What is your blog all about, and from which keywords do you want to drive traffic to your blog? I’ll be the first to admit I’m not an expert, but I’ve learned some tips about keywords by watching the results from organic traffic to my blogs.

A primary place to make sure your posts contain your keywords or phrase is within your post title. When someone does a search for a specific keyword or phrase you have a much greater chance of them landing on your blog if it is contained within your post title.

You can run a simple test on your blog using that strategy by simply publishing numerous posts containing your targeted key word or phrase within your post title, and see where you end up in Google Rankings or by watching your organic traffic referrals.

Another way to bring in more traffic results from a specific keyword or phrase is from using the keyword or phrase in your blog url, and in your h1 heading blog name. Other heading titles such as your sidebar links using the word or phrase you wish to target, or bold text in your posts can also help. There is also the benefit from using Technorati tags or other tag methods. It requires extra work, and I must say I don’t often do that simply because of the extra work involved.

How do you determine your keywords or key phrases to use on your blog? With great effort, but the way to make that task easier is with a keyword tool such as the one available through Overture, and if you take a look at this prior post, there are other tools there to help too. For starters, you may wish to stick with the free keyword tools, but then later you may want to subscribe to a service that provides a more in depth keyword analysis.

Due to the fact that there is a tremendous amount of competition to become number one, or at the very least within the top ten results of a specific Google search, it is very rewarding mentally to see your blog in that position. But, is it enough?

If your blog is number one or even in the top ten for a specific keyword or phrase, it may not do you much good if there is no one looking for that specific keyword or phrase. Here again is where the tool will become of great benefit to you. A keyword tool will show you just how popular a specific keyword phrase is for the current trend. So choose your keywords wisely in order to reap the greatest rewards.

Remember too when you do a Link & Blog Challenge that your focus for the challenge can also be centered around a specific keyword or keyword phrase. I recently did an article in regards to this topic, titled, “Keyword Exchange”.

In the long run the payoff for doing keyword research will result in more traffic to our blogs.