If you are looking for answers to finding the best keywords for your blog or website then you are in the right place. I am going to walk you through the process I use, to make sure I am choosing the best Keywords to get the most traffic to my blog post.

What is a Keyword and Do I need to use them?

Now you may already know this but just to make sure, I am going to refresh your memory.

A Keyword is actually several words or a phrase that Google, Bing and Yahoo use to send people to the right place to get the answers they need. They base this on the words you and I use to search for something, but your title is not enough, there needs to be content to back up that title. It also helps to have the keywords in your first paragraph and I will also use them in the final paragraph too.

In answer to, Do I need to use them? then the answer is YES. Using a random catchy title will not rank highly with the search engines because they are unlikely to be searched for by people like you and I. If they are not searched for then google won’t rank them. And we all know that when we search for something we trust Google to give us the right sites and rarely go past page 2 to find a site that will help us.

The internet is vast and sites that have been around a while will have taken most of the most searched for terms in any particular niche so we have some competition. But this does not mean they cannot be beaten and there are still millions of search terms we can capitalise on.

My Process For Finding Keywords

You have a subject matter that you want to write about but now you need to do some research about what people are searching for in relation to that subject.

My first stop is Google itself. Let’s say I want to talk about training my toy poodle. I actually have another website which does exactly that. https://trainingmytoypoodle.com

I head over to google and put in “training toy poodles” and these are my results.

You can see that Google has helped me out with some search terms often used by their visitors. Now I can take this information and see if there is something there I can focus on in my post. Let’s say “training poodles obedience” is something that fits generally with what I wanted to talk about. Notice that google has dropped the toy element of my search. So, not many people specify toy poodles when searching. Now I need some data to help me out with finding out if this title alone is worth considering.

Now, I have a feeling that “Toy Poodle” or even just “Poodle” is searched for less than the word “dog” so I am going to check out my theory by going to the Google Keyword planner. Now this tool is great but it doesn’t give us any actual figures but is good for testing out theories like this. You will also need a google account to access this.

Here are my two results for “toy poodle obedience” and “Dog obedience” which shows me I am right.

“Training toy poodles” has between a 100 and a 1000 searches but is low competition.

“Dog obedience” is better at between a thousand and 10,000 but still considered low competition. However I can see that “dog obedience training” fairs better.

Now I have some choices here. I can go for “toy poodle obedience” or just “Dog obedience” or even “dog obedience training.”

Now I have ideas but what I really need is some fine tuned data to help me make a decision on my title and Keywords. For this you will need a keyword tool. There are lots on the market to choose from but you need to choose wisely. Some give you so much data that you will get confused and you still won’t know if it is worth using or not.

All you need is three pieces of information. 

• How much competition does it have? QSR

• How many searches does the phrase have? AVG

• Does the phrase make sense?

The last is common sense and is something you can decide for yourself but the other two require input you cannot find on your own.

I use a Keyword tool that comes free with my hosting platform Wealthy Affiliate as my first stop.

If I put the exact phrases into the tool these are my results.

So “training Poodles obedience” has under 10 searches a month and 13 competitors. Not really a great option.

“Training Toy poodles Obedience” also has less than ten searches a month but no competitors. This is something I am going to consider as a title as whilst there are few searches, I am going to get all of them and if I write my content well I will gain quite a few customers over time.

“Training Dogs Obedience” also has less than 10 but over a 100 competition. This is a definite no but I have included it here because if you can see in the image the Keyword Tool at Wealthy Affiliate also gives us variations on the words for us to consider.

If you look to the right you can see the word dig. This allows you to see more variations. Now what I am looking for is a keyword or phrase with at least a 100 searches a month and ideally under 30 competition. You will not find keywords with 1000’s of searches a month without their being at least 300 and often many more competitors.

This is what I came up with after no more than 10 minutes of searching. I could possibly find better if I gave it more time, but this exercise was to show you how to find the best Keywords for your blog.

“Dog training obedience” courses is searched on average 136 times a month and has 31 competitors. Now all I have to do is write the content using this as a title and making sure I put it in the first paragraph and again near the end. This should yield great traffic to my site.

Now this tool is only available to premium members of Wealthy Affiliate which is a great platform for building and learning about websites and blogs. The good news is you can join for free with no pressure to upgrade and you can then use the keyword tool for 30 searches. Take a look at my review of wealthy affiliate here if you would like to find out more.

If you want more from your Keyword tool and I have to admit I do, then an external tool you might like is Jaaxy. Again it is free to join and you get 30 searches for free. To get the most from Jaaxy you really need to join at the pro level which is $49 a month but it is so worth it if you are serious about getting the best keywords you can for your website or blog. It gives you the basics but allows you to find a much broader idea of what phrases will rank you more highly. I have reviewed the product in my post What is a Keyword tool if you want to go check it out.

I hope this post has been useful. So many people are told that you need to write Keyword rich posts, meaning put keywords everywhere in your post. Google is much cleverer than that these days and knows if an article is there to help the reader or not. You do however need great keywords in your title so Google and the other search engines can find you. Without a Keyword tool the task in finding them is a long and hard one.

If you have any questions or if I can help you in any way please leave a comment below and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

With Grace and Gratitude

Karen