What Keywords Are and How to Choose The Right Ones and Rank Your Business

Content appears on search results and appeals to people only if it relates to their searches.

That`s because search engines rank content whose keywords relate to people`s search queries.

Using keywords that target your audience`s searches avails your business to people with a high potential to convert.

However, that can`t happen if you don`t know what keywords are and how to use them.

This content explains what keywords are and how you can use suitable ones that can drive quality traffic and increase conversions to your business.

What Are Keywords?

Keywords are words or phrases that people type on search engines when searching for anything online.

Incorporating them into your content helps search engines index and rank your content.

Keywords are classified into

• Short tail keywords
• Long tail keywords

Short Tail Keywords

These are composed of one to three words. They are general terms that target a wide topic. An example is, “Freelance writing”. This is a keyword that doesn`t specify a particular type of freelance writing.

Short-tail keywords usually have a high search volume and are competitive to rank for.

Long Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords include three or more descriptive words.

Unlike the short-tail ones, they have low search volume, are less competitive, and target a specific audience that has a high chance of converting.

An example is “dog freelance writing services.” This specifies a definite freelance writing service and attracts people looking for particular services, making it easy to convert.

Keyword Search Intent

Image by Miguel Á. Padriñán: Pexels

Keyword search intent refers to the reason for people to make searches.

Knowing people`s search intent helps produce targeted content that ranks, answers their queries, and convinces them to convert.

Before creating content, you should know what and why people search for and if answering that search intent can help you achieve your marketing goals.

Keyword search intent is categorized into

Informational Search Intent

People make these searches to learn about something and they use words like how, why, when, what, tips, ideas, etc.

For your content to appear on these searches, create educational content such as listicles, guides, case studies, and so on.

Here is how people may use informational intent in their searches:

• How to wash a car
• What is SEO?
• Why online businesses fail

If you target such keywords in your content, you increase traffic to your content.

Navigational Search Intent

Navigational search intent is used when one already knows the website name. So, they paste the URL or type the name of the website and search.

You will only appear in these searches if your brand is the one searched for. This can involve one searching for brands like

• Tesla
• Yahoo
• BBC News

The intent behind navigational searches could be to learn about a certain topic, check the prices of items, or buy products or services.

Commercial Search Intent

This search intent indicates that one is interested in buying certain products or services in the future.

People make these searches to look for product and service details such as comparisons or reviews.

When making commercial searches, people may type something like:

• Dell Vs HP
• Yamaha Motorcycle Reviews
• Best Office Desks

Transactional Search Intent

People perform these searches when they have made purchasing decisions and are looking for where to buy.

Such keywords are descriptive and targeted to a specific product or service.

When making these searches, people use words like, buy, affordable, cheap, purchase, etc.

Here is what one may type

• Best places to buy hotdogs
• Affordable Lenovo laptops
• Cheap Samsung phones

To appear in transactional searches, provide high-quality products or services, and create content that shows how people can benefit.

Here is a resource where you can learn more about how to identify your audience`s intent and create content with a high potential to drive conversions.

What to Consider When Choosing Keywords

Photo by Karolina Grabowska: Pexels

Your keyword choice determines whether your website ranks in relevant search results and drives traffic that converts.

To use the appropriate keywords for your content, consider

Keyword Competition

Also called keyword difficulty, this refers to how hard or easy it may be to rank on a keyword.

Before creating your content, analyze the keyword competition. A keyword is difficult to rank for if it`s used by many authoritative sites.

For example, if the keyword is SEO and websites like Semrush rank for it, it`ll be difficult to rank for it if your site is not established.

You can measure a keyword difficulty using keyword research tools such as

• Ahrefs
• Semrush
• Moz
• Soovle
• Jaaxy

Open the tool, type your keyword, and analyze it. It will show you how competitive the keyword is.

If the keyword has a high volume but it`s too competitive, make it a long-tail one to target a specific topic.

That will reduce its search volume but target an audience with a high chance of converting.

Here is more about how to find low-competition keywords.

Keyword Search Volume

Keyword volume refers to the number of searches a keyword gets per month.

Measuring keyword volume helps create content that ranks. Keywords with fewer searches hardly drive traffic or help you make sales.

To find keywords with a high search volume, type your keywords in the keyword research tools and search. You will see the number of searches a keyword gets per month.

Choose the relevant ones and incorporate them into your content, and you will increase your website rank.

Here is in-depth content on how to find keyword search volume and raise your content rank.

Keywords Relevance

If you want to drive conversions, use keywords relevant to your business goals and your audience`s intent.

Your keywords should align with what people type when searching for relevant content and enable you to reach your campaign goals.

That`s because every campaign goal has a different objective. You cannot use the same keywords in sales generation goals as you would in brand awareness goals.

If your campaign goal is to increase sales, your keywords should align with transactional intent, which includes using words like purchase, buy, affordable, etc. That will enable you to rank on relevant searches with high chances of purchasing.

For brand awareness goals, you should use informational keywords to entice people to learn about your expertise and build trust in your business. That can include using words like how, what, where, when, etc, to explain processes and skills.

Using unrelated keywords drives irrelevant traffic that lowers conversions.

Keyword Density

This refers to the number of keywords used in content. Search engines gauge content`s context based on the amount of keywords you use in your content.

To make your content appear on relevant searches, incorporate the focus keywords in your content.

Ensure your keywords flow naturally with the context of the content.  Do not stuff keywords and make your content sound unnatural. Incorporate your keyword once or twice every 100 words.

Stuffing keywords makes your content sound awful, which can make the audience ignore your content and the search engines lower its rank.

Keyword stuffing refers to the repetition of keywords in a piece of content to trick the search engines and rank.

This involves people including a bunch of phone numbers in content unreasonably so they can appear on the search results and attract clients.

Listing blocks of cities and countries you want to rank for is also a keyword-stuffing method used to enable businesses to appear on local searches.

Your keywords should flow naturally with the context of the content. For example, if the keyword is, “healthy foods,” you can create your content like this:

“Eating healthy foods prevents diseases. However, due to the presence of many fast foods, it`s easy to choose unhealthy over healthy ones.

This uses the keyword naturally making it easy to understand.

Stuffed content using the same (healthy foods) keyword looks like this:

“Healthy foods prevent diseases. Eating healthy foods will keep you safe from diseases caused by unhealthy foods.

The word healthy foods appears three times in the paragraph making it difficult for the reader to understand. That`s because it`s optimized for the search engine and not a human reader.

However, also avoid using a few keywords. Using too few keywords makes the search engines misunderstand your content context. This can lead to your content ranking on irrelevant search results, which won`t help you achieve your goals.

See more about how to use the right keyword density and drive more traffic to your content here.

How to Use Keywords in Your Marketing Campaigns

Picture by Kampus Production: Pexels

Though every online marketing campaign relies on keywords to succeed, how they are used varies from one campaign to the other.

You can`t use keywords the same in search engine marketing (SEM) as you would in search engine optimization (SEO).

Knowing how to use keywords in different marketing campaigns helps in increasing the potential of reaching your goals.

How to Use Keywords in SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the practices that help increase website rank.

That involves creating content that answers the audience`s intent and optimizing it with the relevant keywords.

Content will answer your audience`s intent if you target their search queries and offer solutions to their problems, as this content explains.

Besides, people and search engines find content through links. To make your website navigable, add internal and external links.

Internal links enable search engines to crawl and index your website pages and help people find related content.

However, interlink relevant web pages. Interlinking irrelevant pages misleads people, which can bore them, making them lose their trust in you and ignore your website.

Check more on how to do internal links and increase your website dwell time on this content.

Conversely, external links help people follow your resources and verify your assertions. Therefore, add links from relevant, authoritative websites to back up your content. This will help you build your reliability and authority.

Additionally, find backlinks to enable your website to be found through third-party websites. This also helps increase traffic and conversions.

To find backlinks, you can use off-page SEO techniques like

• Guest blogging
• Broken link building
• Reclaim unlinked mentions
• Creating valuable content

This content teaches more about off-page SEO practices to increase your website rank and drive more traffic.

How to Use Keywords in SEM

Search engine marketing (SEM) involves using paid promotions to raise a website's visibility on the internet.

Like SEO, SEM involves optimizing content for keywords and links; however, SEM also includes paying the search engines to rank your site.

To facilitate SEM, you need to create search-engine-optimized content that answers your audience`s problems.

Then search for relevant, high-volume keywords and create PPC marketing campaigns to enable your site to appear above relevant organic searches.

Here is an example of how your content would appear if you created a campaign about affordable t-shirts.

Read this content to learn more about PPC Marketing.

Use Relevant Keywords and Raise Your Website Rank

Creating valuable content builds authority and trust, making people regard you as a source of information.

However, your efforts will be futile if your content doesn`t appear in people`s searches.

To increase your website visibility and attract clients, use the keywords people type when searching for content related to yours. And ensure your content answers their intent and you will convince them to perform your calls to action.