I received this question recently:
If I create content for our company (articles for magazines, social media posts, etc), do I need to try to use KEYWORDS within the text as much as possible? And if yes, is there an online tool / website to check how well I did my job before I publish it?
Here’s my answer:
- Brainstorm and research as much as you can about your topic.
- Ask your sales managers how they describe the service when they talk to people on the phone; write down all the phrases they mention.
- Jot down all the phrases and questions you think people will enter into a search engine for your topic.
- Check the monthly search volume of your phrases using a tool such as SEMRush or Searchmetrics or Ahrefs. Or use free SEO research tools.
- List of tools: https://www.shoutmeloud.com/best-keyword-research-tools-niche.html
- See Neil Patel’s blog for free research tools: https://neilpatel.com/blog/10-free-keyword-research-tools-to-help-plan-your-new-site/
- Via SEMRush blog: https://www.semrush.com/blog/12-free-keyword-research-tools/
- Check search intent by entering the keyphrase into Google. Analyze the results you see:
- Are you seeing some of your competitors? That’s good. You are in the right space.
- Are you seeing dictionary or encyclopedia or university links? That’s not good, if you are a commercial company.
- Look at the Google results and try to understand the search intent.
- See this SEMRush blog: https://www.semrush.com/blog/how-to-identify-intent-in-search/
- Map out the structure and SEO elements of your article.
- Outline the topic you want to target.
- Write a draft meta page title and meta description.
- Write a draft Heading 1 (H1).
- List out the questions you want to answer in your article.
- Questions are typically Heading 2s (H2).
- Answers are a paragraph or a bullet list.
- List out the keyphrases you want to target in the body text.
- List articles that you want to use as inspiration for your SEO writing process.
- Avoid copy and paste. Google is not dumb and can find out if you copy and pasted from another site.
- Review SEO research before starting to write.
- Start SEO copywriting process and include all SEO elements.
- Include main keyphrase in your meta title tag, meta description, H1, add complementary keyphrases in H2s and body of the text, add alt texts for your images.
- There are several tools that you can use to check the keyword distribution and density in your article. I’ve used Ryte.com, Moz, and there’s a new AI tool called MarketMuse that I am testing.
- Important: Write for humans. Make the article useful. Think about the phrases people will use to find this article.
- Track traffic and keyphrases in a tool like SEMRush or SearchMetrics or Ahrefs or Ryte.com or similar. There’s quite a choice.
Hope you find this list useful.
