Welcome back to this SEO podcast. In the last episode, we went through a general overview of what SEO was made up of. There is a lot to SEO that you have to accomplish in order to completely optimize your website and have it rank higher up when getting indexed. But – don’t fret! There are also little changes that you can make in just a few hours that will already make a noticeable difference.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQrYyweay6w&t=125s 

The science behind keyword research

One of these changes is researching, selecting and tailoring the keywords that show up in your website content and on your website in general! One of the core principles of search engines is basing the results on relevancy to the queries. If someone types in “doctor”, they won’t be wanting to see results for cheesecake recipes. And, of course, this goes further down the line, with short, medium, and long-tail keywords—as well as the keyword saturation in your text.  

Types of Keywords

Essentially, the way to break it down is this: 

Short-tail keywords 

Are precise – they target one or two words at most. As a result, they are extremely competitive. 

Medium tails keywords 

They have two to three words and are mildly competitive. And finally, 

Long-tail keywords 

They are much less competitive with anything above 3 words. More specific and less competitive, but as a result, the search volume is much lower! Hence, a healthy balance is key. And not oversaturating it either—search engines can see if you are stuffing too many keywords into your content, and will rank you lower, or even de-index your website. 

About 1-2% saturation, meaning 1-2 keywords for every 100 words of text, seems to be a fair number.

LSI Keywords

And you can always use LSI keywords – or synonyms! Find a word close to the keyword and use that as well. That will generate traffic on several fronts, prevent de-indexing, and also rank you favorably!

Example of proper use of keyword

Let’s use an example to explain the keyword types – you want to look up a question. Specifically, you want to look up how many squirrels there are in European forests in 2020.

To start off, a short-tail search query would be “squirrels”. As of writing this episode, searching for “squirrels” on Google results in 193,000,000 results. And it really won’t get you the answer that you need now, will it?

The medium-tail search query would be the “European Squirrel population”. 3 words, and already specified that you’re looking for the population number and the fact that you’re looking in Europe. 

This shows you 3,230,000 results, and also adds a few specificities: there are a few types of squirrels out there. Red squirrels, grey squirrels, different species, and more! 

Let’s say that you’re looking for Red Squirrels. Searching for “2020 red squirrel population in Europe” will return 1,740,000 results and will get you your number – about 140,000 red squirrels in Europe as of 2020.

Final notes

So, do you see that it is important to have the distinction between short, medium, and long-tail keywords in your content? With a sufficiently specific query, your website will show up first – but by also including well-researched short-tail keywords, your website will also show up higher up on a more competitive search term too.

Thank you for Reading this episode of the SEO podcast! Tune in next week to hear an overview of picking your URL and the various little tips and tricks that come with it!

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