Last updated on April 29th, 2022

What are Keywords in SEO?

The keyword is any search term entered on Google that answers a user’s query (or another search engine) with a results page where websites are listed from a search engine’s perspective. 

A website owner or SEO expert will use these keywords to optimize a site to rank at the top of Google’s results for specific keywords.

Everything searched on a search engine, whether a single word or a phrase, is viewed as a keyword. 

In this seo guide we will cover the topics related to keywords:

Why are SEO keywords important?

These Keywords are important because they are the backbone between what people are searching for and the content you provide to fill that need. Your aim in ranking on search engines is to drive organic traffic to your website from the SERP’s (search engine result pages), and the keywords you prefer to target ( and the keywords you prefer to include in your content) will determine what kind of traffic you get. 

For example, if you own a golf shop, you might want to rank for “new clubs” — but if you’re not careful, you might end up attracting traffic that’s interested in finding a new place to dance after dark.

When your site is listed at the top of the results for a keyword, this keyword acts a a free source of website traffic for you. 

If you have an advertisement budget, you can set pay-per-click (PPC) ads on particular keywords. That is how Google Ads works; advertisers bid for space at the top of a results page for particular keywords. 

Generally speaking, more advertisers will focus on a keyword that implies some monetary action that will be worth paying for the ad’s price.

Example: the keyword “loans” has 4 ads at the top of the search results.

In the process of developing a marketing strategy for your site, you will need to pick particular keywords to target your website. By search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing, you can acquire high rankings organically (not via ads). 

All of your left remaining needs can be used for advertising through Google Paid Ads. 

Why Choose a Keyword?

For an online store, keywords are your strategy; they are the actions you choose to fight with the intention of out-doing your competitors and directing the users using search engines in your market to your website instead of theirs.

When you see at the keywords that a website has rankings for (aka their keyword portfolio), you can see its strengths and the area where they outshine their competitors.

When we see the keyword positions that semrush.com ranks for, we can know what their site is about and what kind of products and services they are marketing online. 

Keyword research is the process of finding the right keywords for your website to target. You may not be interested in targeting the most popular keywords about your product/industry; because those keywords would be too competitive and expensive to advertise.

You may not be interested in targeting keywords that none is searching for. So how does one do keyword research? It is important to understand the qualities that we use to define a keyword’s value. 

Qualities of a Keyword

 The main qualities of a keyword include:

• Search volume
• Competition 
• Price (cost per click)
• Word count
• Intent

Keyword Optimization in SEO

SEO Keyword Frequency: 

Keyword frequency is the number of times a particular keyword occurs on a website. Common sense may advise the more times a keyword, or keyword phrase is seen on a web page, the greater the site will rank in Google.

WARNING! You can misuse the system by stuffing an excessive number of keywords or plenty of keyword phrases into your site’s text. Google will penalize your site for this because it resembles a spam site. Be sure to fix your most important keyword or keywords throughout the page as suggested above and below.

Again, here is what you should concentrate on:

• Keyword in the title, description and H1 tag.
• A few variations of keywords (keyword stemming) scattered throughout the text, where it sounds natural and makes sense

Get ready; this is where you set your website apart from the competition!

When performing SEO on their websites, I would wager that most of your competitors don’t consider the following two strategies. I do, and you should too!

Keyword Weight

It points to the number of keywords present on your webpage compared to the overall words present on that same webpage. Some search engines consider this while deciding the ranking of your site for a particular keyword search.

Keyword Proximity

A search term is a combination of keywords. Keyword proximity applies to the distance between the search term’s individual keywords. For example, a website contains the sentence “Mumbai Photographer john specializes in corporate photography”. Now When a user submits the term “Mumbai Corporate Photographer” in a search engine. Here the search term proximity between “Mumbai” and “Photographer” is excellent, zero words, but between “Photographer” and “corporate”, it is four words. The smaller the distance within a search term’s keywords, the more relevant it will be from a search engine’s perspective.

From an SEO viewpoint, the sentence in italics above would be better written as “Mumbai Corporate Photographer john creates images for blah, blah, blah.” In this way, all three search phrase words the searcher entered are next to one another.

Keyword Prominence:

 Keyword prominence points to how prominent your keywords are inside your web page. This means how close to the beginning of the web page, sentence, title, h1 tag, or Meta description your keywords are positioned in simple English.

If at all possible, insert your most important keyword at the very beginning of the following:

• Title
• Description
• H1 Tag
• The body of the text

Keyword Placement is Necessary for SEO 

Proper keyword placement is when keywords are included strategically throughout your website’s content so that the search engines can correctly index your site for those appropriate keywords. Also, it interests searchers to visit your page and visitors to stay on your page.

When keyword placement is done correctly, you can rank better for your preferred keywords in the SERPs. Picking the right keywords and inserting them in the right places is a crucial element of SEO. This brings people with suitable search queries to your site. Remember, it’s the content that makes a visitor stay on the page.

Best places to use keywords in the webpage

Here is a list of fields where you should strive to use your main keywords.

• Include Keywords in the <title> tag.
• Add Keywords in the <meta name=”description”>.
• Insert Keywords in <h1> or other headline tags.
• Add Keywords in the <a href=”http://yourcompany.com”>keywords</a> link tags.
• Addition of Keywords in the body copy.
• Include Keyword in image alt tags.
• Add Keywords in <!– insert comments here> comments tags.
• Use Keywords in the URL or website address.

How to do Keyword Research for SEO?

There are many ways to collect keywords for your website. Some useful keyword ideas are:

• The possible words people would use to view your product or service.
• The issues that your prospective customers may strive to resolve with your product or service.
• Keyword labels or tags on competitor’s websites.
• Noticeable page copy on competitor’s websites.
• Correlated search suggestions on top search engines.
• Utilizing an online tool such as Google Keyword Tool
• By scrutinizing your website and discovering out proper keywords. Expert SEO copywriters can do this task.
• Pay close attention to stemming for your keywords – especially about what the root word is and what search engine considers to be a match for that word when optimizing pages over time.
• You can do brainstorm to know the correct keywords for your site.