What is a focus keyword?
The focus keyword or keyphrase is the search term that you want a page or post to rank for most. When people search for that phrase, they should find you. If you set a focus keyphrase for a page with Yoast SEO, the plugin evaluates the page’s content and provides feedback on how to improve the content to rank higher for that search term.
If you’re using Yoast SEO for your website, you’ll find the input field for your focus keyphrase in the Yoast SEO meta box below your post:
Or, in the Yoast SEO sidebar, if you click on the Yoast icon on the top right of your screen:
You’ll find the feedback to improve your content in the SEO analysis tab. If you amend your page with this feedback, it will be easier for search engines to recognize what your post or page is about.
Check out this video to see how it works:
Why a focus keyphrase?
Regularly adding quality content to your website or blog is a good SEO strategy. Google sees that your website is active because new information is added and you increase the volume of your content.
But randomly adding content to your site isn’t very useful. You have to craft a keyword strategy, and based on that strategy you should create high-quality content your audience is looking for. When you write those articles, it’s important to optimize them for the keyphrases you’re aiming at. Here’s how to find the top focus keywords for your website marketing:
How to choose a focus keyphrase
In our view, there are at least three things you should do to determine which keywords or keyphrases you should optimize your blog posts for:
- Find a focus keyword people search for
- Research the search volume
- Google your keyphrase
Let’s elaborate on these steps a bit:
1. Find a focus keyword people search for
As we mentioned above, your keyword strategy should have given you some idea of what you want to write about. If you don’t have a keyword strategy, you should really create one. You can read our ultimate guide to keyword research or take our keyword research training course if you need help to find your perfect keywords.
Tools that help you find keyphrases
The Yoast SEO plugin helps you to optimize your post for your chosen focus keyphrase. One of the tools you can use to find – related – keywords is our Yoast Suggest tool. This tool uses the same data as Google Suggest to find the first ten keywords and then expands on that. This is the same as what you’d see when you type the search term into a Google search box. For additional tools, see this post by Marieke about keyword research tools.
The terms you will find in Suggest are terms and combinations of words that are logical and used by actual people to search on the web. This tool can be beneficial in giving you some first ideas about the search behaviour of people in the area you want to write about. Use Answer the Public to find which questions people have about a particular topic. This will give you loads of new insights and inspiration for new posts.
Remember that these search suggestions change all the time. The suggestions will often be tuned to what you’ve been searching for before. When we searched for the term “focus keyword” some time ago, this was the suggest output:
Later on, the output showed this:
Suggest changes based on the problems people have, so monitoring it for important keywords makes sense. New results can give you input for your post or other, but related posts.
2. Research the search volume for your keyphrase
Once you have found a long-tail search term you want to rank for, you should put some effort into discovering whether or not there are many searches for that keyword or phrase – the search volume.
We will be the first to admit; Google has made this really hard. The only way to know for sure how often a search term is used is to have an active AdWords account and bid on the search term of your choice. We understand this is a bit too difficult and expensive for most of you (we hardly ever do this ourselves).
Google Trends
Not to worry, using Google Trends should give you at least some idea, in a creative way, about search volume. Google Trends allows you to compare the search volume between two search terms over a certain time. This will give some insight into the volume of the search terms people use, relative to other terms.
Check your posts that already rank
If you already have some (blog) posts that rank well for good terms, you will know how many visitors these posts attract. Using Google Trends to compare the focus keyphrases of older posts (which you can view the statistics for) with the focus keyphrase you have in mind for your new post, could give you some idea about the potential traffic this new keyphrase could bring. Make sure to choose older posts that are most similar to the post you’re planning to write: if you’re planning to choose a long-tail keyword, compare posts with long-tail keywords as well.
For instance, this post about the focus keyphrase could be compared with a post about snippet previews, a related feature of the WordPress SEO plugin we already wrote about:
As you can see the traffic is comparable, we know the search traffic to our snippet preview post is reasonably good, so we know it’s worth optimizing for.
Using Google Trends to compare your old focus keyphrase or keyword and the one you want to use will give you some insights about the prospects for your focus keyphrase.
Another good way to use Google Trends is when you are considering a number of (long-tail) focus keywords. Because it will easily show you which search term will have the highest search volume compared to another. Therefore, it will help you decide which long-tail keyword is most commonly used in search.
3. Google your proposed focus keyword!
Apart from knowing which search terms are actually used by people, you need to know whether or not your idea for your post or page fits the needs and expectations of the people who use these search terms. You need to find out what the search intent is. One way to find out whether your content meets people’s needs is to Google your proposed (sets of) keywords yourself.
Check the search engine result pages
Take the time to look at the search engine result pages (SERPs) Are the articles in the Google results of similar character to your article? Could your article fit the results shown in these search pages? If you decide to write your blog post or page, while optimizing for this exact focus keyword, you are aiming to get your post amongst these results.
The type of content shown on the search results will help you decide on what kind of content to create: does Google show product pages or blog posts? Or perhaps videos, images? If there’s one dominant type, Google probably “thinks” this is the type of content people are looking for, so it’s worth investing time in creating that type of content too. Just remember: you’ll have to beat the other search results, so only do this when you’re sure you can create something truly outstanding and useful for your audience!
Content of the results pages
Be sure to use the content of the result pages as an inspiration for your blog post. Are there any useful ideas? We are NOT encouraging you to copy content, merely to see whether you perhaps missed some information or arguments for your post or page. And, most importantly: How can you make sure your post will stand out? In what way could your post be better, funnier, more original than the post presently displayed in the result pages? Try to come up with content that will make the audience click and share!
Check out social media and forums
Another great tip: Check what people ask and have to say about this topic on social media and various online forums. This will probably give you loads of input for your post or page. You can directly address the questions people have and the difficulties they encounter regarding this topic. On top of this, it will help you use the right wording, which is crucial if you want to reach your audience.
4. Bonus Tip: Consider your words
It is relatively difficult to rank for general terms (seed keywords) than for long-tail keywords.
For example, consider the following keywords in descending order of difficulty:
- Shoes
- Casual shoes
- casual shoes california
- casual shoes california for men
If you select “shoes” as your focus keyword, you may end seeing no traffic from Google because it is very difficult to rank for seed keywords like these. Therefore, it’s better to concentrate on a long-tail keyword like “casual shoes california.” Even though search volume is less for them, it is relatively easy to rank for them.
Don’t concentrate on more than one keyword in a single post:
If you concentrate on multiple keywords in a single post, it looks unnatural for your visitors, and you may end up ranking for none among them. Instead, dedicate each of your pages to a single focus keyword and write outsmarting content around that keyword.
Smartly sprinkle other related keywords (LSI keywords) in the natural flow and you may rank for them.
Should every page have a focus keyphrase?
People often ask us whether their about page or contact page should have a focus keyword, and, if so, what should it be?
The answer is easy: not every page needs a focus keyword. Your contact page should be easily reachable, it might, for instance, need to rank for “<company name> address.” That probably doesn’t make sense as a focus keyword though, and it’s perfectly fine to leave it empty.
Also, ask yourself: Do I want this post to rank in the long term? Some posts, for instance, temporary announcements, are probably not worth optimizing either.
Conclusion and further readings
Choosing a perfect focus keyword or keyphrase is not an exact science. You should aim for a combination of words that are actually used by a search audience. Aim for a keyphrase that is relatively high in volume and one that will suit your audience.
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Source: yoastseo
