How To Choose The Best Keyword For SEO Purposes?

If you’ve read my posts about SEO, then you know that one of the most important parts is the keyword research, which should also be the step before every post. But how exactly do you choose the best keyword?

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Short-tail vs Long-tail

The short-tail keyword is the one with only one or two words, while the long-tail keyword is the one that has at least three words. For example: writing and writing tips are short-tail keywords, while writing advice for beginners and top 10 best tips for writing are long-tail keywords. Basically, your specific niche is probably a short-tail keyword.

As a general rule when it comes to working on your SEO, is to use long-tail keywords because there are already well-established websites that have a strong rank on short-tail keywords, with millions of views, therefore the search engines will always show them first. If you try to rank on them by creating some posts around them, you won’t be as relevant as they are because they have the historical performance to sustain the idea that they are the best fit for that search.

A strategy for finding long-tail keywords

Finding long-tail keywords involve two things: a short-tail keyword and a keyword research tool. In the keyword research tool there is a dedicated section where you can search your short-tail keyword. You will receive the results for it (e.g. how many people are searching for that keyword on a monthly basis; which website pages are already using that keyword and so on), including a difficulty score for ranking on it. The higher the score, the harder it is to rank on it.

The good thing is that the tool will provide some suggestions for other short-tail and long-tail keywords and you can sort the results based on them. You are interested in keywords that have high monthly searches and low difficulty scores.

If you cannot find something good (meaning with a difficulty score lower than 30 and search results over 500-1000 per month), then you can try searching for other keywords.

Another strategy for finding long-tail keywords

Another strategy is to search for a short-tail one in that same keyword research tool and look for the well-established websites. Then grab that URL and use the tool to find the keywords people use to enter that website. Then check the keywords and choose the proper one for you.

The good thing about a great keyword research tool is that they will allow you to search for URLs as well, not only for keywords.

Bonus strategy

For finding good long-tail keywords, you can use free resources as well. Write your short-tail keyword on google and pay attention to the suggestions it gives you. Those are basically long-tail keywords people are searching for every single day. Of course, the downside is that you don’t know how many do it or how hard it would be to rank on them, but it is a good start if you don’t have a budget for a keyword research tool at this point.

How do you find your keywords?

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PS: If you’re serious about writing and you want to have a long-lasting website that stands out of the crowd, check out one of the best SEO tools out there, Mangools.com, and get on the first page of search engines. You can find my full Mangools review here).