Seo Cheat Sheet – Keywords

No no no I’m sorry around numberWhen you write your blog post, do you know whom you are talking to?

That may seem to be an obvious question. But, I’m going to ask again do you know whom you’re talking to. Maybe you’ve decided that it’s easier to talk to everybody. That’s what blogging is all about getting your message across.

Unfortunately, that’s not what blogging is about. You need to be talking to a specific person. You are not just writing for the sake of writing, you need to define why are you writing the specific post.

In most cases writing a specific post, you are trying to draw people to you. Put out your message and your tribe will come. Sadly a lot of you will have made many posts and you still feel as though you’re writing to know one.

It’s entirely possible that this is correct. Without using keywords in your article, or words your potential readers are looking for in Google, you may not be connecting to them.

What are keywords?

The majority of people who use the Internet use Google as their search engine. When they are searching they are searching for a specific thing. For instance, if they type in “how to socialise a puppy”, they don’t want to find an article about hydroponic gardening.

Google wants to ensure that when people type in the search term and they are directed to a specific web page, they will find the information they’re looking for.

Simply put, that means you need to find the keywords your target audience is looking for.

The funnel or the sieve?

Let’s go back to our original premise. You don’t know who you are writing to, or for, but you are writing in the hope that someone will catch your article.

What happens when you write like that is that you are writing to nobody. You are not connecting with specific needs. For instance in the dog niche, the topic dogs is huge.

Puppies are only a small amount of that market. For instance, think of the niche as a wall. A wall is made up of lots of bricks with cement in between.

The sub-niche is in the dog niche are bricks. These could include
Organic dog food
Puppies
How to exercise your dog
Toy dogs
Oral care for dogs
Aggressive dogs

The cement that holds these together is the fact they’re all loosely connected to the large niche dogs. They are sub niches.

So now we know what they are what we do with that information?

Everything starts with a call to action. Everything you write about is informational but the real purpose is to direct your customer through a sales funnel. It might be your sales funnel because you are selling your own products. It could be that you’re an affiliate marketer directing someone to good information.

In this case, the purpose of this article is to show you how to write using keywords that Google recognises. This is a search engine optimisation tactic which allows your readers to find your posts.

But it’s not any old readers; it’s readers who are specifically looking for the information you are providing. If they are specifically looking for what you’re providing, they are more likely to take your call to action.

Let me illustrate this for you. The term dogs have a massive search volume

The term dogs have a massive search volume

Dogs:- 2851048 people are looking for “dogs” a month, there are 472 competing websites.
Small dogs: – 8174 people are looking for “small dogs”, there are 381 competing websites.
Yorkies: – there are 7058 people looking for “Yorkies” a month, there are 339 competing websites.
Small dog clothes: – there are 745 people a month looking for “small dog clothes”, there are 141 competing websites.
Christmas dog clothes: – there are 284 people looking for “Christmas dog clothes” every month, there are 49 competing websites

So it’s quite clear if you are writing an article about dogs either in the big niche or any of the sub-niches you do have related keywords. It would be almost impossible to write an article about dogs targeting the keyword small dog breeds, without using several related terms. They may be the phrase toy dogs or Yorkshire terriers or Yorkies.

These words that are similar are called latent semantic keywords or LSE for short. If you want to expand the use of your latent semantic keywords use ubersuggest
This is a great tool. Not only does it give you similar keywords which you can use to make your content more focus on rich, but it gives you ideas. For instance, if you type toy dogs in ubersuggest, you get 269 different keywords. That’s a massive amount of ideas.

For me, suggest gives me not only keywords but focused article titles which help your search engine optimisation efforts.

Not all of them are suitable as titles but looking through the list I see it says “toy dog collars”. It makes sense that if you’re thinking of buying a toy dog or you have a toy dog, you are going to need a small collar.

Another of the keywords they suggest is “toy dogs for toddlers”. I will expand on that and use the keyword suitable toy dogs for toddlers is an article title.

As you drill down into your niche and understand more about it you can see what people are searching for. People are searching for information about toy dogs and also clothes for toy dogs.

If you continue to write about dogs, the chances are you won’t connect with very many potential readers even though 2851048 people a month are looking for that exact term.

Even if you do connect with them, you don’t know why they’re looking for that term “dogs”. They may want some ideas to buy one. Unless you are selling dogs directly, you are not likely to have a sale from that.

By writing using the term dogs, you are using the sieve method of article writing. You know what is a sieve is in the kitchen. It’s a plastic bowl with holes. When you have cooked something on your hob with boiling water, you may want to strain the contents. You use this implement the sieve it holes in the solid foods and all the water pours out.

That’s what’s happening to your potential readers they’re all pouring out the bottom.
On the other hand, a sales funnel is a visual representation of a funnel. Again from the kitchen, you will be familiar with this tool. It shaped like a V and I want you to imagine it filled with grains of sand. There’s an awful lot of grains at the top these are your potential readers. As they go through your information a large amount will just read one page.

However, some people will be interested enough to click on a related article. This is a much smaller number of people or prospects. Further down one of those prospects in 10 may choose to buy something.

So the sand at the bottom is more compact with the weight from the top. However, this is what you’re aiming at the people at the bottom the people who are buying or fulfilling your call to action.

If you miss these people, you may as well be blogging into fresh air.