Introduction/Overview
A Keyword is any word used to enter on any search engine like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. that has result pages were lists of sites available. Basically, the keyword is a synonym for Google searches and queries. Keywords are the phrase or words that help search engines to identify what your content is about. Sometimes keywords are also referred to as key phrases. These keywords are discovered during the keyword research process. Keywords play a vital role in successful SEO.
Anything you entered on a search engine, either phrase or a single word, is always considered as a keyword, for instance, if you enter a query on Google search engine “Types of flowers in the world”;
As you can see in the above pictorials, google will filter this search query which is “Types of flowers in the world” and showed us related websites with similar keywords. As said, keywords are the phrase or a single you use to find something; for instance, if you want to buy a new pair of shoes, maybe you enter something like “Comfortable shoes for women”. Even though it is a phrase.
In this guide, We’ll cover:
• Why are keywords important in SEO?
• Types of Keywords
• How to make your website appear in search engines for keywords?
• How to find Keywords?
• Ultimate Tools for Keywords Research
• How to choose the right keywords for your business?
• How to optimize a web page for keywords?
Why are keywords important in SEO?
Keywords are important for successful SEO because in this way your website can be ranked top on the Search engine result page. Your site can be show top of the result page when people type them in the search bar because of the keyword research process and optimization of the site for keywords. In terms of SEO, these keywords act as a free source of organic traffic for your website.
Keywords can be useful to target any market strategy. If you want to adopt any market strategy for your website, you must choose a specific keyword to target your audience. Through content marketing and Search engine optimization, you can achieve top rankings organically not because of ads. To rank up your site organically, it is important to understand well your visitor – what type of language and content they search for.
For marketing, keywords are your market strategy; By choosing the right keyword, helps you in beating other competitors in the market and directs people towards your website, and increases your organic search. Don’t target those keywords that no one is searching for. Your client/customer uses related keywords to reach out to your website.
Types Of Keywords
There is a variety of SEO keywords available to target, you need to use a different types of Keywords, so people reach out to your website. The keyword selection process may occur complicated or confusing without any proper knowledge, but it acts effectively in long run. Here we are going to explain different types of keywords by length and characteristic, you need to know.
Short-tail keywords also known as Broad, Generic or Head keywords are popular for huge amount of search volume and on the other hand highly competitive. These keywords mostly consist of one or two words and are typically one of the most competitive SEO keywords. Short tail keywords have lower conversion rates than focused ones.
For example: Comfortable shoes
Long-tail keywords considered to be more specific keywords, are highly targeted to specific audience and topic. These keywords mostly consist of three or more words and are typically less competitive SEO keyword than short-tail keyword. More specific and less competitive keyword are more likely to provide visitors relevant search that they are looking for. It is more likely to increase your search rankings.
For example: Comfortable shoes for women in Australia
Short term keywords also known as trending, fresh, hyped keywords, are popular for something that recently in trend. This type of search increase rapidly but ranking drops after the trend is end. Short term keywords can be used but you have to ready for harsh drop in search ranking.
For example: comfortable shoes Spring 2021 edition
Long term keyword is also known as evergreen keyword because of its consistency in search rankings. These are the keywords that are all time relevant. Search ranking may be up and down, but it lasts and always evergreen keywords. These keywords considered to be more informative and educational, which means top rankings in search engine result pages SERPs.
For example: 5 tips for better sleep
Product Keywords focused on specific offering product of any brand or company. These types of keywords are used when visitor tend to buy a specific product offering by a company. To get high ranking for the site, brand should adapt strategy for each service or product, so that customer can reach those products rapidly through search.
For example: Adidas comfortable shoes for women in red colour
Geo targeting keywords are the term, people used for finding a specific location (Country, state, city, area, neighbourhood etc.). Geo- targeting words are also known as local keywords, used by the searchers to find near places or any other location they are interested in. Placing the brand location in sidebars or in footers having different effect in searches than placing them in actual content.
For example: Australia Shoe brand
Latent semantic Indexing keyword is mathematical study, that how set of words or phrases will come together, used by search engines, and also known as thematic keywords. Search engines use different way of pattern to understand word context. LSI keywords very closely related to primary or main keyword, also very tricky. LSI keywords mostly used in article, blog post creation.
For example: if your main keyword is shoe then LSI keywords are shoe sole, shoelace.
Intent targeting keywords are also known as Buyer keywords. This type of term is used by the searcher when they are looking to buy a product or want to service something specific. These types of keywords are categorized in three phases of purchase. Each type will describe different search intent of buyer.
1. Informational
Informational keywords related to some queries, which describes the visitor’s experience. These are the keywords usually used to get a solution for a specific problem. Visitor used these keywords to seek guidance or help.
For example: What’s the best comfortable shoes?
2. Commercial
Commercial Keywords are also known as navigational keywords. Visitors use these keywords to reach out a brand or company. Searchers often use these keywords when they tend to buy something from a specific brand or a company. When visitor targets specification like size or style, is clearer and more serious about buying.
For example: Adidas comfortable shoes?
3. Transactional
Transactional queries or keywords are those, in which searcher has the intent to perform a transaction. This type of keywords used when the buyer considering a product and finalizing the last phase of purchase. At this point, when searcher ready to make purchase, use keywords like Sale, Best product, guarantee, Free delivery and reasonable etc.
For example: Shoes for sale.
How to make your website appear in search engines for keywords?
There is long debate of SEO vs PPC, which is effective; paying to get high ranking PPC or having a market strategy to get organic suitable rankings SEO. Here I’m going to discuss both ways to get high rankings and which technique used by professionals nowadays.
PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising
When you pay the search engine for “clicks” or “visitors” to get highly ranked in SERPs for specific keywords, it refers to Pay Per Click Advertising. Pay Per Click Advertising allows stakeholders to quickly get search engine traffic their way, by paying or bidding. If you have enough budget to pay for advertisements you should prefer Pay Per Click Advertising, to be highly ranked in SERPs. PPC is scalable only if you have a budget to spend, otherwise, in long run, you will have to pay more and more to get better results. The more you spend money; the more you get the desire results. Once you turned off the PPC ad, it will stop providing you a high ranking.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Search Engine Optimization is considered an organic and natural way of ranking generation. SEO consists of the optimization of Your website to achieve top ranking positions in SERPs. In SEO, you must make sure that the search engine understands, what each page of your site is about. SEO helps provides understanding to the search engines, of your web pages. It is only possible if your brand used the right keywords for the services and for the products. SEO is the only right and long-lasting way used by professionals, to survive in long run, a properly optimized site can get a high position in SERPs. The labor cost for SEO is less than the cost of managing PPC ads.
How to find keywords?
Finding the right Keyword is the foundation for SEO, if nobody is looking for a keyword that you used, you would not get any search traffic. So, choosing the right keyword for a product or service is very important. Keyword research is a process of understanding the terms and languages searchers using. Researching involves analyzing and comparing the promising keywords for your website. You must do keyword research if you want to know what people are searching for. You need to avoid creating content that no one is searching for. There are many ways to do keyword research, but you can also use Keyword research tools.
Ultimate Tools for Keywords Research
Keyword research tool helps you in identifying topic-related keywords, people are using for searching purposes. It helps you get the knowledge that what people are searching for relevant content. By knowing the right keywords for a specific topic, you can use them in your web pages, to get search traffic organically.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs offers the functionality of competitive intelligence, provides an ability to see different new keywords with alignment in search queries. When the user types any keyword in the search box, the Ahrefs tool gives a variety of ideas similar to the entered one. You can use it to see your competitors’ ranking also and you can create content by targeting keywords related to those subjects.
SEMrush
SEMrush is the same keyword research tool as Ahrefs. It gives an idea about the keywords that your competitors are ranking for. It is a complete suite tool to boost your SEO rankings. By typing any keyword in this tool, you can get a complete idea of that keyword. If you scroll down, you can also find other similar keywords that have organic search rankings.
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is designed for Advertisers, who want to get rankings through PPC or CPC. Also, people use Google Keyword Planner for SEO because it is free for SEO. To use this tool, a Google ad account is required. Once you get access to it, you can see all monthly searches of any desired keyword.
MOZ
MOZ is the same as SpyFu. It is designed to get more accuracy about the search volume of a keyword, in this tool, you enter a URL link in the search bar, and can get a detailed version of accurate keyword volume. If you want to get a comprehensive analysis of any keyword, you need to create a MOZ account, and it’s free.
SpyFu
SpyFu is designed to get a complete report of your competitor’s profitable keywords even for the paid ones. By using this tool, you can find competitor’s ranked keywords. You can use it for free and check the details of any desired site. If you want to get more details of any site, you must create an account and log in to see a more detailed version of the competitor site.
How to choose the right keywords for your business?
Nobody pays for every keyword at the same time nobody gets ranking for every keyword they use, so choosing the right keyword for your business is very important, choose wisely. There are major attributes I’m going to discuss, which will help you in choosing the best keyword.
Search Intent
Search intent also known as User intent refers to understanding the main idea of the user when searching queries. The basic purpose of search intent is to understand searcher intent, why users is searching for this? Is the user wants to make a purchase or taking interest in a specific product? If most of the users searching for the same query, that means results for that query will get high rankings on SERPs. In SEO, this is known as Search intent.
Google provides their user the most relevant result against their query, if you want to get high rankings in Google for your keywords, you should create content that aligns with user intent.
Volume
Keyword research has one of the most important metrics known as search volume, Keyword research tools help us to find a keyword with high search volume. If you are confused between two keywords that people searching for, choose a keyword that has a high volume search. Different tools have different figures for the same keyword, but no one knows which algorithm Google Keyword planner is using because most the people consider as an accurate source.
Difficulty
Let’s suppose you have found keywords that searchers searching for, and your site aligns with that keyword and seems valuable. After finding, you should go further? Necessarily Not. It depends on another metric to find out, how difficult it would rank your keyword? Keyword difficulty measuring runs from 0 to 100. If any of the keywords have a high difficulty score, it means top-ranking pages use some backlinks to rank up their keywords. It is important to have high-quality links to get high rankings. No one knows the exact formula that Google uses to measure keyword difficulty with complete accuracy. It is also not necessary that all keywords have a high difficulty score.
How to optimize a web page for keywords?
Most of the research says, you need to follow some steps, that will help in optimization for keywords:
Include keyword in URL
Include the keyword in page title
Use keywords frequently in content
Try to use Long Tail Keywords
The above steps make sense, to optimize the site for keywords. But it would be considered as a secondary way, not the primary one. The goal is to optimize keywords for only search intent. Google knows the user intent, it does not show results that depends only on Blog Post, Google also shows product and services. Remember the way to optimize the web pages for a keyword depends on search intent. You need to understand the other factors that users are expecting to see. Let’s suppose the other factor is “Backlinks”. You can explore top-rank pages or sites on SERPs and get an idea of what people want to see.
Take sense by seeing top pages, what type of content you should write. You should check each and everything on top rank Pages, like URL, title, content type, and type of keywords.
With the passage of time, most of the keywords become less or more popular, and optimization for keywords progress or become outdated. Always assume that your competitors keeping an eye on you and doing what you are doing. SEO is not just setting up and forget after it. Make sure you are well aware of the latest SEO techniques and intent to optimize your website for keywords.
Conclusion
Keywords are important for a successful SEO campaign because in this way your website can be ranked top on the Search engine result page. In terms of SEO, keywords act as a free source of organic traffic for your website. Finding the right Keyword is the foundation for SEO, if nobody is looking for a keyword that you used, you would not get any search traffic. So, choosing the right keyword for a product or service is very important. Nobody pays for every keyword at the same time nobody gets ranking for every keyword they use, so choosing the right keyword for your business is very important, choose wisely. If you want long-term rankings, know your audience’s taste and create content accordingly.
The important thing is to learn the algorithm, that how each search engine works, and what metrics they are following to rank up the page. These algorithms change all time and replace by new versions. What’s important today, will be important tomorrow, because important last over time.