What are Keywords?
What are keywords?
Keywords are ideas and topics that define what your content is about. In terms of SEO, they're the words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines to discover content, also called "search queries." If you boil everything on your page — all the images, video, copy, etc. — down to simple words and phrases, those are your primary keywords.
As a website owner and content creator, you want the keywords on your page to be relevant to what people are searching for so they have a better chance of finding your content among the search engine result page (SERP) results.
Why are keywords important?
Keywords are important because they are the linchpin between what people are searching for and the content you are providing to fill that need. Your goal in ranking on search engines is to drive organic traffic to your site from the SERPs, and the keywords you choose to target (meaning, among other things, the ones you choose to include in your content) will determine what kind of traffic you get. If you own a golf shop, for example, 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.
Keywords are as much about your audience as they are about your content because you might describe what you offer in a slightly different way than how your audience actually searches for it. To create content that ranks well organically and drives visitors to your site, you need to understand the needs of those visitors — the language they use and the type of content they seek. You can do this by talking to your customers, frequenting forums and community groups, and doing your own keyword research with a tool like Keyword Explorer.
You can learn more about understanding and listening to your customers with the Moz Keyword Research Certification.
What are long-tail keywords?
Keywords can be broad and far-reaching (these are usually called "head keywords" or “seed keywords”), or they can be a more specific combination of several terms — these are often called "long-tail keywords."
Targeting and ranking for singular keywords might appear to be your ultimate goal as they often have a temptingly high search volume, meaning, more people are searching for them. However, they usually have extremely tough competition. For example, you may want your boutique clothing store to rank for "clothes," but it's going to be tough to rank above websites like Amazon, H&M, and Nordstrom.
On top of that strong competition, singular keywords can be infuriatingly vague. If someone is searching for "dog," you don't know if they want a list of dog breeds, information about dog food, a place to buy a dog collar or just a site with cute photos of dogs.
Long-tail keywords usually have more clearly defined intent. For example, "best organic dog food for a puppy," or "inexpensive dog walkers Seattle." You may find that long-tail keywords have less competition, with room for a smaller site to break in and make their mark on the SERPs.
Want to understand how long-tail keywords can help you get a leg up on the SERP? The SEO Keyword Research Master Guide can help!
“The long tail of search is the limitless space of low-volume (and often low-competition) keywords. Tactically, long-tail SEO centers on competing for a large number of low-volume keywords instead of focusing on a small set of high-volume keywords”.
Dr Pete Meyers - Long Tail SEO on the Moz Blog
Where to use keywords for SEO
There are some basic keyword usage rules you should follow to get started. Unique keywords should be employed on each page of your site in the areas that bots and humans normally look to reassure them that you have what they're after.
The key areas that you should place your primary keywords include:
Page title (H1)
Subheadings (H2)
Body of your content
Many of these elements can be optimized after you’ve published your content. Except for the URL, which you should avoid changing.
A URL is the web address for your page and will show up in the search results, it is used to create links and is displayed in the address bar. URLs should be created so they are easy to read and include your target keywords. Engage in a simple and understandable URL structure from the beginning to avoid making changes down the line.
Title tags show up in the search results and the browser tab. They should be written for humans and optimized for robots, which is a tricky balance to strike! As this is prime real estate, all your skills in brevity and encouraging clicks will be put to the test. This leads to an important point: the pitfalls of clickbait. You may believe you're enticing more clicks by offering tantalizingly vague titles for your content, but by disguising what the page is actually about, you're masking the true intent of the page, and opting out of some of the power of keywords.
Meta descriptions are displayed in the search results, are known to impact user behavior and in some cases can be rewritten by Google. Include a unique meta description for each page and don’t forget to include your target keywords.
H1 tags show on your page content and can help format your content so it’s consumable by humans and demonstrates topic relevance to robots.
The body of your content should naturally include the keywords you’re targeting. It's no good just throwing keywords on your page. Your goal should be to create compelling content that provides real value for the user. Writing relevant content that is high quality, accurate, unique, and engaging for human visitors that sends strong signals to our robot friends at Google is often the most time-consuming and rewarding part of optimizing your content for target keywords.
Image Alt text is often overlooked by site owners, provides value to visitors unable to view images, and can have the additional benefit through providing robots context for your images.
Including your keywords in these areas is the most basic way to target your content to searchers. It's not going to immediately shoot you to the top of the results, but it is essential SEO; failing to take these basic steps can prevent you from ranking by other means.
Keyword Research Best Practices
Do keyword research to better understand your audience and gather industry-relevant keywords
Match your keywords with user intent
Use your primary keywords in title tags, on-page content, H1 tags, and when you can in the page URL, meta description, and alt attributes - of course only where it makes sense, don’t stuff keywords in where they don’t make sense!
Perform keyword research regularly to stay on top of trends
Use keywords to formulate a content strategy
While you can often start with a keyword and create a piece of content around that term, sometimes your content already exists, and you need to figure out how to match it to keywords. To do this, create what's known as a "content to keyword map." Creating this map can help you understand the impact of your existing content and identify weak links or gaps that need filling.
As keywords define each page of your site, you can use them to organize your content and formulate a strategy. The most basic way to do this is to start a spreadsheet (your "content to keyword map") and identify your primary keyword for each article. You can then build your sheet to your own requirements, add keyword search volume, organic traffic, page authority, and any other metrics that are important to your business.
Ideally, you want each page on your site to target a unique primary keyword. Generally speaking, your homepage will target a very broad industry term and as you create category pages, product pages, and articles, they will drill down into your niche and target more specific needs.
“So, when it comes to using product synonyms to scale your SEO strategy, the key is to align user search intent with a product use case that helps them.”
Adriana Stein - How to Use Product Synonyms to Build Use Case Awareness & Scale SEO on the Moz Blog
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I discover popular keywords?
You can discover popular keywords by looking at competitors in your industry, as well as understanding the keywords that your customers are searching. A great way to discover popular keywords is to use Moz’s Keyword Explorer tool. You simply input a keyword to do with your primary topic, and the tool will then show you other related keywords, along with a search volume metric. You can then filter to see those keywords with the highest search volume. But be careful, as highly searched-for terms, may not always be the best keywords to use!
What is a keyword strategy?
A keyword strategy is a plan you create upon the findings of your keyword research. This involves the target keywords you have chosen, and where and how you choose to place them on your page. Your keyword strategy supports your larger SEO strategy. Strategies involve setting goals and doing the work to achieve those goals, they help you to benchmark the success of your hard work.
How many types of keywords are there?
We discussed ‘head’ keywords, which are also known as ‘seed’ keywords, and ‘long-tail’ keywords. There are, of course, all those keywords in between the head and long-tail, which can be called “middle” keywords. You can drill all of these keywords down into more specific types of keywords, such as branded or product-related terms (i.e. when the brand is in the term, such as ‘Harley Davidson motorcycle parts’), and location-based keywords (i.e. ‘best coffee spot in Seattle’).
What is a primary keyword?
A primary keyword is a keyword that a piece of content is centered around. The primary keyword is the primary topic of the page. This primary keyword can be used as a launchpad to find other related keywords to do with a particular topic.
What is the difference between a keyphrase and a keyword?
A keyword is one word, they are typically those ‘seed’ keywords. While a keyphrase consists of several words, which are typically those ‘long-tail’ keywords. A keyword has a high search volume and is highly competitive, and a keyphrase usually has a lower search volume and is less competitive
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