competition, and how well you have selected your keywords.

[Michelle Strait]

Thanks for the answers. They helped a lot. But I did have a hard time reading "dog pooping examples" without laughing.

[Dave Ryan]

Yes you should shoot for the long tails as mentioned above. Don't over-due it though with your posts. Some other things to keep in mind:

Make sure your blog is optimized so each post page is like a page for the title of your post... Including all meta data.

Use related terms for your sub-section titles within each post as well.

If you use images in your post, make sure those are optimized as well.

You internal linking structure needs to line up with your SEO strategy as well. Having each post link to keyword targeted related posts works wonders.

Take care,
Dave