The first step to starting a blog is your keywords research, keywords are known as ‘On Page Search Engine Optimization’. This needs to be done before you register your domain name, your domain name should contain the main keywords/phrase. How to find keywords is fairly simple once you know how. There are a number of keywords tools that you can use.

Having the right keywords is critical in bringing traffic to your website. If you target the wrong keywords your site will not rank well and visitors will not find your site. It will not matter how good the content on your site is, without the right keywords all your time and effort will be wasted.

It is important to use targeted keywords rather than broad term keywords. An examples of a broad term keyword could be soup, but if your post is a recipe for pumpkin soup,  pumpkin soup would be your targeted keyword. The advantages of a targeted keyword is when visitors land on your site, the content is more likely to be what they are after. The aim is to get visitors to stay on your site, visit other pages and return at a later date.

Then there is the long tail keyword which is ideal to use to target a specific niche. With a long tail keyword there will be less competition and the search engines will find your site easier to rank and index. For example ‘dog collar’ is a short tailed keyword which has high searches and high competition, it would be very hard to rank well for this keyword. On the other hand there is the long tail keyword ‘cool dog collars’ which has low competition, the searches are not high, but worth targeting.

How to Find Keywords

Google Adwords has a free keywords research tool. Once you have registered and signed in, click on the ‘Reporting and Tools’ tab and in the drop down box click on ‘Keyword Tool’. You can now enter your keyword and search.  This will also show you related keywords and the global and local monthly searches for that keyword. To find the competition you will need to go to Google Search and search by – intitle:”enter your keyword”

Market Samurai is a paid keywords research tool, it is affordable and a one off payment. Market Samurai has a lot of extra features, you can refine your keyword search, check out your competition, check how your site is ranking and much more.

It is not just a matter of finding the keywords with the highest searches, you need to pick keywords with low competition as well. If the competition is high for a keyword it will be difficult to rank for that keyword. It does take time to find the best keywords, but it is time well spent.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool from Google and once set-up tracks your sites statistics. These stats enable you to see where your site’s traffic is coming from, there are three types of traffic.

• Search engine traffic – visitors searching using Google Search (keyword traffic).
• Direct traffic – visitors come to your site using your URL.
• Referring sites – visitors will click on your sites link from another site, social media, web directories etc. You can view these sites under ‘All Traffic Sources’.

The stats show the average time visitors spend on your site, what part of the world they are from. The bounce rate, which is the number of visitors who land on you page and leave without viewing other pages on your  site.

Conclusion -  How to Find Keywords

Before you start your blog make sure you know how to find keywords that will bring traffic to your site. Decide on which keywords research tool you are going to use, take your time and thoroughly research your keywords. Remember your keywords are the building blocks of your site and if you get it right, your efforts will pay off.

My next post will be why generate sitemap and the benefits.

Kerry, Learn to Blog The Easy Way