How to Find a Focus Keyphrase that Matters

Finding a perfect focus keyphrase is crucial. Your potential customers have lots of questions about problems they are facing and all you have to do is answer those questions honestly and thoroughly with your content. This is basically all it takes to make the buyers come and run in, right?

In fact, this scenario is only true if you’re a master of SEO with all its principles and best practices that get your content found online. Yet, we all know how tough SEO really is. 

The great news is that if your website runs on WordPress, you can use the Yoast SEO plugin to be more confident about your content. Plus, Wincher has partnered up with Yoast to simplify your optimization even more. 

In this article you’ll learn:

1. What is a focus keyphrase
2. A couple of focus keyphrase examples
3. What is a good focus keyphrase
4. How to find the most relevant SEO focus keyphrase
5. How to add focus keyphrase in Yoast SEO

What is a focus keyphrase?

The focus keyphrase is basically an exact keyword or the keyphrase that you want your specific page to be found for in search results. SEO focus keyphrase often consists of more than one word hence calling it a keyphrase is much more accurate. 

However, it doesn’t mean that your page will be ranking ONLY for this focus keyphrase, but it will be the main one you thoroughly researched and can bet on. 

Want some focus keyphrase examples? 

Easy. Let’s say you want your page (or a blog post) to rank for the term “online marketing solutions”. In other words, you want people to come across your specific page when searching for “online marketing solutions”.

In order to achieve it, you need to optimize the target page for this focus keyphrase in WordPress. So, our focus keyphrase example here will be “online marketing solutions” (believe me, I hate word repetition, but I didn’t have a choice).  

Want another page of yours to rank for, let’s say, “best digital marketing services” or any other focus keyphrase example?  You have to optimize the page for that specific term first. The awesome news is that you can rely on Yoast SEO focus keyphrase with that. 

With Yoast, you can be confident that every time you hit that publish button, the page has been checked and has a decent SEO score that fits search engine expectations. Continue reading and I will explain everything in detail. 

What is a good focus keyphrase?

In short, a good focus keyphrase is a perfect match of words that your potential customers use to find answers online and your website’s ability to rank high for that exact word combination. 

But if you’re wondering what is a good focus keyphrase and what makes a good keyphrase the best focus keyphrase, the answer will take a bit more time. Follow me. 

How to find the most relevant SEO focus keyphrase?

1. Look for Words your Target Audience Uses

Here, it’s super important to speak the same language as your customers. Forget the fancy phrases you use on a regular basis, try to think as a person who tries to find your services or products. What questions this person will most likely be asking, what problems might be wanting to solve, and so on. 

Feel free to use forums and surf through the comment sections below videos, blog posts, reviews, and basically any place where people share their opinions and concerns. This will not only help you understand what terms people are using, but also what problems they’re facing that your business can help them with. 

2. Use Long Tails

Of course, you can always opt for short keywords, but if your business operates in a highly-competitive market, chances that your page will rank for such keywords are miserably low. 

Yes, if you did your research and found a short keyword with good potential, you should go for it, but if not – do your best to specify the keyphrase a little bit (go for long-tail keywords, in other words). 

For example, the term “digital marketing services” has great search volume. But can you imagine how many businesses are trying to optimize for it? Gosh! 

That’s why we can stretch the term a little bit and try “digital marketing services for small businesses” instead. Or we can stretch it even more and try “what are the benefits of digital marketing services for small business”. Also, never forget to use Google auto suggestions as inspiration.

As you can see, auto suggestions contain one of the examples I was using above.  

3. Check the Traffic Opportunities of The Keyphrase

I’ve mentioned earlier that a good focus keyphrase should be the one people are searching for. That’s why it’s crucial to do proper keyword research first. I have a full guide about how to research keyword opportunities, so I won’t be diving too deep into it right now.  

The main idea here is to make sure the term you’re about to use has enough potential for your business. Otherwise, what’s the point of spending so much time and effort on a page that no one would ever see. 

4. Find Focus Keyphrase Your Website is Already Ranking For

You may have heard it before, but increasing your rankings is ALWAYS easier and faster than building them from scratch. That’s why the number one SEO advice is often to identify what keywords your website is already being found for. 

No, I am not telling you to have two pages optimized for the same SEO focus keyphrase. It will lead to the bad situation called Keyword Cannibalization, which is fixable, but better to be avoided.  

What I am telling you to do is try to find keywords that your website can be already found for in search results, but you haven’t been focusing on them before. We have a whole blog post that covers the fastest ways to find keywords you’re already ranking for. 

5. Google Your Keyphrase First

The rule of thumb is that each time you come up with a new focus keyphrase example, you need to google that term yourself and analyze the SERPs. Oftentimes it serves as a focus keyphrase generator and helps you understand which search results come up. You can use it to your benefit because then you know exactly what search algorithms prefer for this exact query. 

Thoroughly look through search results. Do you see map packs and local listings? Then the query has local intent and local optimization has huge benefits. Do you see mainly product pages? Then take this search intent into account, because your blog post won’t be ranking good in this case. Are there mostly blog posts? Then roll up your sleeves because there’s gonna be lots of writing. 

Also, keep in mind that if the SERPs are flooded with Ads, make sure your domain is strong enough to compete for the keyword people are paying to rank for. 

How to add focus keyphrase in Yoast SEO?

I don’t want to sound boring, but first, you need to install the Yoast SEO plugin. That’s why, in case you don’t have it already, go to Plugins and click on Add New. 

Then, just search for the Yoast SEO plugin, click on Install Now, and let’s get straight to the guide. 

Adding a focus keyphrase in Yoast SEO is extremely easy, but examples make every explanation even easier, so why not use them. 

Let’s take one of my blog posts and use it to show a good focus keyphrase example.

The blog post is called Mobile Rank Tracking: Why Do You Need It and Where to Start. Let’s imagine that I’ve just written it and have successfully added this piece to WordPress as a separate new post. 

Because I have already installed the Yoast SEO plugin to my WordPress, I can see a separate tab that is active and ready to do its job. 

So, let’s assume that I’ve already checked how the content will look like and now I’m finally ready to check how well (or not so well) it is optimized. Click on the Yoast SEO tab to get started. 

Adding a Yoast focus keyphrase is a must because it fires up the whole optimization process. With the focus keyphrase the tool can analyze every part of your content and tell you:

• if you used the keyphrase in the introduction
• if the keyphrase length is optimal
• if you’ve used your keyphrase enough times throughout the text
• if you didn’t forget to use it in your meta description
• if you didn’t previously use the same focus keyphrase on another page
• if you’ve used enough SEO keyphrases in the sub-headings
• if the number of alt attributes of the images is fine
• if you didn’t forget to use the same focus keyphrase wording in your title
• if you’ve used your keyphrase in slug

and so many more important things you could have done better or could accidentally have missed.

Now that you know how important Yoast focus keyphrase is, let me show you how to set focus keyphrase in WordPress.  

When you’ve clicked on the plugin’s tab, the focus keyphrase field is right at the top. 

What you need to do is just paste your keyphrase inside the little box right here and wait just a few seconds to see what Yoast thinks of all the efforts you’ve made. 

The bad news is that adding a keyphrase and optimizing your page or a blog post for it doesn’t guarantee you any success (or high rankings in our case). What is a focus keyphrase? It’s research, research, and research!

We’ve already discussed here how to find the most relevant SEO focus keyphrase. Let’s use my example once more. So, I did my research and found out that keyword rank tracking is super competitive and there is no way I could possibly rank for it quickly with one blog post. So I started stretching that keyword and trying out different tails. 

Mobile rank tracking appeared to have high volume (meaning that a good amount of people are interested in this subject) and low competition (very few websites are ranking for it). That’s why I decided to stick to it and, as a result, managed to get this blog post to the first page of Google the next day it was uploaded. 

Sounds easy? Personally, I consider it a perfect match of persistence and luck! And if I managed to do it, you can do it too – zero doubts!

Good that things are different right now and Yoast SEO can now help you find focus keyphrase examples that your website is already ranking for. Therefore, you can be more confident about the keyphrase you’re choosing to rank high easier and faster.

Remember I mentioned that Wincher has partnered up with Yoast SEO to make the optimization even easier for you? I guess it’s the perfect moment to tell you in detail about our integration. Keep on reading to find out how you can find the best focus keyphrase AND know exactly what position your website already has for it. 

How to Find Out What Position You Have for The Focus Keyphrase?

Because Wincher is responsible for this part, let me explain it in depth. 

But first, let’s summarize what we’ve learned this far:

1. We’ve defined what is a focus keyphrase and saw a couple of examples of it
2. We’ve learned what should you focus on when looking for your perfect Yoast focus keyphrase
3. We’ve found out what benefits you gain after you’ve added a keyphrase into the Yoast SEO plugin
4. We’ve learned exactly how to set focus keyphrase in WordPress 
5. And we have just found out that from now on you can check the position your website already has for the Yoast SEO focus keyphrase. So how can you do it?

After you’ve added a focus keyphrase into Yoast SEO, don’t rush into optimizing your content and fixing alt attributes (or whatever the plugin recommended you to fix). Check if the chosen keyword has really the best potential out of all. To do it, you need to scroll down the right sidebar and click on the tab “Track SEO performance”.

  

This tab will lead you to the pop-up window that will show you what you were looking for.

At this point, you can see that the Yoast SEO plugin can already show you the position of the keyphrase you’ve entered before. This way, if you have a couple of keywords and you doubt which one will work better for this blog post or a page, this is the perfect time to know it for sure.

Add one focus keyword – check what position your website has for it (if it has it at all), add another focus keyphrase and check if the situation varies.

Note: The screenshot above shows the position of the already published blog post. Until the page or a blog post isn’t published, it’s totally ok to see the position >100. It means that your website IS ranking for that keyword, but you need to make some efforts to let it rank higher in search results in order to drive traffic.

Also, I have some great news for those of you who have Yoast Premium accounts. Wincher integration with Yoast allows you to track multiple keyphrases in one post. I have a detailed step-by-step guide that you can follow to do that. Plus, it has more details about the integration, metrics you get, and possibilities you can use to your advantage. Feel free to check it out if you want to learn more.

Final thoughts

I really hope that I managed to explain to you all the basics of what a focus keyphrase is, why it’s so important to choose the right one, and how exactly you can do it.

Of course, Google remains somewhat mysterious about what exactly they use and how to leverage the more than 200 ranking factors the search algorithm uses. But here’s what we do know: your content needs to be of high quality and relevant to your searchers and what they are looking for. In fact, that is the most important factor above all. 

How to become better at SEO and get better results? You need to creating high-quality content that not only gets you on that front page of Google search results, but is also absolutely adored by the real people you’re trying to reach. And that’s no easy task.

So how do you become a master of creating high-ranking, engaging, and memorable content? By using professional tools that were created to make you that SEO superhero you deserve to be.