While we may understand the importance of search engine optimization on an intellectual level, these SEO tips and tricks will (hopefully) help freelance writers understand how to vet a keyword to give their articles the best chance of being discovered.
SEO tips and tricks for freelance writers
Finding keywords is just the first step. Next is to figure out if it’s a good keyword or a bad keyword.
But what does that mean?
Here’s how I like to think about good versus bad keywords.
- A good keyword means if I use it my article will have a chance of being discovered on the Internet
- A bad keyword means it’s too competitive so don’t use it.
Keyword vetting to me means this. If I write an article about the keyword I’ve selected, will it have a chance to hit the first page of Google?
How to vet a keyword
Once I’ve brainstormed my keyword ideas I take my top ones to KWFinder and do a quick check for difficulty.
By the way, I’ve created a worksheet to help you with brainstorming. Just pop your email address into the form below and I’ll send you the password for my resource library. When you’re there, navigate to the writing category and download the “How to Brainstorm Ideas for Writing Worksheet.”
Anyway, back to the training.
KWFinder is a simple keyword research tool to use—you pop in your word or phrase into the search bar and then click “Find Keywords.” A few seconds later your results populate and you can consider your options.
I thought I’d include a couple screenshots from my research for this post. After doing my initial research I was down to two key phrases for this post: SEO tips and tricks or keyword research tools.
My results?
The keyword “SEO tips and tricks” is possible to rank for with a difficulty score of 39 out of 100. The keyword “keyword research tools” is hard to rank for with a difficulty score of 61 out of 100. You can see these results on the right-hand side of the screenshot.
On the left-hand side of the screenshot you can see variations on the keyword and the difficulty associated with it.
It helps you see what people are already ranking for and helps you come up with a strong direction to go with your article.
Final thoughts about seo tips and tricks
If you want to try KWFinder out there is a free account, which gives you five keyword searches every 24 hours. It’s a commitment-free way to try out the tool and decide if it’s a good fit for your writing flow.
You can make search engine optimization as complicated as you want. And you can make keyword research as expensive as you want. There are a lot of shiny objects in this world. But until you’re ready for that level of SEO, I suggest taking a simplified approach to vetting keywords.
Do you have a process for vetting keywords? I’d love to hear about it!
One more thing. I think you’ll enjoy my free resource library. This is where I keep my files, downloads, ebooks, worksheets and whatever else I manage to create. I love sharing what I learn and want to keep adding to this library so it becomes a wealth of helpful goodness.
This is a free resource but I do require a password to access the library itself. You can get access by popping your email address into the form below.
