Ahrefs

How to Target Keywords With Blog Posts (& Get More Search Traffic)

By Si Quan Ong

SEO & Marketing Educator at Ahrefs

Reviewed by

Joshua Hardwick

Mateusz Makosiewicz

August 30, 20226 min read

14 Organic traffic57 Linking websitesArticle performance data from Ahrefs

You’ve probably heard a lot about the importance of targeting keywords with your blog posts.

But why should you do that? And how exactly do you target keywords?

You’ll learn how in this post.

Why target keywords?

If your content ranks high on Google, you can get traffic consistently over time.

For example, we published this post on advanced Google search operators in 2018. To this date, we’re still getting tons of organic traffic:

But you can’t just publish any random post and expect search traffic to come your way. To get consistent organic traffic, you need to write about topics that people are searching for.

This is why you should be targeting keywords with your blog posts.

How to target keywords with blog posts

You now know why it’s important to target keywords. But how exactly do you “target” them?

Here’s how.

1. Find keyword ideas

The process begins by figuring out what keywords you want to target. We’re not just looking for any random keywords—we’re looking for relevant keywords that people are searching for.

The easiest way to do this is to use a keyword tool. Keyword tools are databases of words and phrases with their SEO metrics. They show you a list of ideas based on the seed keyword idea you’ve entered.

You can use any keyword research tool. Many of them are free. However, most of the free keyword tools are limited in some way—they may have a small database, have poor or no filters, lack SEO metrics, and more.

That can make it difficult to make good decisions.

So we recommend that you use a “professional” keyword tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. Here’s how to use the tool to find keyword ideas:

Enter one (or a few) relevant seed keywords, e.g., try plugging keywords like “coffee,” “latte,” “french press,” etc., if you have a coffee blog
Go to the Matching terms report
Switch the tab to Questions

You’ll see that there are over 300,000 potential keywords you could target. That’s too many—and most of them are probably too competitive. If you’re just starting out, it’s better to target keywords that are:

High in Traffic Potential (TP) – TP is the estimated amount of search traffic you can potentially gain if you rank #1 for that topic. We calculate it by estimating the amount of search traffic the #1 page currently gets.
Low in Keyword Difficulty (KD) – KD is how difficult it is to rank for the keyword in the top 10 organic search results.

Use the available filters to reduce the list down:

From here, you can look through the list and pick out those keywords that are relevant to your site.

Recommended reading: Keyword Research: The Beginner’s Guide by Ahrefs

2. Identify search intent

Google’s aim is to rank the most relevant content for any query. As such, it tries to understand why a searcher is Googling that keyword so it can serve the most relevant results.

That means, in order to rank high on Google, we need to identify and match search intent. Fortunately, we can do this by looking at the current top-ranking pages for your target query. Specifically, we want to identify the three Cs of search intent:

Content type – The dominant type of content on the SERPs—in this case, blog posts.
Content format – The dominant content format, such as guides, listicles, reviews, and more.
Content angle – The dominant angle. Examples include the current year, for beginners, simple and easy, and more.

For example, let’s take a look at the top-ranking pages for the keyword “how to clean coffee maker”:

Content type – They’re all blog posts.
Content format – Most of them are how-to guides.
Content angle – It seems like a few of them mentioned “with vinegar.” It could be a potential angle you might want to go for.

If you’re targeting this keyword, for example, it’s likely you’ll have to create a how-to guide on cleaning a coffee maker (perhaps with vinegar!).

Recommended reading: What Is Search Intent? A Complete Guide for Beginners

3. Create the content

Targeting keywords with blog posts is no longer about stuffing as many keywords as possible. That’s an ancient tactic that no longer works. If you want to rank high on Google, you need to show Google that your content is relevant and deserves to be on the first page.

By matching search intent, you’ve already cleared the first hurdle. But how else can you show Google your content deserves to be there?

Here’s how:

A. Cover important subtopics

If there are subtopics that almost all the top-ranking pages cover, then it’s a sign that searchers are looking for them.

Here’s how to find these subtopics:

Paste a few top-ranking URLs for your main topic into Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool
Leave the bottom section blank
Hit Show keywords
Set the Intersection filter to 3 and 4 targets

We can see that the top-ranking pages cover topics like these:

What is earned media
Earned media examples
Owned media examples
Paid media examples
Paid media vs earned media
Owned media vs earned media

And more.

If we’re covering this topic (“earned media”), it is likely we’ll have to cover these subtopics too. Even better: You can use them as potential H2s to organize your content.

B. Invest in a good reader experience

You should make sure your content is easy to read. After all, the purpose of your blog post is not just to rank but also to get the reader to consume your content.

Follow these tips to create an effortless reading experience:

Use descriptive subheadings (H2–H6) for hierarchy
Use bullets to help with skimming
Use images and GIFs (where needed) to break up the text
Use short sentences and paragraphs to avoid “walls of text”
Use simple words that everyone can understand
Write as you speak to make things conversational
Read your copy out loud (when editing) to smooth the flow

C. Don’t forget your on-page SEO

Your on-page SEO is the “icing” on the cake that helps make it doubly clear to Google and searchers that your page is relevant.

Here are the basics:

Use the keyword in the title (if possible) – Google confirmed the importance of headings in 2020. If it’s difficult, don’t shoehorn the keyword—use a close variation instead.
Use short, descriptive URLs – A descriptive URL, usually the keyword, helps searchers understand what a page is about before clicking.
Write a compelling meta description – It’s not a ranking factor, but it further helps entice searchers to click on your result.
Use descriptive alt text – This helps Google understand images better.
Link to relevant internal and external resources – Linking to relevant internal and external resources helps visitors navigate your website and find more information.

Learn more

Interested in learning more about SEO and creating SEO content? Check out these resources:

Any questions or comments? Let me know on Twitter.

Post bySi Quan Ong

Si Quan is a content marketer at Ahrefs. He has been involved in digital and content marketing for the past 5 years. Before he joined Ahrefs, he was content marketer at ReferralCandy, a 7-figure ARR SaaS company. Si Quan has spoken at some of the industry’s largest conferences in the Asia region, which includes TIECon and Digital Marketing Skill Share. He has also written for some of the industry’s most popular blogs like Sumo and SmartBlogger. His earliest work was marketing a product on Kickstarter, which eventually raised $150,000, more than double the original funding goal. The product was also featured on prominent tech websites, including Engadget, CNET and Digital Trends.

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