What Are Keywords and Why Do You Need Them for SEO?
If you are trying to build out an SEO strategy, you may have heard the term "keywords." More than just a buzzword, keywords should be considered the cornerstone of your SEO content strategy. Without optimizing your site for keywords, you really cannot optimize your website for anything else, which means you won’t be able to drive traffic to your website or any other landing pages.
Here’s why:
What Are Keywords?
Keywords are the words and phrases you type into a search engine like Google or Microsoft Edge. These returned results can be images, videos, or links to websites.
In a more technical sense, keywords represent the ideas and topics related to the content. For example, I may type in “Best SEO websites in The Woodlands” to find an SEO agency in my township. The websites that will come up will have related content, meaning the links shown will mention SEO and should be located in The Woodlands.
Thus, you can consider keywords a clear and concise representation of what you will find on the internet – whether you want to include keywords on your website (to let users know what it is about) or if you wish to see this content yourself.
Why Are Keywords Important?
As mentioned, keywords should be the cornerstone of any good SEO strategy. Think of what you might search for daily. For example, here are a few search terms you might find yourself doing:
Restaurants near me
Can dogs eat bananas
What’s the weather today
How do I do SEO for my business
Best credit card companies
As you can see, people search the internet for all kinds of topics, both broad and detailed! Thus, if you have a website, there are many, many keywords you can use.
On the backend, you can use keyword research and keyword analysis (using various tools like SEMRush or Moz) to find what specific words or phrases your customers are searching for and how often. You can also learn what keywords are the most commonly searched.
When you conduct keyword analysis and find a list of words and phrases you want to use, you can use these to help with landing page creation, blog posts, paid ads, and all kinds of content.
Keyword Definitions
Since this blog post is about the basics of keywords, we will not go over advanced definitions. Instead, here are four SEO terms you should know:
Volume
The number of searches on a keyword for any given time.
A high volume means that many users are searching for this word, and it is a viral keyword.
A low volume, or zero volume even, means very few (if at all) people are looking up this term. This does not mean that you should immediately dismiss any keywords with a low volume; instead, you should be mindful of the popularity of specific keywords.
Competition
This is similar to volume, but it is essentially how difficult it is to rank for a particular keyword. For example, a keyword with low competition means that people are not bidding (spending advertising dollars) on this keyword, or there are not many bidders.
Is it the sweet spot to have high volume and low competition? Of course, this makes sense, but you can also find success with low volume and low competition or high volume and high competition. Rarely would you want low volume and high competition? This would be rare to see as well.
Short Keywords
General keywords that consist of 3 words or less. This is one of two types of keywords you will come across.
For example, “best SEO agency.”
Long-Tail Keywords
Keywords that consist of 3 or more words. This is the other keyword type you will come across.
For example, “Best SEO agency to help with my law firm.”
Should You Use Short or Long-Tail Keywords?
Now that you know the difference between short and long-tail keywords, you might be wondering which to use for your website.
Well, consider the following scenario:
You are thinking of a movie from childhood, but you can’t think of its name. You know it features a bigfoot, so you search “movie about bigfoot.”
You get millions of search results!
This includes what you are looking for, so you might find that movie. However, what if you typed in “movie where bigfoot lives with family and eats McDonald’s.”
See how this is much more specific?
So much so that you will find 1987’s Harry and the Hendersons – the exact movie you are looking for!
You can find the movie you are looking for in both cases, but in the second case, the long-tail keyword generates the exact match.
Here’s another example, suppose you own a life insurance company and want to increase the SEO on your life insurance website.
You can use the phrase “term life insurance,” which will bring more people to the website. The people that come to the page (or click on an ad that uses this term) may convert right away, or they may convert at a later date.
However, suppose you also use “term life insurance for over 50.” Few people search these since it’s limited to a specific demographic, but the people that do are more likely to convert.
Thus, it would help if you always used a mix of both short and long-tail keywords as part of your SEO strategy.
How To Find Keywords:
There are many different ways to find keywords for your website. First and foremost, you can conduct a Google search to see what is recommended. Just look down at the bottom once you return search results. You can do this on other search engines like Microsoft Edge as well.
However, there are other ways you can find search terms. For example, you can use a keyword research tool like Moz or SEMRush and search engine extensions like Keywords Everywhere.
Or, you can partner with us!
Did you know aside from creating short and long-form content, we can also provide keyword lists or create business blogs to generate increased traffic? Whatever your needs, we can help.
