Keyword confusion??

Please help I'm a newbie!

Keywords to Concepts: The Lazy Web Marketer's Guide to Smart Keyword Research - Moz

Great article on keywords - helped me alot

Write your post naturally. Remember content is king. You don't want your post to look "forced." Just write post with your keywords in mind and it will all come out ok.

Hey Rhoda,

If writing is your not your thing, you can outsource this and get solid, unique content. I personally use The Content Authority For 15-20 dollards, you can get a solid (proper English), unique article with your keyword in it.

If you want more help on how to choose valuable keywords, take a look at Keyword Research - Azimus Group | Azimus Group

Select only those keyword which is very popular in your niche. Always prefer high searches and lower competitive keywords. In some extent yes blogroll helps you in traffic.

Content is King. So write proper keyword density content 3% to 4%.

That's a lot of questions to answer. LOL

Here goes:

1. "...how to go about adding keywords to my post???"
Use your primary keyword on your Article title. Consider placing the primary keyword also in the url and meta description. You can variate it a bit though, for example, main keyword is "How to train a dog in 90 days", url is "how-to-train-a-dog" and meta desription containing the keyword "training a dog". Then use your keyword in your subheadings and in your content. Don't overdo it though, use them when they sound natural in the text.

2. "Should I already have keywords selected before, I write my post?"
Yes, it makes it a lot easier to write and you don't have to purposefully edit them in later on.

3. "Does my post have to focus on one keyword phrase or multiple?"
One primary keyword and then you can use multiple variants of it. A variant is a secondary keyword that has the same meaning as the main keyword. For example: "make soap" is your main keyword, and you also use other similar keywords such as "soap making", "making soap", "how to make soap" etc.

NOTE: in case you are wondering how to get these keyword variants, you can use Google Keyword Planner, which will help you to group the keywords in similar groups. They don't do a really good job though. I'm developing an excel keyword organizer to do just that automatically, so we get all the keywords that are similar grouped together nicely. Let me know if this is something useful

4. "Does each post have to have different keywords?"
Yes. It's not a rule though. It's a good practice to target different keywords on differnt post, when those keywords are not similar to each other. For example, "how to train a dog" and "how to groom a dog".

5. "Do my pages and categories have to have different keywords? How many should I use on each page/category?"
Managing keywords for pages are the same as posts. For categoreis, rather than thinking keywords for categories (which is good btw), but I would think in more general words. For example, categories should be like "Dog training", "Dog grooming", "Dog Diet and Food" etc. One very strong and clear phrase detailing what people can find in that category.

6. "How do I select the right keywords for my blog?"
Good question!
a) A good keyword would be one that relates closely to your blog.
b) It should have a good search volume (I shoot for >1000 avg per month, feel free to move your bar based on the industry you are in, the more specific the niche, the lesser the search volume for the niche keywords)
c) It has a clear intention of what people are looking (e.g. "how to make soap without lye")
d) Has a reasonable amount of competition, preferably low competition. This one is hard to measure, you will need tools like Market Samurai to do it.

7. "Will a blog roll help my traffic and page rank? If so how do I start one?"
A blog roll on your site tells visitors and search engine where they can find other info you recommend.
A blog roll on other peoples' sites with your website link in it does very little in terms of SEO. Google understands placement of links and links found on the footer, sidebar, blogrolls passes minimal link juice to your site. Doing too much of it, like having the majority of your backlinks from blogrolls, can hurt your site as well.

Good luck!

Regards,
Jinghong Chiu