Should ALL of my blogposts be focussed on my main target keywords for my site?

[laurenelizabeth1986]

Hi everyone.

I am an interior designer and I'm looking to boost my rankings locally for my target keywords (eg: Interior designer in Cheltenham) and I'm wondering about whether my blog posts should all be planned out with this (and other similar, location based) keywords in mind. For example, should I always make my target keyword for each blog post something related to 'interior design in xxx' or should I look for other keywords just related to my field? Eg: interior design tips, furniture guides, paint colour advice etc, just because it is related?

As an example, I am planning a blog post to go on my website which will be about a trip I'm taking to Copenhagen. Could my keyword therefore just be something like 'interior design', and this would be okay?

Thanks for reading!

Lauren

[Satans_Apprentice]

When targeting keywords with your blog, you should not be targeting keywords that you are targeting with your main site. That's called "keyword cannibalization", and it splits your ranking authority.

Generally, blog posts target keywords at the top of the conversion funnel (how to's, design ideas, etc) vs the bottom ("find an interior designer near me").

There are lots of tactics, but the blog is longer tail than your main site.

[laurenelizabeth1986]

Hi there, thanks so much thats such a helpful answer. I just searched for 'keyword cannibalisation' and understand now. I'm so pleased I didn't target everything at the same keywords! Thanks again

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Lauren

It's inevitable that you will use keywords that target other pages. When you do, link back to the page from the blog. So for example, if you use the term 'Interior Lighting' which inevitably you will, then link through that anchor text back to the page on your site that targets that phrase.

You would be pretty hamstrung if you created blog posts without being able to reference different parts of your site! Just try and keep the links down to 1 in 100-150 words, that's all. If the page you are linking to is not in the main menu, ie 1 or 2 clicks down you will strengthen the internal linking structure of your site and the anchor text will help. If it is in the main menu, the anchor text will have no benefit as Google only looks at the first link.

Hope that helps

Regards

Nigel