Choosing Focus Keywords

[Lulus_Likes]

Hello everyone!

I am new to the community and I have a question about determining keywords. I have created a blog {LulusLikes.com} to practice my SEO.

I have installed the Yoast SEO plugin and I have noticed the plugin always encourages you to choose a different focus keyword. So if my focus keyword is "Dog of the Week" and it's a weekly contest, wouldn't that be my focus keyword each time I had that type of post?

How should I choose my focus keyword for that type of post?

I hope that makes sense. Thanks!

[Lulus_Likes]

Thank you so much! This is the best explanation I've gotten so far!

[evolvingSEO]

No problem

What you would want to do is learn a little about site architecture, and how different pages will target different thing. Think of a sire like Zappos:

• homepage - targets something broad like "shoes" and "shoes for sales" etc
• shoes categories - target things like "men's shoes, men's dress shoes" etc
• subcategories - "men's dress shoes black"
• finally products - "size 9 men's dress shoes black"
• even resources - "how to choose the most comfortable men's shoes"

So your homepage should target the broadest concept / keywords. Then you might have category pages targeting things slightly more specific. Then your posts would target informational searches of very specific things people are looking for.

[evolvingSEO]

Hi There

We were just saying the type of content being created seemed like a very good fit for sharing on social media.

I'd say if it's your goal to be practicing SEO - that process and SEO work should start way before writing a new blog post and entering a focus keyword. You would want to begin everything with keyword research. This helps you determine what to create content about to rank for things.

You may also want to learn a little about how different pages should rank for different things - and your homepage should target your main over arching topic. This will be usually the broadest, most highly searched term.

There's some great resources on keyword research:

http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/keyword-research

http://backlinko.com/keyword-research

http://www.copyblogger.com/keyword-research/

[Lulus_Likes]

Yes, I think it is safe to say that ALL of my traffic is from social media since I just started and have a tiny little following. But, I would like to learn how to get traffic based on my SEO. I really appreciate you breaking it down for me. That makes sense to find a "gap" and fill it with content.

So if I'm not so much focusing on one single keyword per post, should I focus on adding overall keywords through out my whole website? Like incorporating "dog clothes" or "dog fashion" into all my posts? I know not to stuff keywords, but if I can organically incorporate them?

Sorry for all my newbie questions, but I really appreciate your help!

[Lulus_Likes]

Like I said earlier, this is a brand NEW blog to try to help me learn SEO (which I am clearly terrible at) so does that mean I need more text so it's not appearing only as social media? I did use some Instagram posts to get started. So that is probably why it looks like that.

I guess what I am wanting to do is make it like a fashion blog so I can promote products. Those have SEO, right? I find them when I search for them. So would that mean I should focus on overall keywords to use throughout my website? Like maybe "dog clothes" or "pet clothes"?

My "dog contest" it's a contest I hold on Instagram and then post the winner's images on my website. So wouldn't I want to optimize it for that?

Sorry for all my newbie questions but I REALLY appreciate your help!

[paints-n-design]

I cant say any other thing than @evolvingSEO he is right, your content clearly looks like social media. 
There is an opportunity for image search of course, thatswhy you could name the puppy/dog you write about like I said above - but your traffic screams out social media

If you optimize for dog contest, just because it is searched a lot, you will frustrate any person wich want to participate on a dog contest (as long as you dont do dog contests).

[evolvingSEO]

Hi There

To step back a second, not all blog posts or pieces of content need a focus keyword. It depends on the goals of your content, and how you are trying to get it traffic. It looks like a lot of your content may be best suited to get traffic from social media etc. That's great, and in that case just write your article and don't worry about the focus keyword too much because it may rank for stuff by happenstance, but your main traffic sources won't be SEO.

That said, sometimes you may create content because you specifically see an opportunity to maybe rank for something where there is a "gap" in existing content in Google's search results. For example, you may notice a lack of great results for something like "pembroke welsh vs cardigan corgi" - and as a goal, you may set out to create the best piece of content on that topic to rank for it, and SEO is your primary goal. In that case, you'd enter "pembroke welsh vs cardigan corgi" into Yoast, and it will tell you how well your article is optimized for that based upon simple best practices.

So in other words - focus keyword is great when you know your target keyword ahead of time and are writing an article based off of that. If you're just writing an article for non-SEO purposes, maybe you'd refine a target keyword after the fact, but it's not a huge concern.

Choosing your focus keyword also has to do with just knowing good keyword research in general. There's two main factors to think about. Search volume and competition.

• Search volume - how many people look for the keyword per month. For blog posts it's best to stick in the 10-1,000 searches per month range.
• Competition - there's no single competition metric (Google does not provide one) but you can judge competition by experience of looking at search results or using a tool like Moz's keyword difficulty - which will give you a number from 1-100.

The trick of course is to try to find the highest volume but lowest difficulty, and that's a great beginning point for choosing focus keywords.

[Lulus_Likes]

Thanks for your response! Okay that makes sense. So if I make my focus keyword for example - "brown retriever puppy"  then I would be better off making one of my main keywords "dog contest" ? Because that is something people search for.

Am I understanding that correctly?

Thanks again for the help!

[paints-n-design]

Yoast tells you what people search for, i guess noone searches for "Dog of the week". 
If you write for a targeted Keyword, you should do that only one time - otherwise, what should google show in SERPs??

But in your case, Dog of the week is not the targeted keyword. Don't know how people searching for dogs you write about, but that should be the target keyword - maybe for the category - and with the post about the dog of the week should target other things. Maybe "brown labrador retriever puppy"