Keywords are the cornerstone of your WordPress website’s search engine optimization strategy, and don’t let the numerous reports of their death convince you otherwise. It has been a long and bumpy road for search engines, keywords and websites that use them as an optimization factor.
Search engines’ rules about keywords have not always been clear. Websites’ practices with keywords have not always been honest. People who made the queries were often left in the middle and served with low-quality, over-optimized content.
But at this point, everything is clearer than ever before. We know how and why keywords are important and what is the best way to use them. But even if we follow keyword best practices for our WordPress blog posts, we still need to occasionally check if they are ranking for the right keyword.
In this article, we’ll show you what you need to do to make sure your posts are ranking for the right keywords. We will consider:
There are many different types of keywords. Short-tail keywords are those that contain few words and tend to be too vague or vague to indicate the searcher’s intent. Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, contain more words and are much better at specifying what the person using them is searching for.
These two are just the beginning of a long list of different types of keywords you can use for your WordPress posts. We won’t go into details about researching keywords here because we have a great keyword research article with every bit of information you’ll ever need on that topic.
However, we will talk about what kind of keywords you should be careful about – what kind of keyword is considered “correct”? A keyword that matches your content and won’t look misleading to anyone who comes to your website using that keyword as a search term is the right keyword. It’s a keyword that makes sense with the type of content you have in the post you’re using. If you don’t get this right and there is a mismatch between the keyword and the content, you will likely notice a high bounce rate.
Tools that can help you search for keywords include:
These are just a few of the tools you can use. Some of the features we’ll cover later will also have keyword research capabilities.but they can come with a price tag.
If you understand how search engines work and at least understand the basics of SEO, you’ve already made sure that your WordPress website is crawlable and that your posts can appear in search engine results.
To get them to rank for your chosen keyword, you need to optimize your content for that keyword. Content optimization techniques have changed over time, but to cover your corners, the current consensus seems to be:
Of course, it goes without saying, making sure that the keyword appears naturally and organically within the post. If you’ve chosen a good keyword for the content you’re writing, you don’t need to put in a lot of effort to ensure that your content is filled with the target keyword. It should come naturally.
Even if this all seems incredibly easy, you may need a reliable tool to help you with this part of search engine optimization. Some tools you can try include:
Of course, you are free to use any other optimization tool that ensures the right keyword is found in all the right places. If you’re sure you know what these places are, you can skip these tools altogether and optimize everything manually in no time.
After you publish your content that is well optimized for the right and relevant keyword, you should wait a while before you start seeing results. As much as we want it to be different, it takes a while to get things done online. How long? Sometimes hours. Other times – weeks.
Eventually, your posts will appear in search results and have a specific location. To determine how well you rank for a particular keyword, The easiest and least accurate thing to do would be to search your computer for your target keyword and see if your content appears on the first few results pages.
This is not the surest option, but if you have nothing else to do, at least make sure to search in a different browser or use your browser’s private or incognito mode. You do not want the available data on this website to interfere with your results.
It would be much better if you used some tools to check which keywords you are ranking for.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console It is a tool specially created to help you monitor and ultimately improve the performance of your website in Google search results. A very narrow portion of the data you get from Search Console is available in Google Analytics – Acquisition > Search Console > Queries it will show some search queries – so you want to use the exact thing so you can see what keywords your posts are ranking for.
Finding keywords that your entire website ranks for is pretty simple – Going to the Performance tab will show the queries your website ranks for, sorted by clicks, impressions, clickthrough rates, and location.
To collapse a particular page, you want to go to the top of the page, press the “+ New” button, and then select “Page”. You will need the link, or at least the information, of the page you want to check. Once done, you should see all the keywords your page is ranking for and you’ll be able to find out if the keywords you’ve optimized are among the top ones.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs It is an SEO tool predominantly used by professionals, i.e. those for whom website performance is important enough to warrant an investment in a professional-grade tool. Ahrefs can be very useful when researching your keywords and useful when optimizing your content, but you can also use it to find out for which keywords certain posts are ranking.
Rank Tracker is one of the five essential tools in the Ahrefs suite. In the tool’s Overview area, simply scroll down to see the keywords your website is ranking for. You’ll be able to see great things like ranking history for specific keywords and the top hundred Google search results for that keyword.
But if you switch to the Pages tab, you’ll see that the keywords you rank for are now grouped by URLs on your website. Clicking “Organic keywords” for a specific URL will list all the organic keywords your page is ranking for.
SEMrush
Like Ahrefs, SEMrush It is a tool that shines best in the hands of a professional who knows what he is doing. A combination of over forty tools, SEMrush’s usability ranges from search engine optimization and content marketing to market research, advertising and even social media management.
SEMrush has at least six different tools you can use when researching keywords. It has tools for on-page SEO, local SEO, content marketing – It’s a great tool that can help you every step of the way to make sure your posts are ranking for the right keywords.
The SEMrush tool you can use to check for which keywords certain pages are ranking for is the Location Tracking tool. The tool shows you and your competitors’ ranking distribution and overview, while also allowing you to segment results by landing pages, which are pages that attract visitors from search engines. By opening the “Keyword count” drop-down menu next to a specific URL, you’ll get a list of keywords along with relevant traffic, location, and volume metrics.
Let’s wrap it up!
Making sure your WordPress posts rank for the right keywords is a multi-stage process that may involve the use of multiple tools. First, you need to make sure you have a good grasp of what keywords you want your pages to rank for – this is an ordeal in itself.
Next, you need to make sure all your pages are properly optimized for those keywords. Finally, once your pages are created, optimized, and published, you’ll have to wait a bit until they start appearing in search results. Only then can you check if they are ranking for the keywords you want them to rank for. And remember, if you’re not happy with the results you see, you’ll be back to the old drawing board – you’ll have to revisit your steps and figure out what went wrong.
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