When looking for information about keywords related to SEO, you can drown in information about keyword research. But if you still want your page to rank, it is very important to do keyword research. But it is also important to understand what the basic principle of a keyword is.
What is a keyword?
A keyword, or another keyword focused on it, is the word that best describes the content on your page or post and the search term you want to rank for for a particular page. So when people search for this keyword or phrase on Google or other search engines, they should find this page on your website.
Let’s say you have a website about pianos: you sell all kinds of pianos. You blog about what to look for when buying a piano and share reviews of the pianos you offer in your online store. You sell digital pianos, so you created a product category page about digital pianos.
At this point, you should ask yourself the following questions and answer them:
- For what kind of search term do you want to be found?
- What words do you think people will use to find you in search engines?
Although we always use the phrase “keyword”, this does not refer to a concept that consists of just one word. Keywords often consist of more than one word. When we talk about keywords, most of the time we actually mean a sentence instead of just a word.
Also; “What is a Long Tail Keyword? ” to better understand the importance of keywords.
Why are keywords important?
One of the things Google looks at when ranking a page is the content on that page. Google looks at the words on the page. For example, if a blog post about a digital piano uses this word 2 times, then the words here are just as important as the other words that appear twice. Google has little choice but to look at frequency to understand which of these words are important and which are not.
The words you are using contain clues for Google. It helps Google and other search engines understand what the page or post is about. So if you want to make Google understand what your page is about, you need to use related words quite often.
But Google is not the only reason why keywords are important. In fact, you should always focus on visitors or potential customers. When using a specific search term or keyword with SEO, you want people to visit your website. You need to put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and use the words they use when searching.
If you use the wrong keywords, you will never get the visitors you want or need because your text doesn’t match what your potential audience is looking for. However, if you use keywords that people are searching for, your business will succeed. In a nutshell, with the wrong keywords, you have the wrong target audience. So having the right keywords is really important.
How do you use your keywords on your pages and in your publications?
There was a time when you could add a lot of keywords to your pages and posts, you could do some old school keyword stuffing and you were really successful in the search engines. However, a text that contains many of the same keywords will not make for a pleasant read. Because users find it scary to read this kind of content, Google has started to find it scary too. That’s why it’s now – fortunately – difficult to get ranked on Google through keyword stuffing!
So what are the new rules here?
First and foremost, it is very important that your content is easy to read. Of course, you should use your keywords in your text, but don’t use your keywords in almost every sentence. In general, if 1% or 2% of all the words of your content are your keywords, you should not overdo it
Make sure your keywords are well distributed throughout the text. Don’t put all your keywords in the first paragraph thinking that optimization is done in this section. Use keywords naturally on your page or in your post. Depending on the length of your page or post, use your keywords in a subheading or several subheadings. Don’t forget to use the keyword in your page title, first paragraph and meta description!
