Keywords: Definition, Types, Importance and SEO Factors!
Last Updated on 27th November 2022 by Ajmer Singh
Are you starting a blog and you are wondering what keywords are?
Our article on keywords in WordPress and its SEO factor should guide you.
Keywords are an integral part of SEO, they help in increasing your rank and traffic on the search engine.
In this article, we will show you what keywords are and their importance in blogging.
What is a keyword?
This isn’t a question you hear every day.
However, becoming familiar with keywords can be a great tool for your internet marketing strategy.
In fact, it’s the foundation of SEO techniques and social media optimization.
Knowing about keywords can help you to understand if a client has done any search engine optimization work on their site already.
It will allow you to know what keywords should be targeted for increased visits.
Keywords are also known as “search terms” or “search queries.”
They are the words that people search for on search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Generally, keywords consist of 2-3 words in length.
Relevance is key when choosing which words to use as your keywords.
The more relevant it is, the higher your chances are of ranking well in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Some effective examples of relevant keywords might include:
- how to make butterscotch cookies recipe
- how to tie a scarf in three different ways
A high number of searches will increase the likelihood that you’ll rank well for that keyword.
To give you an idea, here are some most popular keywords on Google in 2021:
1. Facebook login
2. youtube downloader
3. Facebook
4. yahoo mail account recovery
However, not all of these keywords are relevant to your industry or even inspire confidence in searchers to click through to your site.
This is why it’s important to choose only highly relevant keywords for maximum results with minimum effort.
Keywords can also be competitive.
For example, “Boston Red Sox” has a lot of competition because many other people want their page about this topic to rank high as well.
On the other hand, “Red Sox player Xander Bogaerts” is a less competitive keyword.
If you want your page to rank for this more specific term, it’s necessary to have lots of links pointing back to your site from other people’s sites.
Just keep in mind that when you are targeting keywords with the highest level of competition, it may require an increased budget or additional work.
Finally, don’t choose keywords that are too general or too long because they will be harder to optimize for and won’t bring in many targeted visitors.
For example, “Red Sox news” has lower competition than “Where can I find all the latest news about the Boston Red Sox.”
However, the newest player probably doesn’t know what most fans already know—that there isn’t just one source for all Red Sox news.
This is why it might be better to choose “Boston Red Sox latest news” as a keyword instead of something like “latest Red Sox news.”
Knowing how keywords work can help you craft an effective strategy for your business.
When choosing relevant words, consider their levels of competition and the number of searches they attract.
Implement strategies that will help you rank high in search engine results pages (SERPs) like guest blogging or link building,
targeting specific long-tail keywords rather than highly competitive terms.
Using this knowledge can put your site on the road toward successful internet marketing!
Semrush is s popular keyword research tool that is used by us and many other top bloggers.
What are Keywords in WordPress?
Keywords are ideas, words, or phrases, that searchers type into search queries on search engines to find what they are looking for.
For instance, if I want to buy a business backpack, I will type in the word ‘business backpack’ on google. That’s a keyword
Keywords basically define what your content is about.
As a blogger and content creator, your duty is to ensure that the keywords on your page are relevant to what searchers are searching for.
Read our guide for more information on Searcher’s Intent.
Why are keywords important?
Keywords act as an intermediate between what people are searching for and the content you are providing.
The main goal of wanting to rank for a keyword is to drive more traffic to your website.
For instance, if you wrote content whose keyword has a monthly search volume of 5000, showing up at the top of Google gets you lots of traffic.
Types of Keywords!
1. Generic Keywords
Generic keyword – ‘Football Shoes’
- Highly Competitive and decent traffic
- Not specific enough to the site’s actual content
- Low conversions
2. Head Keywords (Broad keywords)
Head keyword – ‘Red Football Shoes’
- Not as much competition and good traffic
- Specific content for broad searchers
- The average amount of conversions
3. Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keyword – ‘Red Football Shoes Under $100’
- Low competition and not as much traffic
- Actual Content is what they are looking for
- A good amount of conversions (better than generic and head terms)
How to choose keywords?
There are certain factors to put into consideration when selecting a keyword, they include;
- Search volume
- Keyword difficulty
- Competition
- Search intent
- CPC
1. Search volume
Search volume tells you more about the popularity of a keyword, that is how often a keyword is searched for on search engines.
The search volume allows you to know how specific a keyword is and how much traffic you will get from google if you top on that keyword.
However, some keywords do well in the search engine than others.
For instance, the keyword has a monthly search volume of 800 in the United States and a global volume of 1.2k
while the keyword ‘Biscuit’ has a monthly search volume of 92000 and a global volume of 217000
Does it now mean that it’s better to write on the keyword “biscuit” which has a higher search volume monthly than the keyword ‘how to run Facebook ads with less search volume?
The answer is no, this is because your niche should tally with your keyword.
Your niche can’t be focused on blogging and you are writing content with the keyword ‘biscuit’.
How does that fit in?
However, if you choose to write on the keyword ‘biscuit’ and you top on google for that keyword, while it brings you traffic, the traffic is irrelevant to your niche.
Read our guide to pick a perfect niche.
2. Searcher’s intent
Searchers’ intent gives you an overview of what the searcher intends to do.
Is he or she looking for a definition? Are they looking to buy something?
Understanding searchers’ intent helps in drafting your content properly.
In SEO, the searcher’s intent is based on 3 categories and they include;
- Navigational intent
- Transactional intent
- Informational intent
1. Navigational intent
These searchers already have an idea of what they want, what they just need is the correct internet address where to find that information.
For example Bank of India, Donald Trump, etc.
The intent is to navigate to a specific website for particular content.
2. Transactional intent
These are queries where searchers have a strong intent of wanting to purchase the product.
Queries like buy, size, sign up and subscribe fall under transactional intent.
For example: Buy baby’s diaper, size 12 of Louis Vuitton pitch dress.
This intent shows that the buyers are ready buyers.
3. Informational intent
These are queries where the searchers’ intent is to gather information about a specific keyword without the intention of making a purchase.
Queries like how, best and where are examples of informational intent.
For example: how is keyword research done? best business backpack for men? where is McDonald’s restaurant?
Knowing when and how to fix these intents in your content makes your site user-friendly.
3. Competition
How competitive a keyword is, is dependent on two factors
- Keyword difficulty
- competitive density
Keyword difficulty
Keyword difficulty stands for how easy or difficult it is to rank for a keyword.
The keyword difficulty of this keyword is 79, looking at a scale of 1-100, the keyword is high and will be quite difficult to rank for, except, of course, you are ready to build links.
The keyword difficulty of 0-30 is considered ok for websites because it is less competitive, while the Keyword difficulty of 31-100 is considered high,
this is because sites that appear on the top page of Google have spent time building links from other websites.
Competitive density
These metrics tell you how difficult it is to rank an advertisement on the top page.
4. CPC
CPC shows how much advertisers are willing to pay for a particular keyword.
It shows how valuable a keyword is.
Some keywords have CPCs as high as $20.00 while some have CPCs as low as $1, this does not deduce that one keyword is more valuable than the other.
It means that keywords have different values for different people.
How to use keywords?
Most of the guides will advise that you add keywords to the URL of your site, the meta description, the title tag, and much more.
While we don’t counter that, it is still the basics of keyword optimization.
The best approach to optimizing keywords is to do searchers’ intent.
Any time you want to write content around a specific keyword, the first approach is to do the searchers’ intent.
Check out our tips to write unique content.
This is because you don’t want to put up content that does not tally with what your searchers are looking for.
Like I said earlier that there are several types of searchers’ intent, it will be better for you to analyze this intent to see what type they fall into,
so as to know how to write your content.
You can use semrush or ahrefs for keyword research.
There are several ways to search for a searcher’s intent including:
1. Using LSIgraph:
Just type in your keyword and click on the Search tab, the LSIgraph will display a lot of semantically related keyword data you can use.
2. Checking the ‘people also ask’ section on Google:
After you must have typed in your search query on Google, scroll down a bit further, and you will see the people also ask section, you can draft out subtopics from them.
Plugins for Keywords and SEO
There is an extension for google chrome users named Keywords Everywhere.
I love this extension, as it gives all the results regarding keywords when I look for something in google,
like volume per month, CPC rate, competition percentage and more related keywords.
Check our list of best Chrome extensions for SEO.
Meta description and Keywords
Meta descriptions and keywords are used to improve the SEO of a website,
and do you want to take some steps to add meta descriptions and keywords without any problem?
This article will help you in finding the steps on how to add meta descriptions and keywords in your WordPress without any hindrance.
What is the use of meta descriptions and keywords in WordPress?
The meta descriptions and the keywords that we use tell more about the search engines which are based on the content that your posts or pages hold.
Keywords are the words or phrases that are searched the most in content when it is published and even some people search the content using those keywords only.
Whereas meta description is all about describing the page or post that you publish on your website and is brief in its length.
Meta descriptions and keywords are HTML meta tags in actuality and they are added to the website’s header directly.
These can be easily added to your post or page using your WordPress in the admin area with the help of WordPress SEO plugins and they are very easy to use.
What is the importance of meta descriptions and keywords when dealing with SEO?
Search engines do not tell anything about the number of keywords or meta descriptions used inside a post or page.
But it should be very clear and everyone should know as it is very obvious that they should be added inside the posts so that the post or the page published should be ranked best.
Look at the screenshot below to clear your doubts about keywords and meta descriptions.
According to some of the SEO, keywords are not important to use while posting a post or a page.
Even in posts and pages, it is observed that Google does not use keywords and they have themselves admitted it.
But some SEO experts said that it is wrong and people should add keywords to their content before publishing them,
as it is very useful and makes the content easy to use.
Whereas according to some people it is very important to add meta descriptions to the posts and pages as it is helpful in grabbing the attention of the user,
and attracting them towards the website which is very helpful for the admin of the website.
Let’s look towards how to add meta descriptions and keywords with the help of WordPress in the content that is to be published on your website.
Keywords and Meta Description
Yoast Seo Plugin will help you to make your posts SEO optimized and SEO friendly. Use this article to properly set up Yoast in WordPress.
How To Setup Yoast SEO On WordPress (Step by Step)
If you already have it then go ahead and follow the next steps.
Firstly edit the page or post where the meta keywords or meta descriptions are required in the content,
and then scroll down to the Yoast SEO meta box which is present a little below the post editor.
Then you will notice the title of the page or site and then observe the description which is generated automatically as a snippet.
And then after all this, you will see the keywords field which is present somewhere below the page.
Try using keywords which are relevant to the content written.
Avoid using repetitive keywords and try keywords that attract the user who is reading your content.
Then move to the next step by clicking the Edit Snippet button on the screen,
and this button will help you enter the meta description about the site and the content you are about to publish.
This step will help you in turning the snippet preview into an editable area.
After editing the description press the Close snippet editor button which helps in storing the description written,
and then you can display the custom description in the snippet preview.
Then you can observe that meta description and keywords are added to the content and then the content is ready to be published and will give you a helpful ranking.
However, website speed is also a ranking factor, so we recommend using Cloudways as your hosting provider.
Cloudways hosting review 2022: features, pricing and more.
Keywords and meta descriptions are important parts to be added for a better understanding of the post or page.
Hope you guys understand the topic keywords and their importance in SEO.