What Is A Focus Keyword?

The goal of SEO (search engine optimization) content copywriting is to create blogs posts, articles, infographics and videos around words, sentences and language a specific target audience uses in search engines.
By doing so, you aim to answer that audience’s questions and solve their problems with your content – thereby attracting them to your website and converting them into paying customers.
Focus keywords are an important component of this SEO strategy, as they enable website owners to target a specific “gap” in existing content within Google’s and other search engines search results. But choosing these keywords can be tricky.
With a carefully planned and researched keyword strategy, the best content marketers out there can help you select appropriate focus keywords around which to design a set of article or blogs.
In this article, we’ll discuss:

• What focus keywords are
• Why focus keywords are important for SEO
• How you can do your own keyword research

What Is A Focus Keyword

Originally, a focus keyword was a term used in the YOAST SEO plugin tool to help bloggers and article writers ensure their articles were optimized with the correct density and variety of related terms to a target keyword.

However, over time, the term “focus keyword” has become synonymous with writing SEO articles around a primary keyword, which that piece aims to rank highly for in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
If you manage to create a high-quality piece of content, complete with SEO titles, meta descriptions, and other on-page SEO essentials, then you might be able to outrank your competitors on the SERPs and capture more organic traffic.

Why are Focus Keywords Important?

Focus keywords are an essential component of any SEO content marketing strategy because they guide the topic of the content to be created.
If, on your website, you simply target any random search term or search query you think your target audience might be using without any consideration for a common list of keywords or the keyword phrases your people search for, you’ll find you will struggle to get any results from Google search.
However, suppose you use specific SEO keywords that are the result of a dedicated keyword research strategy. In that case, you give the different pages on your website the best chance at being seen by the people you want to see them.
Many people believe that focus keywords are only short-tail keywords.
In many instances, a focus keyword isn’t necessarily a single word. More often than not, a focus keyword might be a focus keyphrase, or a long-tail keyword, for which you notice no good content, yet has a certain amount of search volume.
By using keyword research tools, you can discover specific keywords and keyphrases of this nature, and use them to create your web page content.

Focus Keywords FAQ

How do I use the focus keyword in WordPress?

1. Log into your WordPress account.
2. Enable the SEO analysis function on your Yoast plugin to set a focus keyword.
3. Open the article or page you want to optimize.
4. Open the SEO plugin section.
5. Type your focus keyword into the focus keyphrase box.
6. You’ll notice the analysis and recommendations appear.

What is focus word in content writing?

The focus keyword in content writing is the foundational term around which an article is created. It might be a particular question your target audience ask Google, it might be a particular word related to your business – it can be anything that your target audience might type or speak into Google and other search engines.
You then create in-depth content around this term, with the aim of producing high-quality material that provides the answer to your audience’s problem.

How do I find focus keywords?

Finding focus keywords is best done with an experienced SEO strategist. However, to get an idea of the keywords available to you, we at Loganix have put together this free keyword research tool.
Google autosuggest also offers a wealth of focus keyword research. Simply type in a related term, and look at all the other queries people ask that are similar to that query:

Other online tools for doing focus keyword research include Ahrefs (which many suggest to be the most powerful and versatile tool out there). Their keyword planner looks like this:

Google trends is yet another powerful focus keyword research tool to isolate current and relevant search terms that your competitors might not yet have caught on to.

Summary

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of focus keywords.
Getting your focus keywords correct at the beginning of your SEO digital marketing strategy is paramount to success, as using the right keywords will likely be the difference between finding organic search traffic, or getting lost in the infinite expanse of the internet.