What Are Keywords and Why Do They Matter?

With the increase of online activity, targeting keywords to capture the attention of your audience is more important than ever. So is our understanding of them.

The last quarter of 2020 demonstrated a 7.4% growth in internet users. With this, on a global scale, there is estimated to be 4.66 billion users searching the internet on a daily basis. 

With this, you’re probably thinking something along the lines of:  “Perfect! More active internet users means more people will see my content, right?”. Well, unfortunately, no. Without being able to answer the question “what are keywords?” or understanding the importance of keywords for optimising content in 2021, your words might not go as far as you’d think. 

So, that’s why I’m here giving a good go at letting you know exactly what keywords are:

Keywords are Words, Phrases and Sentences 

Optimising content in 2021 involved using specific words, phrases and sentences throughout your content a few times here and there. The idea is to place these words and sentences every 200 words or so to let the Google crawl bots know that your content is consistently valuable in answering a search engine user’s query! 

However, depending on the type of keywords you choose to use throughout your content, they really can be anything from single words to phrases, sentences, rhymes, questions, numbers, statistics, acronyms and more. 

Keywords are Targeted for SEO and PPC

One thing to remember is the importance of keywords to your audience rather than your business. The role of your content is to rank on a search engine results page (SERP) to help answer the query of your target audience. 

Whether you decide to do it through organic search engine optimisation (SEO) or through pay per click (PPC) advertising, the keywords need to be targeted in a way that means something to your audience. This means that it’s not just got to relate to your business.

One key thing to note is that an extra keyword type is used with PPC marketing: negative keywords!

Keywords are Found Through Brand-Specific Research

When discovering keywords, you need to be able to conduct both audience-specific research and brand-specific research. 

For example, it’s important to know what your target audience is searching for in relation to your brand, product or service.

To do this, you can use a range of free websites such as Answer the Public, Google Trends, SEM Rush and Wordstream as well as free-to-use plug-ins such as Keywords Everywhere, SEO Minion and TubeBuddy. Of course, paid-for services like SEO Surfer, SEM Rush and Ahrefs are certainly on the cards, too.

These sites and tools all start with a search; you look for something that relates to your brand and audience in order to pull a list of possible keywords people are searching around the globe. Most of these sites and tools will also tell you the competition value, too (P.S. don’t aim for high-competition keywords just yet).

Keywords are a Competition Value

Continuing with the whole competition aspect, the importance of keywords is to tell the search engine that your content is the most relevant out of all the other websites targeting the same keywords.

They are a competition value because you’re essentially competing to reach the top position on a given SERP using your content. Targeting longer and more niche keywords, where the search trends are slightly lower (and so is the competition) you’re more likely to reach the right target audience for your brand at the top position!

Keywords are a Key to Gaining Organic Traffic

Putting everything together for optimising content in 2021, the answer to the question “what are keywords?” really is just a tool used to gain organic traffic.

Effectively using keywords means:

• Creating a brand identity

• Understanding the ideal persona for the site

• Finding keywords that resonate with your brand

• Searching keyword search trends in your audience

• Keeping keyword competition at a level of low to medium

• Implementing the keywords within your content

When you’ve got that process in the bag, the idea is that the Google crawl bots will look at your content, analyse the value and begin to rank the content in the relevant search queries. This then creates a snowball effect of audiences clicking the link to your site, increasing the site value, Bettering the ranking for the intended keywords and having even more traffic find your site organically (and follow the customer journey, of course).

You have to question whether you and your audience are getting the most out of your content or not. For example, optimised content using a strategised approach with the ten keyword types can help attain more valuable leads to increase overall convergence rates on your site no matter your brand goal.

To find out more about the ten keyword types, have a quick gander at my other article: “The 10 Types of Keyword You Need to Know for Optimising Your Content”.

Otherwise, leave a comment and let me know if you found this article helpful and what else you’d like to see from Jade Victoria Copywriting!