Targeted keyphrase strategies

Your first step in determining a powerful keyphrase is judging relevance. An irrelevant, weak keyphrase – which has very little search volume – is not going to do your content, or its performance, any favours. Always lean toward nouns when picking a keyword and avoid using prepositions, conjunctions, articles, adverbs and adjectives. When picking a key phrase, try to keep it at four (4) words or under. Determining relevance is a fundamental aspect of what we do; it takes time, research and an excellent understanding of current affairs across a variety of genres. Most importantly, it requires keeping your ear to the ground, at all times. However, when choosing your keyword or keyphrase and optimising your article, please be wary of over-optimising and falling foul of Google’s rules about keyword stuffing and cloaking. Keyword or keyphrase stuffing is when you repeat the same words or phrases in an article so often that it sounds unnatural, to rank for that keyword or keyphrase. Cloaking is when the SEO title meta description, or both, doesn’t align with the content of the article. Articles like this are misleading to users and Google views them as deceptive content. We have an in-depth document entitled “Determining Relevance in SA Online Media” which provides tools, tips and tricks to help you focus on hot topics. This is available upon request.

Trends, topics, relevance and keywording

Recent studies show that most millennials – our core target audience – digest news via social media.  Naturally, this means that most of our trend monitoring is done on X, Facebook and Google (with the former being a priority). It’s incredibly easy to find out what’s trending in your country (and even  City) via integrated X tools. It’s also vital that you follow key X accounts. We suggest you build a bookmark folder with relevant X accounts, one which you scroll through every morning and evening (or whenever you get a gap in content production). For example, if you’re writing about politics, you need to follow/bookmark; Jacob Zuma (@PresJGZuma), Julius Malema (@Julius_S_Malema), Democratic Alliance (@Our_DA)  and more. If you’re crafting content about celebrities, for example, you should be following: Cassper Nyovest (@casspernyovest), AKA (@akaworldwide) Coconut Kelz @CoconutKelz and more. Note: The more accounts you follow/bookmark, the greater your access to direct information. While it’s seldom that an entire article can be based on Twitter talk (hashtags and trending topics), it often leads to greater social commentary and other leads. Hashtags and trending topics can often be used as successful key phrases. We also rely greatly on Google Trends, which reveals (with a search count) the most queried terms and topics. These search terms should directly influence your keyphrase. Determining the most powerful search term also requires a fair amount of knack. Keep your terms short, and direct yet all-encompassing. Get into the mind of the “searcher‟ and ask yourself; “If I were  looking for more information on this topic, what is the term I’d punch into Google search?” Once you’ve discovered your primary search term – for this example we’ll use “Julius Malema birthday” – it’s time to populate your content with the keyphrase to ensure it ranks highly when searched.

How to target successfully

Here are some key steps and checklists to follow, to ensure that you’ve successfully targeted your keyphrase. 1. The keyphrase must be in your headline and must be as near to the beginning as possible.  An example would be: “Julius Malema birthday bash attended by ‘new friend’ Helen Zille” 2. The key phrase must appear in your opening sentence/introductory paragraph, preferably as near to the beginning as possible. An example would be: “Julius Malema’s birthday party has attracted a host of unexpected guests…” 3. The key phrase must appear in your first sub-heading and at least 50% of all sub-headings contained within your article if more than two. For example, if you have four sub-headings in your article, at least two of them must contain “Julius Malema’s birthday”. 4. The keyphrase must appear throughout the body of your copy (but be careful not to overdo it;  as a rule, we don’t sacrifice fluid composition and flow for the sake of keyword targeting). Use keyword/keyphrase synonyms and related keywords/keyphrases to ensure that your copy isn’t riddled with your focus keyphrase, making it difficult to read. 5. Your blurb/excerpt/meta description must contain your focus keyphrase (again, the nearer to the beginning of the sentence, the better). 6. Your focus keyphrase, as well as, any other related keyphrases should appear in the alt text block of your featured image. Click on this link for more information on how to choose a good keyword/keyphrase and how to optimise for it, making it completely SEO-friendly.

Long-tail and short-tail keywords

SEO aims to understand how the reader’s mind works. What would they search for on Google when looking for information? What are they going to find? That’s where long-tail and short-tail keywords enter the picture. Short-tail keywords are much more general search queries consisting of one or two words, while long-tail keywords consist of three to five, or even more words. When searching for more specific results, readers tend to type a longer query (i.e. a long-tail keyword) into Google to get more relevant results. By contrast, if they are only searching for a general topic, they’re more likely to enter a short-tail query of one or two words. Short-tail keywords tend to have the most traffic. However, short-tail keywords are extremely competitive due to the large number of hits the keywords receive. By comparison, targeting a long-tail keyword that is more specific to a writer’s article will be far less competitive, and the traffic generated is more likely to lead to conversions (in our case, pageviews, higher rankings and a longer Average Time Spent on Page). This is because long-tail keyword searches are highly specific, so readers know exactly what they are looking for when searching. In summary: 
● Short-tail keywords are general search queries consisting of one or two words
● Short-tail keywords are more competitive, i.e. your article will have to fight harder for prominence.
● Long-tail keywords specific to a writer’s article will be far less competitive.
● Due to the specificity, they’re likely to lead to a higher Google ranking.
● When thinking of keywords, it’s useful to do some research. This is a useful tool.

(https://ahrefs.com/keyword-generator) For additional information on long-tail and short-tail keywords, see these resources below:
● Keyword research 
● Long-tail and short-tail keywords