5. Focusing on only one keyword per post

If you write a nice blog post, its ranking opportunity may not be limited to one exact keyphrase, but includes related terms as well. So, if you can optimize for related (long tail) keyphrases without stretching it, you should definitely do so. For example, we have a post about timeless SEO tips. It’s optimized for [timeless SEO tips], but also for the similar phrases [universal SEO tactics] and [universal SEO improvements], and it’s doing quite well for each of these keywords. 

Not sure how to optimize your content for related keywords and synonyms? Our Yoast SEO Premium plugin can help! It allows you to optimize for related focus keyphrases, and also gives you the option to define synonyms for your focus keyphrase, so that it can take them into account. Awesome, right?