How to Choose Effective Keywords for Articles

As writers, you want your articles to be read by others. To achieve this, you must get your articles in places where people can find them and read them. The most strategic place to have your articles appear is to have them on search engine's first page. But to have this happen you must use effective keywords in your articles.

The reason you must use effective keywords in your articles is so that your articles can be easily found by search engines. You want to appear on search engines' first page ideally in the first position because being placed in the first position make it more likely that searchers for your keywords will click on your article link instead of others.

Two factors to consider when choosing effective keywords

There are basically two factors you need to take into consideration when choosing effective keywords for your articles. The first factor is the number of searches made on your chosen keyword and the second is the competition that exists for that keyword. You must find a balance between these two factors to make your chosen keywords effective to bring the views to your articles.

An illustration of how to choose effective keywords

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For example, if you've chosen the keyword "golf" for your article, you'll find the keyword gets searched 185 million times monthly, according to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. To find the competition for this keyword, go to Google and enter "golf" in the search box. You'll find an equally large number of competition for that keyword with 283 million websites using "golf" as their keyword.

Remember if you still want to use the keyword "golf" for your article, you have to compete with 283 million other websites. Are you up to the challenge?

If you're an SEO expert and believe that you can rank well with this keyword, you may want to use it, as you'll get 185 million hits to your article. However, if you're just starting out, you might want to be less ambitious and choose some other, more effective keywords for your article.

Use keyword phrase or long tail keywords

You might want to use a keyword phrase instead of a one-word keyword. For example, you might want to use keyword phrases like "discount golf equipment" or "private golf courses," which probably have less searches but you can rank well with these keyword phrases as the competition will also be not as much.

Once you've found the keyword phrase which has substantial search with little to moderate competition, you can use that keyword phrase in your article and in the title of your article. This will help search engines to understand your articles.

Consider the competition

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However, to get on search engines' first page is not that simple. You need to consider the competition carefully too. Look at a search engine's first page. For illustration purposes, let's use Google. Look at the first four websites on Google's first page. How authoritative are they? You can assume that websites like Wikipedia will have more authority and therefore is difficult to compete with. Perhaps, it's better to use another keyword phrase for your article if you find that the competition is a little to stiff.

Choosing effective keywords for your articles means you need to look for keywords that have a substantial search with moderate competition and the competition must be one that you can overcome in order to appear on a search engine's first page because that is where the traffic is.