Keywords are basically ideas and topics in the form of text that define what your content is about. In terms of SEO, they’re the words and phrases that users enter into search engines, also known as “search queries.”

As a website owner and content creator, you want the keywords on your page to be relevant to what people are searching for. This way they have a better chance of finding your content among the results.

Keyword research is the process of identifying Keywords, a practice used by SEO professionals to find and research actual search terms people enter into the search engines when conducting a search. Developing a list of keywords is the most important step in any search engine optimization initiative. Keywords and SEO are directly connected when it comes to running a winning search marketing campaign. Because keywords are functional for all your other SEO efforts, it is well worth the time and investment to ensure your SEO keywords are highly relevant to your audience and effectively organized for action.

SEO Keyword research should be an ongoing and ever evolving part. Old keywords need to be re-evaluated periodically and high volume, competitive keywords can often be usually replaced or augmented with longer, more specific phrases designed not to bring in just any visitor but exactly the right visitors.

Let’s get you acquainted with a few SEO Keyword terminologies that you ought to know to get a better understanding of the concept of keywords.

• Keyword Planner – Google Keyword tool is an official product from Google, which gives a traffic estimation of target Keywords and also helps in finding more relevant and related Keywords for your niche. Keyword Planner is a free AdWords tool for new or experienced advertisers, like a workshop for building new Search Network campaigns or expanding existing ones. You can search for keyword and ad group ideas, see how a list of keywords might perform, and even create a new keyword list by multiplying several lists of keywords together. Keyword Planner can also help you choose competitive bids and budgets to use with your campaigns.
  Image source: Google

• Keyword Proximity – The keyword proximity refers to the distance between the search terms and individual keywords. For example: a website contains the keywords that make up the search phrase “Advertising Agency Mumbai” in the heading “agency in Mumbai; creative boutique and digital marketing”. The search term proximity between ‘agency’ and ‘Mumbai’ is one word and that between ‘creative’ and ‘marketing’ is three words. The smaller the distance between a search term’s individual keywords, the more relevant it will be from a search engine’s point of view.
   Image source: Google

• Keyword Density– Keyword density tells you how often a search term appears in a text in relation to the total number of words it contains. For example: if a keyword appears three times in a 100 word text the keyword density would be 3%. From the point of view of search engines, a high keyword density is an indicator of a search engine spam. If a keyword appears too often in a website, search engines will downgrade the website and it will then appear lower down in search results. Hence it is highly necessary to maintain a proper equilibrium of keyword density, to obtain best results.
  
  Image source: Google

• Keyword Stuffing – A webpage has a section that is hidden from users,  but contains all the words relevant to the page. Keyword stuffing is a black hat technique whereby this section is abused and filled by a high amount of irrelevant keywords, in the hope that it will be associated with these words and found when these words are searched for. Search engines penalize websites that it discovers using this technique.
  
  Image source: Google

       Examples of keyword stuffing include:

• Lists of phone numbers without substantial added value
• Blocks of text listing cities and states a webpage is trying to rank for
• Repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural, for example: We sell custom stationery. Our custom stationery items are handmade. If you’re thinking of buying a custom stationery item, please contact our custom stationery sellers at custom.stationery@example.com.

• Long-tail Keyword – Long-tail keywords are those three and four keyword phrases which are very specific to whatever you are selling. You see, whenever a customer uses a highly specific search phrase, they tend to be looking for exactly what they are actually going to buy. Take this example: if you’re a company that sells classic furniture, the chances are that your pages are never going to appear near the top of an organic search for “furniture” because there’s too much competition (this is particularly true if you’re a smaller company or a startup). But if you specialize in say, ‘contemporary art deco furniture’ then keywords like “contemporary Art Deco-influenced semi-circle lounge” is going to reliably find those consumers looking for exactly that product.
  
  Image source: Google

• Keyword Mapping - Keyword mapping is the process of assigning or mapping keywords to specific pages on a website based on keyword research. Based on your mapping process, you are able to then make specific on-page SEO recommendations to help make the page more relevant to the mapped keywords. Put simply, a keyword map aligns the keywords that prospective customers are using with the pages on your website, while providing a blueprint for adding new pages to attract more traffic. Keyword mapping is best done after you’ve performed thorough keyword research.
  
  Image source: Google

All of this can seem quite complex if you are new to SEO Keywords. Fortunately, there are many tools available that help to figure out the right set of keywords.

A few popular ones are – Google Keyword Planner, SEMRush, Longtail Pro, Market Samurai, MOZ, Word Tracker; amongst others.

If you want Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) done for your brand or business, we can help you.
You can write to us at digitalrego@gmail.com and we’ll get back to you.