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How to Find Your Top 5 SEO Keywords in 5 Steps
What’s an SEO keyword, you may be wondering? It’s the main phrase in your web page that gives you higher search results on Google. When people google that SEO focus keyword, your website will show up in the first few results. Highly-ranked websites on Google search results attract more visitors, which is why SEO is really important.
The internet is full of competitors, and searchers usually only look at the top 3 results. This is why it’s necessary to have a good keyword strategy. If you’re wondering what “keyword strategy” means (since it’s thrown around on the internet a lot), it essentially just means your go-to keywords that you know gets you more Google traffic. For example, creating a list of keywords is a significant step in any SEO initiative.
Keywords are the foundation of your website traffic, and that’s why you need to take time to do your research and make sure your keywords are actually relevant. It can take some trial and error, but once you find your top 5 keywords, your website traffic will soar through the roof.

How to Find Your Top 5 SEO Keywords in 5 Steps

1. The 3 Most Common Keyword Research Mistakes

New bloggers usually make these 3 mistakes when doing their top keyword research:
  • Only researching the SEO keyword once
  • Failing to update and enlarge their keyword list
  • Using keywords that are too common and returns too many results for your site to be relevant
The thing about SEO keyword researching is you have to continue doing it all the time and updating your strategy often. Old keywords have to replaced with new ones, your repertoire of keywords needs to be constantly expanding, and long phrases need to be left out. First-time visitors to your website are looking for the most specific and straight to the point descriptions.
You need to do something different from what your competitors are doing for you to stand out in searches. Good content speaks for itself and paired with good keywords the traffic will come.

2. How to Do Keyword Research

It all starts by typing your keyword in the search engine box. Once you start typing, a bunch of suggestions pop up. Use those as a jumping off point for what people are searching for. You need to ask yourself if your keyword or phrase will be useful in categorizing your content and if it will be easy for your visitors to understand.
There are also websites and programs that help you in keyword research (listed below).
[RELATED: 5 Must-Knows about Social Media and SEO that You Should Never Forget]

3. Use Keyword Research Tools

Here are a few useful tools for SEO research:
  • Google Keyword Planner
  • 7 Search
  • Long Tail Pro
  • Bulk Keyword Generator
  • Seed Keywords
  • Word Stream
These programs provide only your targeted keywords that align with your content.
It also provides keyword data you can count on. It filters the data to give you only what’s actionable and structured.
Some of these websites also use negative keyword tools so you can see most of the negative keywords that are irrelevant to your website.

4. How to Make SEO Keywords Work For You

  • After finding the best keywords, you need to put them in the right places.
  • SEO requires you to include only the best and relevant keywords in the attention-grabbing areas. For example, in the body titles, URLs, or file names. These are places that are highly recognizable even by the passersby who don’t take enough time to read the whole content body.
  • Under each keyword, you need different words that explain that keyword correctly. This is essentially your content. Putting the keywords in your post body and following it up with real relevant content is what makes your keywords actually work.

5. Choose Your Top 5 Keywords

SEO works by keyword grouping. Dividing your most critical keywords into smaller, more manageable categories and narrowing them down to a select few per category reduces your workload and makes your site just that much more organized. For example, let’s say that your website is for a pet store. If you have one keyword group of all the dog-related products, and then one for parakeet related products, it’ll be way easier to find your tags for each product.
So, when choosing your top 5, look for:
  • What people are searching for
  • What gets you the most traffic/hits
  • Your target demographic and the demographics of your searchers
  • Balance between your content relevance and search hits (try to avoid big numbers)
When improving your strategy for better SEO, remember that the focus keyword is more relevant to your traffic than any other thing in SEO. The focus keyword or phrase should be the first part of your title, your slug, and in your meta description. Follow these tips, and you’re well on your way to increase website traffic tenfold!

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