Eight Pitfalls You Can Simply Keep away from • Yoast
Marieke van de Rakt
Marieke van de Rakt is the CEO of Yoast. Her main focus is on growing the company. She attaches great importance to maintaining an open and friendly corporate culture. Marieke is also heavily involved in the marketing of Yoast and with the Yoast SEO Academy, the online course platform.
Thinking about the keywords you want to rank for is really the first and most important step you need to take in your SEO strategy. Still, keyword research can be pretty daunting. So what are the key keyword mistakes you should avoid? In this post, I’m going to walk you through the most common mistakes in keyword research. Knowing these mistakes can help you create a successful keyword research strategy and avoid practices that harm your ranking.
Are you overwhelmed by all the intricacies of keyword research and afraid of making these or other mistakes anyway? Take a look at our keyword research training, which is part of our training subscription for the Yoast SEO Premium Academy, and let us help you carry it out!
1. Don’t do keyword research
Some people seem to think that they can skip keyword research or that it is no longer important. Proper keyword research can indeed be a difficult and time consuming process. And it’s true that ranking high isn’t just a matter of getting the right keyword in your text, and it hasn’t been for a long time. But skipping or skipping your keyword research means you are creating content without a single idea of what your potential users are looking for. One of the biggest keyword mistakes you can make is thinking that you instinctively know what your audience wants.
It’s still important that you take some time to really immerse yourself in your audience’s language. What words do they use? What terms are you looking for? Which conditions are competitive and which are less? The result of your keyword research should be a long list of keywords that you want to rank for. Make sure you update your keyword research list or table regularly. Your target audience can change, as can your business focus and needs. This also has an impact on your keyword strategy.
Read more: Keyword Research: The Ultimate Guide »
2. You have the right keywords, but the competition is too big
Look for realistic keywords. Some niches are very competitive. It is difficult to rank in competitive niches, especially when you are just starting out with your website or business. If you’re just starting out, don’t target the competitive keywords “head” (yet). Instead, focus on long-tail keywords (which are easier to rank and have a higher chance of conversion).
For example, if you have a fitness center and you start a blog about fitness, the term will be too difficult to rank for [fitness]. Find out which aspects of your blog are unique and try to rank those terms. Maybe you write about fitness exercise for retirees. The goal is to rank for [fitness routines for retired people] could be a good strategy. In this case, you should as well [fitness tips for seniors], [fitness exercises for retirees] and so on. If you’ve been in your niche for a little while and are ranking successfully for long-tail keywords, you could also try ranking for more head words. Ranking for competitive keywords should be part of a long-term successful keyword research strategy.
Read Next: Why Focus On Long Tail Keywords? »
3. Don’t think about the search intent
More than ever, taking a closer look at search intent is an important part of keyword research. You need to have a clear idea of the kind of intent behind your keywords. Users may be looking for information (informational intent), a specific website (navigation intent), or may want to buy something (commercial or transactional intent). And that’s not all, because search engines aim to give users the exact answer they are looking for. In other words, if your content isn’t what the searcher’s intentions are, no matter how great and optimized it is, it probably won’t make it to the results pages.
Hence, it is important to check that the content you are trying to post for a given keyword is what people are looking for. You can do this by looking at the search results. Do the types of intentions match? What answers do people want? Is your content in the right form? For example, if you’ve written an extensive DIY post to rank for the term [wedding decorations] and all you see on the results pages are online stores that sell wedding decorations. It’s time to rethink your strategy. Check out this post on Writing Intentional Content for Your Keywords for more information on how to do this!
4. Using keywords that nobody searches for
This keyword error is in part related to the previous one. If you don’t consider search intent, you’re more likely to optimize for words that potential visitors or customers don’t use. Two things can happen: Either you offer something people are looking for, but those potential visitors are simply using different keywords and therefore won’t find you. Or your keywords are too long and are not receiving any traffic.
The keywords you want to rank for should be the same words your customers use. Always try to use your audience’s language. Imagine you are selling dresses for gala events. In your marketing you refer to these dresses as “gala dresses”. Most people don’t look for it, however [gala dress]. They are looking for [gown] or [evening dress]. You don’t get a lot of traffic for the search term [gala dress] compared to the search terms [gown] or [evening dress].
As you can see on Google Trends, a lot more people are searching for it [gown] and [evening dress] as for [gala dress]
The second problem could arise when you focus on long-tail keywords that are so opaque that they simply don’t generate any traffic. Long-tail keywords are a great way to start your keyword strategy. These words attract less traffic, but you have a higher chance of converting your visitors into buyers or returning visitors. People who use certain terms to find exactly what you’re writing about just do very well. However, if your keyword is too specific and isn’t bringing in traffic, it won’t help your SEO. So make sure you are targeting long-tail keywords that are actually generating some traffic!
5. Focus only on specific keywords
If you’re writing a nice blog post, its ability to rank may not be limited to an exact key phrase but include related terms as well. So if you can optimize for related (long tail) keyphrases without stretching them, you should definitely do so. For example, we have a post on timeless SEO tips. It’s optimized for [timeless SEO tips], but also for the similar phrases [universal SEO tactics] and [universal SEO improvements], and it does reasonably well on each of those keywords.
Not sure how to optimize your content for related keywords and synonyms? Our Yoast SEO Premium Plugin can help! It allows you to optimize for related focus keyphrases and also gives you the ability to define synonyms for your focus keyphrase so that they can be taken into account. Awesome, isn’t it?
6. Don’t check whether you should use singular or plural
Always check whether you should be targeting the plural or singular of a particular keyword. Should you aim to rank? [ballet shoe] or for [ballet shoes]? People are looking for [holiday home] or [holiday homes]? While Google can tell that the plural and singular versions of a word refer to the same thing, the search results pages and the number of results often still differ because the users differ slightly.
Again, it’s important to think about the intent of the people searching for your keyword. Someone looking for the singular version of a keyword may be looking for information, while someone looking for the plural version may want to compare products and / or buy something. Either way, whether you should use a singular or a plural depends on your specific keyword and its intent, so take that into account.
7. Use the same keyword on more than one page
Optimizing multiple pages for the same search term (known as keyword cannibalization) will ruin your own success. If you make this keyword mistake, you can suffer in rankings as search engines cannot tell which of your pages to show to users.
If you’ve already created multiple pages and optimized them for the same keywords, then you can fix your cannibalization problems. However, it can take a little work and maybe some difficult decisions, so the best method is to avoid this trap whenever possible.
8. Forget to rate
If you want to rank on specific terms, see if you’re successful. You need to check regularly that people are actually finding your articles. One way to do this is to google your suggested focus keyword every now and then. Be aware, however, that your search results may be skewed as Google has personalized search. So use a private browsing session or a tool like https://valentin.app/ and see if your article shows up in the results. If you forget to evaluate, you won’t know whether to aim for more competitive keywords or focus on long-tail variations.
Read more: Adapting your content SEO strategy »
Bottom Line: Avoid These Keyword Mistakes For A Successful SEO Strategy
It takes a long time to conduct keyword research. It is important that you take this time and really think about the terms that you want to rank for. Read Keyword Research: The Ultimate Guide, packed with practical tips to help you create a successful keyword research strategy. And when it starts to look good, check out other common SEO mistakes as well.
Read on: Why Every Website Needs Yoast SEO »