What are keywords | How to use them for SEO?

Keywords are phrases or words that users type into search engines to find what they are looking for . For example if a user is looking for a sweater , he might type “men’s sweaters” , this long term is considered as a keyword from SEO point of view , however they are generally considered as a search query.

Why are keywords important ?

Keywords are important because , if a website shows up for particular keywords then there are high chances that website would get more CTR and organic traffic. For example for keyword webwave solutions , our website ranks in the top 10 in the search results .

How to appear in google search results ?

One can appear in google search engine for a particular keyword in two ways 

• Pay Per click (PPC)
• Search engine optimisation (SEO)

Pay per click (PPC) 

Pay per click is where you pay for google to rank in the top for a particular keyword in search results. For instance, for the keyword say “Webwave” , the following website shown in the image appears on top , with sponsored mentioned , meaning its paid advertisement , where webwave is bidding in google to rank on top for this keyword .

This method of ranking for a particular keyword is called PPC (pay per click ) , for this google charges certain money . 

Search engine optimisation

SEO is the process of optimizing your site to rank for a particular keyword in search results. For example, for the keyword “webwave marketing agency” , our website ranks 1st in the search result for this keyword beating other websites.

By this way we will be able to capture the clicks and organic traffic for the above keyword. 

How to find keywords ?

Most people have a fair idea of what keywords the people search for products they sell . So people use various keyword research tools in the market , which take in certain seed keywords and return a few suggestions . We at webwave have our own free AI keyword suggestion tool which takes in seed keyword and country name , and gives 10 keyword suggestions.

For example for keyword , event management company , the tool suggested 10 keywords , with its difficulty level .

How to choose keywords ?

Now that various tools suggest a list of keywords , how to select the right keyword ? 

Also one cannot rank for all keywords and also one cannot pay for all keywords.

There are  4 metrics which help us to solve this problem, they are 

• Search volume 
• Keyword difficulty
• Search intent 
• Value

Search volume: 

Higher the search volume indicates , more people are looking for content related to these phrases or keywords . If these keywords match your business , then one should include them in their content .

Search intent:

Search intent is the reason behind a query . In  other words , it is what users are looking for when they use a search engine. Search intent helps us to understand what sort of information the user is looking for . The search intent is of 3 types 

• Informational intent : users want to learn about something
• Transactional intent : users want to buy something
• Navigational intent : users want to navigate to particular site 

First one has to identify what their core users are looking for , then one has to select the keywords that match users intent and optimize content accordingly.

Keyword difficulty: 

Keyword difficulty gives you a hint about how difficult it is to rank for particular keywords . Suppose you have found a keyword with a lot of search volume , but if its difficulty is high , it means a lot of websites have high quality backlink for this keyword . To start one has to choose keywords with low to medium difficulty.

Value: 

Keyword value helps us to determine how much people are ready to pay for that keyword to rank for . This is usually measured in terms of cost per click . For instance, Pizza dough has high volume and if you are an oven seller , this keyword is not of much value to you , as people with this search intent are looking for a recipe rather than buying a product .

Final thoughts 

Keywords are the foundation of SEO. You can’t possibly create or optimize content for search engines unless you know what people are searching for and what they want to see