Optimizing your posts and pages with a keyphrase makes it easier for people to find your content. Here, we’ll dive into a particular aspect of the keyphrase – its length. We’ll tell you how the length of your keyphrases relates to SEO. And, you’ll get a few essential tips on when to use short or long keyphrases.
What is a focus keyphrase?
The focus keyphrase is the phrase that you want your post or page to be found for in search engines. Sometimes, it is a single word, but it usually consists of a few words. That’s why we call it a keyphrase. For example, if you want your blog post to rank for ‘healthy snacks’, then optimize your post for that term. Your focus keyphrase can also be longer. For instance, you could write an article about healthy snacks specifically made for kids and optimize for ‘healthy snacks for kids’. Or a post about healthy snacks to eat after a workout, and optimize for ‘healthy snacks after workout’.
Why is the keyphrase length important for SEO?
There are different approaches to choosing a keyphrase for your posts or pages. You can choose to optimize your article for a short, generic keyword. These are the more common keywords that get a lot of search traffic. But, they also have a great deal of competition. Like, ‘snacks’, for example. A lot of people will search for this term. However, there will be many companies optimizing for it. In the image below, the body of the mouse represents these less specific keyphrases.
You can also choose to optimize for a longer, more specific keyphrase, represented by the tail in the image above. These longer keyphrases are also called long-tail keyphrases. They get less search traffic, but they usually have a higher conversion value. That is because they focus more on a specific product or topic. For example, a lot of people would probably search for the generic term ‘snacks’. And, fewer people would search for the long tail keyphrase – ‘healthy snacks for children’. Still, there’s a higher chance that the people who use the long tail keyphrase will find what they are looking for because they used a more specific term.
Longer keyphrases make it harder to optimize your post. Since you’ll need to repeatedly use a large number of words close to each other, it will be hard to keep your copy readable.
Don’t forget to set a focus keyphrase
If you want to know if your post or page is well-optimized for the keyphrase you want to rank for, you should make sure to add keyphrase.
Decide what you want to rank for
Choosing what you want to rank for is hard. That’s where keyword research comes in. It will help you find out what words people use to describe the product or service you’re offering. Then, you will need to decide if you want your page to rank for a short, generic keyword or a longer, more specific keyphrase.
Make sure it’s not too long
Last but not least, it’s perfectly fine if you decide to go for a longer tail keyphrase. However, make sure it’s not too long. We recommend a maximum of four content words for your focus keyphrase. If your keyphrase is longer, it’s harder to optimize your post or page.