WordPress SEO Keyword Myth Debunked

[This is Part 3 of our WordPress SEO Tutorials. Ensure you read the past issues as to get a bigger picture of what we’ve covered so far.]

This article was initially intended to cover wordpress seo keyword research. Unfortunately, like a broken record, I’ve continued to read blogs where the blogger tries to downplay the importance of using keywords/phrases in your content for seo purposes.

Since my intention in this tutorial is to make clear the what, the why and the how of WordPress blog seo, I did decided to write this article to show why you must not overlook the importance of keywords if you want some organic seo rankings.

SEO, Keywords and Creating Content for Your Human Readers!

Tips for small business collaboration

Ever heard the phrase: “Content Is King?” You definitely have!

What about bloggers who, based on that phrase, argues a blogger does not need to concern him/herself with researching and optimizing blog content for keywords?  You know, they want you to simply concentrate on creating good content and allow the search engines decide where to rank your content.

Read things like that, right?

Indeed, it’s clear that those who consider keyword research as a waste of time have in mind the years when black-hat internet marketers gamed the search engines through keyword stuffing.

But frankly that is not what SEO keyword use is about. It’s clear that the search engines have evolved over the years and trying to game them with keyword stuffing would only produce negative effects.

In fact, with the recent Google Panda update, Google now considers human activity on your site as a crucial element for ranking any site. And what will produce this human activity?  The quality of your content!

But does that mean implementing keywords for search engine optimization purpose in your content is a waste of time?

I’m sure you’ve used the search engines to search for information before. What did you do when you searched for that information? Did you simply entered what came to your mind into the search box? Did you not first considered the information you wanted and then entered a phrase which you thought would best describe what you wanted?

Now what you entered is nothing but keywords or better still keyword phrases. This is what all of us do when we use the search engines. When we search for information on the search engines we do so with keyword phrases.  Your content must therefore be able to convince the search engines that it matches the words that people are actually searching for.

This is what effective blog SEO is all about! You should be able to tell the search engines in your content what it’s supposed to rank for! Without that every other thing you would have done to optimize your content would be lost.

This position was made clear in my previous article on how to strategically use WordPress plugins to enhance your blog’s SEO:

“Your blog’s title, description meta tag, content, keyword density and links form the essential SEO elements which the search engine spiders focus on when they crawl your blog. It is the information they gather from these elements that they use when they index your blog.

“Whenever someone request information through a search, the search engines check the keyword phrases used against the information indexed and returns the pages that best suit those keyword phrases. Because of this it’s important that you focus on these elements whatever the niche you’re targeting.”

Blog SEO, Keyword Phrases in Content – An Experiment!

To put what I have said so far to the test and to show that using keyword phrases in your content is very important, I did a little experiment while putting this article together.

I Googled the phrase: “wordpress seo strategy” (without the quotes) and here is what Google returned:

google search results

The graphic above shows the top 5 results for the keyword phrase “wordpress seo strategy”.

Of the 3,760,000 pages Google believes are optimized for that phrase my article on laying the right foundation for your blog’s seo strategy rank #5! And remember this article was written just a few days ago as Part 1 of this wordpress seo series!

Now do you think Google is wrong about this result? Did Google simply and randomly picked the pages shown in that graphic?

Alright, let’s take a look at what Yahoo! and MSN says,

For Yahoo!:

yahoo search results

And, for MSN:

 

msn search results

Ok, Yahoo! returned 296,000 and MSN 513,000 pages against Google’s 3,760,000. But in each of these results, my wordpress seo article rank #5 for Google, #5 for Yahoo! and #4 for MSN!

Surprised? You shouldn’t be! Of course I’ll be talking about the simple strategy used in subsequent articles when we’ll be talking about keyword research and content creation. But for now to let you know the importance of using your keywords right, I want you to take another look at those results.

Can you notice that one common thing with all of the pages returned is that the phrase “wordpress seo strategy” appeared bold in all?

That is the search engines' way of assuring you that the information you searched for is what they have given to you! Seeing those keyword phrases is an assurance  that you are not getting SERPs that talk about what you’re looking for.

Still not convinced that keywords and implementing the right keyword phrases in your content is very important? Still want to believe some “guru” blogger with a list of 10,000+ subscribers who says you don’t need keyword research to drive traffic to your blog?

Ok, that is understandable. He’s a “guru” while I’m not! 🙂

But don’t be deceived. If you don’t have that type of list that brings traffic to your blog, you’d better make the search engines your best friends. And how you can do that is by giving them what they want and they would love you for it!

Keyword Research Empowers You To Create Just The Right Content!

Before I round off this article, let me quickly say that what we have said in this article is the basis of seo keyword research.  Doing a seo keyword research gives you the power to peep into the mind of your prospects so that you can know ahead of time what they really want. With this knowledge you’ll be able to create the type of content that they want to read.

It’s like creating a product. You don’t want to first, create a product and then go looking for those who want that product.

On the contrary, the wise thing is first, run a market research with the mind of knowing what the market wants. With this knowledge you can then create a product your target market would be eager to pay for!

So keyword research gives you the scientific knowledge that removes guess work from your content creation. With this knowledge you can strategically write your content with the keyword phrases “sprinkled” in to help the search engines determine where to place it in the SERPs.

Over to you: Do you consider optimizing your content with keywords as an important element in seo? Do you carry out keyword research when creating your blog content? Share your views with us in the comments below.

Hey, am I asking too much if I request you share this with your friends? Ok, go on and do just that. 🙂

22 Comments
  1. thanks for sharing it.

  2. Well you see.. This SEO, it’s slowly but sure getting its portion more and more in this business world nowadays.

    • @Andrew Walker,

      That’s because marketing online is driven by the search engines – over 90% of the traffic online, that is!

  3. i think that every blogger should need to learn this one! i believe that understanding seo very much would be an advantage for since i have just started blogging and i need to learn more about it

    • @duncan,

      seo is definitely worth learning. You either know how to do it or be ready to shell out some dough for someone to do it for you!

  4. It is very difficult that you have to learn about all these steps of SEO . But this is important thing. I’will should be work on it .Thanks for your kind information

    • @Nicholas Scott,

      Oh, you don’t have to learn it if it is that difficult. You simply need to determine if it is important and if so then learning it will be a joy!

  5. hello there, i would recommend you a full length video in it, so it would be more easy to understand it.
    cheers

  6. Chadrack were you supposed to be impressing me with those images? Well it worked 😉

    Bravo you!

    • @Christopher,

      Frankly, when I set out to write the article it was not my intention but then when I decided to use an example to make things a little clearer I simply entered those keyword phrases into Google and right there was my article. I said wow! And then when I did the same for Yahoo! and MSN I couldn’t just hold it back. And so? Well it does show that what I putting out here in this seo series is something that works!

      Glad that it did impress you 🙂

  7. Hi Chadrack,

    I also believe in the power of keywords. Even with the Panda updates, keywords are still the main indicator of what your website or post is all about. Keywords also make your seo more targeted on your niche. 🙂

    • @Maia,

      It’s unfortunate that many bloggers want to argue that focusing on keywords is not neccessary. What they do not know however is that what they are using in their content is nothing but keywords.

      Yes, they may not be conscious in their use of keywords yet the search engines do judge their content by the keywords used. If that is the case is it not a wise thing to be more conscious in using keywords to get a better advantage?

  8. Actually, your site is currently #2 and #3 for “wordpress seo strategy” at the moment on Google. Well done. However, there are only 3 people per day who search for this phrase on Google. More popular phrases are “wordpress seo plugin” (500 searches per day) and “wordpress seo tips” (80 searches per day). The difficulty is in getting on the first page of Google AND have 500 searches per day for that phrase. In fact, more people search for my name per day than they do for “wordpress seo strategy”.

    • @Russell Davison,

      Currently at #2? That’s outstanding! Never thought it will go that far.

      Now about the number of searches, the fact is that article is not optimized simply for the keyword wordpress seo strategy. Of course within the article there are pockets of other keyword phrases thrown in here and there. I simply used this phrase as an example because while writing the post I did a simple test with that phrase and there was this article.

      Do you mean more people search for your name more than wordpress seo strategy? Then you definitely must be a brand already! 🙂 But what really do you think they are looking for when they search for that name? Don’t you think they only wanted to check on you or maybe the forgot your site’s url and only had to use your name since that will bring up some details?

      Indeed from my blog stats I’ve noticed many times that some visits came through a search with my name. But that will never make me optimize any of my pages for my name. Ok, maybe when I’ve become some celebrity! 🙂

  9. I think you’ve made a great point, which I subscribe to: it seems as though page stickiness is a strong ranking factor, these days. Which actually makes sense, too:

    If a website is any good, visitors will hang around and read several pages, maybe leave some comments and subscribe (as I’m doing just now with your blog, BTW).

    On the other hand, when a website is spammy, bounce rates will tend to be high, and visitors will leave after a few seconds. As such, using this variable (website stickiness) to ascertain the quality of a website is actually a sound reasoning, if you ask me!

    • @Pedro Cardoso,

      That’s the point. The interaction on your site shows your human visitors regard your content highly. And you know the search engines wants to give the best to those using them for getting information. This is why a site’s stickiness is a great point to note.

      And thanks for the comments. Can see you spend some time here. Glad to see you around. 🙂

  10. When I started blogging with wordpress, theme seo didn’t matter much as I had limited knowledge of it. But now after reading more about it. I started wonder if there is an ultimate blogging theme that can help me attain on-page seo readily. With so many thousands of themes to choose from, I am getting a bit confused which one could work best for my serps. Or does it really matter!

  11. There are indeed some ultimate blogging themes that can magically boost your rankings for some of the hot keywords in your niche, if you spread your content well.

  12. You can analyze your page after every change you make in your pageusing this amazing service. http://www.w3optimizer.com

  13. The plug-in generates an XML sitemap that you would submit to Google. It does not appear that this plug-in creates sitemap user pages, however there are several other plug-ins that generate those.

  14. The dynamics of blogging are well suited to marketing ventures, because blogs can provide a lot of useful information and attract a lot of interest from consumers.

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