A keyword is any search term entered on Google (or any other search engine) that has a results page listing websites.
Keywords are search terms that a website owner or SEO professional uses to optimize a website. The goal: to appear at the top of the Google results for certain keywords.
Anything that is searched for in a search engine, be it a single word or phrase, is considered a keyword. For example, here is the results page for the keyword “plants in the desert.”
Why are keywords important?
Keywords are important because they can be used specifically for marketing.
If your website is at the top of the search results, that keyword is your free source of website traffic.
If you have an advertising budget, you can run pay-per-click (PPC) ads on specific keywords. Because this is how Google Ads works: Advertisers submit a bid for a prominent place on a results page for certain keywords.
In general, more advertisers will focus on a keyword that implies some kind of monetary action that is worth paying for the price of the ad.
Why choose a keyword?
For an online business, keywords are an important part of the strategy. They are the linchpin of the competition. There where you stand out from your competitors and lead interested parties who are in your market to the website.
By looking at the keywords that a website is ranked for (also known as a keyword portfolio), you can see the strengths of the website and the areas in which you stand out from your competitors.
In the keyword research is about finding the right keywords for your own website. You don’t want to target the most popular keywords related to your product/industry. These are often too competitive and too expensive to advertise.
You also don’t want to target keywords that no one is looking for. So how do you go about finding keywords? It is important to understand the properties that we are studying to define a keyword’s worth.
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Properties of a keyword
The most important characteristics of a keyword include:
- Search volume
- competitor
- Price (cost per click)
- Word count
- Search intention
Search volume of a keyword
You can use this metric to evaluate how popular a particular search query is and how much potential traffic you can drive to your website with a good ranking in the results.
For example, “What are keywords” had a volume of 140 monthly search queries in August 2020. You can also see that the search term also had a global search volume of 630.
Competition of a keyword
No matter how impressive a keyword’s search volume, you should keep an eye on the competition. The more sought-after a keyword, the more likely it is that there are tons of websites and marketing agencies already out there vying for the top spot.
Most keyword tools have a way of measuring competition – SEMrush has two metrics:
- Keyword Difficulty – This metric tells you how much effort it takes to organically rank at the top of the results page. The metric reflects how strong and reputable the websites are that are already on the first page. To top what is already there, you have to offer something better in the eyes of Google.
- Competitive Density – This metric is how competitive it is to get an ad at the top of the results page. This depends on how expensive the bids are and how strong the current advertisers are.
In general, Keyword Difficulty will help you plan your SEO campaign and the level of competition will help you plan your advertising campaign.
Word count of a keyword
Word count refers to the number of words in the phrase; “Loans” has a word count of 1 while “Plants in the desert” has a word count of 3.
When searching for keywords in a keyword analysis tool, the search volume and the keyword difficulty of the query are more important than the number of words in the phrase.
However, word count is still a way to refine your research.
For example, in a keyword research tool like SEMrush, you can filter a list of keywords by word count so that only keyword phrases that contain at least 5 or more words are shown.
Why should you do this? Well, you can find more specific queries this way and thus better serve the search intent. Check out how the phrases with 4 or more words are more specific than simply “credits”.
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