The Definition of Keywords With Examples
A keyword, or more accurately, a key “phrase” is the search term someone entered in a search engine to arrive on your page.
In this example, “Apple Cider” is the keyword:
Believe it or not, keywords have been around since way before the internet.
Last week, I wanted to brine a chicken before I roasted it. I grabbed the book I KNEW had the brine recipe, and dug through the whole section on “Chicken”, I found: Garlic chicken, buttermilk chicken, roast chicken… but no brine recipe.
Then I went to the index, and looked for “brine”. Ah HA! Page 118, a turkey/pork brine.
Like magic, I was on that page, interacting, and making my brine. My keyword, “brine” got me there.
Without that keyword, I would’ve had to accidentally find that page.
Why are keywords important?
I’ve seen really good content just abandoned on the web. It’s well-researched, built with care, but no one reads it.
Why? Because when it was written, no one thought about how someone might LOOK for that information.
Keywords are the key to unlocking the internet. They connect your site information to your potential readers and clients.
Keywords are the main tool in the SEO toolbox.
So let’s take a deeper look at how keywords work.
What are the types of SEO keywords?
1. Short tail keywords
In the above example, the initial keyword, “Apple Cider” would be a short tail keyword, or just a short keyword.
The less you tell your search engine (Google, in this case), the more difficult it is for it to guess what you want:
- Do I want to know what apple cider is?
- Do I want to buy apple cider?
- Do I want alcoholic cider or Mott’s apple juice?
If I was looking for a local cidery, for example, these short tail results are not helpful to me, unless I also want juice boxes for the kids while I drink cider.
As a small business, why waste your efforts and dollars on trying to compete with Treetop?
If you’re a small cider maker, people shopping for apple juice boxes for kid’s lunches are not your clients.
These short keywords bring in tons of volume, and it’s expensive to be at the top. In other words, they’re the big apples on the big tree.
Let’s look at how to be the big apples on the small tree.
What are long-tail keywords?
Long-tail keywords include more information, and narrow the search.
In this example, I’ve narrowed my search to “Spokane”, and also dropped “Apple”. If you are a small local cidermaker, THIS keyword (cider Spokane WA) is more useful to you.
Google can now guess more accurately what I am looking for. It’s now assuming I want alcoholic cider, and brings up Spokane information first.
Why Are Long-Tail Keywords Important?
Long tail keywords are an important part of a small business search engine optimization strategy. The more keywords you have, the more accurate your understanding of the searcher’s intent.
If you’re a small business, getting 8000 visits a month to your site for “Apple Cider” might increase your traffic, but 99% of that traffic is useless (unless you sell lunch juice-boxes). It’s also extremely unlikely you can get your results to “rank” on the first page of Google, where all the big apples are crowding you out.
The opportunity for small businesses comes in with long tail keywords. With “Cider Spokane”, you can see the local cideries getting front page results, including Google Maps.
Even better, going for longer-tail keywords like “dry cider Spokane 2022” brings up local cideries, review blogs, and cider events. These keywords have great potential for small businesses, they bring in less visits, but those visits are more likely to buy something, and it is easier to get your results toward the top.
The trick is, how do you figure out these keywords? That’s a deeper subject for another article, but the basics look like this:
- Brainstorm what your customers want – who is your ideal customer, where are they at on the buyer’s journey? This will give you some “seed” keywords
- Research the keyword results from that brainstorm, using keyword research tools. Look for the sweet spot of enough searches per month to bring in traffic, but not so much that the competition is high.
- Organize these long-tail keywords into topics, and plan articles, videos, social media posts, podcasts, or whatever is your favorite form of content around them.
- Use the keywords in your content.
How to use SEO keywords on your website for content marketing
So you have your topics, lists of keywords, and you’re ready to create a blog post. Now what?
Don’t do this
Let’s say you’ve identified a keyword as “heirloom apples in Washington State”. You have some quality knowledge to share with potential clients, starting with the history of cider apple varieties.
It’s great to put your keyword in your title, something like:
“Who’s growing heirloom apples in Washington State”.
But-
don’t overdo it.
Which would you rather read?
“WHO’S GROWING HEIRLOOM APPLES IN WASHINGTON STATE?” Ryan Smith looks down the row of grey-green leaves, searching for the tiny marbles that will become tart cider apples this fall. His orchard, Ryan’s Big Apple, just ventured into heirloom apples, and business is booming in Washington.
–Or–
“WHO’S GROWING HEIRLOOM APPLES IN WASHINGTON STATE?” Want to know who’s growing heirloom apples in Washington State? They can be hard to find, but read on to find out who’s growing heirloom apples in Washington State.
No article is really geared to just one keyword, so sprinkle them in naturally. Yes, put them in your title, add secondary keywords into your subheadings, and in your content where they MAKE SENSE.
Ideally, keywords should be 1-2% of your content.
Your web designer can also use them here:
- Image alt text – put keywords in the “Alt” text that pops up over images when you roll the mouse over
- Your meta tags – settings for search engines, at the page and site level.
- URL slug – when creating a blog post, make sure the title is in the URL
NO: http://www.myciderdomain.com/456423#article
YES: http://www.myciderdomain.com/Whos-growing-heirloom-apples-in-washington-state
Need help with SEO keywords?
To use keywords successfully, they need to be part of an all-over SEO and content strategy. I can help with that.
Good post.