What are keywords and how are they used effectively?
Keywords are words that are entered into search engines by searchers to find results or answers to their queries. You should include keywords in your web content so that your webpage will appear in search results for relevant search queries.
Keyword research can help you find words to use that are relevant and get a good amount of traffic. I am not going to go in depth about everything involved in keyword research, but it is a very important step to take before implementing keywords into the content of your website. Keyword research can include the use of online keyword research tools that present data on keywords. Or, keyword research can also include the use of personas or AI tools to help with the brainstorming process. When choosing keywords, think like the searcher. Consider what terms and phrases would they use when entering a search query. Let these thoughts and ideas guide you as you conduct your keyword research. The best keywords have medium or high search volume and low competition.
A word of caution: make sure that you do not overuse keywords because it is considered keyword stuffing. You should generally try to have less than 3% of your content be made up of keywords. Having over 3% of your text consist of keywords may have been okay in the past, but it is no longer considered a best practice, and is actually now seen as quite the opposite. Keyword stuffing is a Black Hat SEO practice that can incur repercussions from Google because it is not benefitting the user and is an attempt to trick the search engine into ranking a website higher. Trickery is not the answer when it comes to search engines. It is best to use keywords as naturally as possible, and not overuse them.
The implementation of relevant keywords can help your website rank higher in the search engine results page and help searchers to find your content when it is most related to their query.
Sources:
https://www.webfx.com/seo/glossary/what-are-keywords-for-seo
https://www.webfx.com/blog/marketing/what-is-keyword-density
4 Responses
I really like how you emphasized the importance of keyword research before all else! I feel like it’s been easy to just try and jump to conclusions on what keywords will work for a post or page without doing enough research to really figure out what will work and what won’t. This is great advice
I like that you defined what a keyword is and talked about keyword stuffing. Keywords are easy to overkill when you get into it. Keyword research is very important, and you established that in your post. I enjoyed reading your post!
I really like that you highlight the importance of keywords, and even though they are important, sometimes we tend to overuse them. It’s important to convey the key topics and subjects of your content, by using several different keywords relating to your content in general.
I think you make some great points. It is easy to jump to conclusions with certain things and assume they are simple, but even something like how we use keywords can absolutely have right and wrong ways to go about it. I like your point that we should think like the searcher as well.