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How to Select Keywords for Blog Post Writing

Keywords – you have to get them right. They are pretty critical if you want your posts found by searchers. If you have been blogging for a while, you also know that you cannot “stuff” keywords in an attempt to hit on one or two that will “work.” No, you have to find the right one or two on your own and use only them in a post you write, and only once or twice each. But how to determine the best key words to use?

Tools You Can Use

Until recently, most bloggers used a Google keyword search tool – it was free and really great. But now Google has attached that tool to Google Adwords, and a fee is attached. Take heart, however, because there are still great ways to find keywords with a large number of free keywords tools. Here are some of the best.

Ninja Search Combination Tool: Develop a list of keyword queries and this tool will return to you the popularity of those keywords on Google.

Bing Webmaster Toolbox: Bing has a large supply of keyword tools that are free. While the popularity results are based on Bing searches, the same people search on Bing as do on Google. Your results will be pretty good.

Keyword Discovery: A very cool tool. You will get a table as a report of the most popular keywords based upon your topic selection.

Keyword Spy: This is a commercial site that really wants you to sign up for its package. But you can get a free keyword list up front.

SemRush: If you really want to check up on your competition, in addition to getting great keyword suggestions, this site will help.

SpyFu: Type in any keyword and get immediate results as to its popularity.

A Little Grunt Work Never Hurts

How often do you access the sites of your competitors? You should do so often, especially their blogs. As you read through those posts, you will be able to pick out keywords being used, even long-tai keywords. Then, conduct a Google search using those keywords and keyword phrases that you have “lifted.” What results do you get? If the results bring up competitors that are totally in your niche, you have probably hit upon keywords and phrases you should be using.

And, as long as you are on that page, go to the bottom and look at the “related searches.” You will see some long-tail keywords that may be really good for you to use to. In fact, click on some of them and see what sites come up.

Use Product/Service Terms

What does your product or service do? What problem does it solve? Try to pull keywords and keyword phrases from these, because people often search with questions? For example, “What is the best way to clean my deck before staining it?” If you are selling products and tools to clean wood, like decks, than you can have several blog posts that relate to that problem and use the right keyword phrases.

Search Question and Answer Sites

There are some good Q&A sites – Quora, Yahoo answers, Stack Exchange, Ask Metafilter, and Wiki Answers. You can search by your business niche and you will get the questions that people interested in your niche are asking. Terms in these questions and in the answers too will give you some good suggestions. If, for example, you have an online writing service, you might type that in the search term. You will then see the most popular questions and conversations that are occurring and you’ll pick up such terms as “write essay” or “term paper writing.” If these terms are showing up a lot, add them to your list.

In the End, You Have to Experiment

Finding the right keywords is not an exact science. You will have to use them and “test” for their efficacy. And, popularity of keywords changes, so you will have to make searching for keywords a rather continual process.