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When you are writing an article and you want to target a keyword for Google purposes, you will want to mention the keyword twice or three times throughout the article.
It is also a good idea to link the keyword to related articles, if you have any. (Related articles can be from your website or other reputable websites.)
Choosing keywords
When choosing a keyword, you need to be aware of which ones will get you the best response.
When we say "keyword," we should really be saying "keyword phrase" –– this better describes what newspaper SEO should be targeting.
In short, the shorter a keyword (or the more general it is), the harder it is to rank well for it. But the longer a keyword phrase is (or the more specific it is), the easier it is to rank for it.
Think of the keyword "high school" (extremely hard to rank for) vs. the keyword phrase "Peoria High School prom photos," which is much easier to rank for.
Showing the numbers
For example, when I search for the phrase "SEO" in Google, I get back 996,000,000 pages of results.
However, if I searched for the phrase "SEO newspaper headlines," I get back 12,400,000 page results.
And yet, still, if I searched for the phrase "SEO newspaper tips for headlines," I get back 2,520,000 page results.
And we can go one more –– if I searched for "SEO newspaper tips for headlines for copy editors," I get back 559,000 results.
I know most search queries don't contain upwards of seven or eight words, max. But for people who will type in such specific phrases, you have a really good chance of popping up. In fact, I see a few of my older posts ranking on the first page for those last two searches.
If you start off with the longer phrase, Google will begin to associate you with certain words in that phrase and, over time and as your authority improves, you can trim down those keywords and start making them more general.
To begin, I suggest target phrases that are four to six words in length.
