What Are Keywords?
Simply put, ‘keywords’ are any word, term or phrase that people type into search engines when searching for information, products or services. In other words it’s the phrases people type into google before finding and clicking on any website (or ad). If you culminate all your information on your page, i.e, all your copy, images, videos etc down to simple words and phrases, these are your primary keywords.
How does this relate to business owners?
Your keyword strategy will help search engines like google define what your content is about and in what instance you should show up in search results.
An example of how keywords help you rank; (google, 2021)
So how does it work?
In order to get the best results possible, you will want the keywords on your page to be relevant to what people are searching for so your content can have a better chance of showing up. The more relevant keywords and the content on your web pages the more of a chance you have at showing up for relevant searches.
example of keyword phrases
Lets say you sell shampoo. Your keywords might include “shampoo for sale”, “best shampoo” or “buy shampoo” etc. You can improve your chances of ranking further by including border or more specific phrases like “shampoo for men”, “shampoo for women” if you sold a wide range of shampoos.
If you have a USP like being organic or sustainably made, this can can leveraged by using key words like “organic shampoo” or “shampoo made with natural ingredients”
Why Are Keywords Important?
In short, they are crucial for your SEO.
Keywords help websites with the following:
- Identify and speak the language of the target market.
- Create useful content for the target audience.
- Get content in front of the right people at the right time.
- Communicate to Google that a web page is a good match for a query.
- Improve search engine rankings by helping Google understand the webpage content.
- Drive more qualified traffic to appropriate webpages.
- Increase time on site by directing more qualified traffic to webpages.
- Increase conversions by helping consumers find you rather than your competitors.
Keyword research helps you understand how your target market describes your products or services. It also shows you how people ask for more information on your topics when using a search engine, helping you generate ideas for new content and optimise your webpages to match a searcher’s intent and answer a searcher’s questions.
What are Negative Keywords?
Negative keywords refer to a type of keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by a certain word or phrase. Your ads aren’t shown to anyone who is searching for that phrase. This is also known as a negative match.
For example, when you add “free” as a negative keyword to your campaign or ad group, you tell Google Ads not to show your ad for any searches containing the term “free”. On the Display Network, your ad is less likely to appear on a site when your negative keywords match the site’s content.
example of google search for women’s shampoo
Negative keywords are exclusive to PPC advertising meaning that by targeting keywords via ppc you will stand more of a chance ranking for specific terms and also receive more relevant traffic to your site, but this also means you will be paying for each click you do get, regardless of a conversion.
What are long-tail keywords?
Keywords extend to more than what we have discussed so far. Keywords can be categorised whereas some can be broad and far-reaching, known as “head keywords” or consist of a more specific combination of several terms which are known as “long-tail keywords”.
The scale above known as the “search and demand curve” shows the correlation between head keywords and long-tail keywords, and the average types of search people will often use.
Singular keywords, like shampoo appear to be the most relevant as it would often have a temptingly high search volume. Naturally trying to rank against a broad term will be difficult as you would now be competing against all the other businesses with the same keywords. Not only that, but singular keywords are extremely vague, i.e “shampoo”. It does not offer much insight.
However, long-tail keywords usually have more clearly defined intent, like “best shampoo for women”. This helps navigate users to more specific parts of your website.
How To Use Keywords on Your Page?
There are some basic keyword usage rules you will want to follow such as, implementing your keywords into both your title tag and body of your content. These are referred to as ‘unique keywords’ and for the best results you will want to employ these on each page of your site in areas that bots and humans would normally look.
Some more tips include;
- Merging your keyword into your URL,
- Keywords frequent in page copy
- H1 tag (often your page title),
- Meta descriptions
- Alt attributes
To find out more about optimising your content and how to show up more on search engines view our recent blog on how to create better content. https://k-numerique.com/how-to-create-great-content.