Have you made a list of keywords for your blog? Good for you! Now it is time to get your hands dirty. This part of the process can be frustrating and rewarding at the same time. It will take a little bit of patience, but once you get the hang of it the rest is cake.

Keyword Tools

Your first research project is to use a few keyword tools that will help you determine how often your keywords are searched. Let’s start with an online tool by Wordtracker.

Simply type your keyword in the Keyword: box and click “Hit Me” (there is an option to remove offensive words as well).

I typed in the word blogging and these are the results:

Noticed that the word blogging by itself generates 490 daily searches.  That word may be a little too competitive for my small blog.  Looking at the results, I notice that blogging tips generates 88 daily searches.  This might be a better niche.  Other phrases that interest me are blogging guides (66), define blogging (50), explain blogging (38), blogging advice ( 31), tips on blogging (20), blogging for dummies (17) and blogging how to (9).

This does not end my search for the best keywords for my blog.  I have to now turn to a familiar tool – Google.  Each keyword and/or phrase must now be searched in Google to determine how many pages exist for that particular keyword or phrase.   Here are my results:

Notice that the term blogging may have the most daily searches, but there is also the most competition for this keyword with over 61 million pages.  The next term – blogging tips – is also highly competitive with almost 2 million pages.  The third term – blogging guides – looks like a much better fit for me.  The term is searched 66 times a day and only 239,000 pages were found.   Some of the other phrases are also likely to be a good fit.  Stay away from tips on blogging.  With only 20 daily searches and over 31 million pages, this would not be a good phrase to choose.

My quest is not quite over yet.  I also check my results with Digital Point – Keyword Suggestion Tool. This tool will tell you the daily numbers for searched keywords from WordTracker as well as Overture.  You will notice that there are different keywords and phrases listed and that Overture has larger numbers.  The Overture data is based on more searches.

Again, look at the results, do some Google searches, and determine the best keywords and phrases for your site.

Here are the simple steps so far:

• Write down keywords and/or phrases for your blog
• Search those keyword and phrases in Wordtracker and Digital Point
• List the keywords and phrases that look good to you
• Use Google to determine which of these keywords and phrases have a lower competition rate and might be best for your blog.

Next:  How to use keywords in your blog.

Recently, I mentioned that using the post slug feature when writing a post can result in good search engine results for your blog.  How do you find the right keywords to use for the post slug or for a title for your post?   The answer is – Research!

There is no quick scheme for finding niche keywords you must relay on using keyword suggestion tools and good old fashioned leg (or finger) work.

I find that choosing keywords for a blog differs from a website.  First of all, your blog may be about many different subjects.  You may have blogging tips, recipes, personal stories and news items spread throughout your blog.  This is very different from a website whose only goal is to sell pet supplies.   However, you should come up with at least a dozen different keywords that describe what your blog is about.   For example, I might choose words such as blogging, blogging tips, beginning blogging, etc., for my blog keywords.  I open up a text editor and type each of these terms in the editor.

In that same text editor, I also write down keywords of topics that I would like to use in future posts.  For instance, this post is about keywords.  I might write down keywords, choosing keywords, seo, search engine optimization, etc.  Since I will probably write more than one article about keywords and search engine optimization, part of my research will be done for future posts.

You should now have a good list of keywords.  Your next step will be to research the keywords that you wrote down.   Stay tuned for Part Two of this series which will cover using keyword tools and search engines to narrow your choices.