Ros Griffiths

What Are Keywords and How Are They Used?

When people use search engines, they go to the search bar and type in ‘keywords‘ which are one or more words representing whatever they are trying to find. Two examples might be: ‘Cardiff plumber’ or possibly ‘budget vacations in Honolulu’.

The search engine (such as Google) then comes back with a selection of website pages, with content that relates to the keyword the person used.

So if you are creating any kind of website which needs visitors to take advantage of what you have to offer, you need to ensure that when customers search for relevant keywords, your website appears as early as possible in the list of results and particularly on the first page. That is what search engine optimization (SEO) is centered on.

How to use keywords on your website?

Fundamentally, you should have relevant keywords in your written posts and pages. It’s better, actually, to identify keywords first and then create content around these words or phrases.

Here are 3 things you should bear in mind:

* Concentrate your efforts on keywords likely to be used by prospective customers

* Focus your individual web pages – target only a small number of keywords per page

* Check what your competitors are up to

Choosing the correct keywords

As far as getting the right keywords are concerned, you could consider the way your prospective clients are likely to think. As an example, imagine you have invented an awesome new baby stroller which is lightweight and particularly for newborns – you call it ‘Smoothbuggy’. You could use that as a keyword for one of your web pages, thereby making it apparent that the page is about the Smoothbuggy. Unfortunately, that’s not what prospects are likely to be searching for – as it’s new, they very likely to never have heard of it! They’ll be typing in ‘baby strollers’ or ’baby strollers New York’. So those are the types of keywords you should be planning on using rather than a product name, unless, of course, it’s very well-known and popular.

Concentrating your time and effort

You should always aim to build separate web pages that are clearly relevant for only one or two keywords. Merely stuffing each and every keyword you are able to think of into your writing doesn’t get the job done – the result is poor content, often unreadable. You may also actually find your pages are penalized by search engines like Google, appearing well down in the search results, if they think you’re seeking to abuse the system. I personally prefer to use just one keyword, supported by synonyms (words and phrases with the same or similar meaning) for each of my posts and this makes it far easier to create content that makes sense.

Outsmarting your competition

Just about all your business rivals are doing SEO on their websites as well – and many may have bigger funds available to spend on it. Picking a one-word keyword and trying to compete with it is likely to be unachievable (and, happily in this instance, less likely anyway to deliver potential customers who are interested in what you specifically have to offer).

What you should do to make your campaign effective, is think of longer phrases that properly match what your target market are looking for, and where you have a competitive advantage. Using the above example, a better keyword might be ‘lightweight baby stroller’ or ‘newborn baby stroller’. These have less monthly searches by consumers but are far more effective as, the fact that they are more specific augments the likelihood of the person having found what they’re looking for. These types of keywords are called ‘long-tail’.

This is the basics of keywords and their use in SEO of websites.