What is a Keyword: Most Crucial Part of SEO & How to Use Them Best

What is a keyword

Introduction: What is a keyword, and what is it used for?

A keyword is a word or phrase that people use as a query to find information on the internet. It can comprise a single word or a group of words, which fulfills the requirement of data from the search engine by the user.

When someone types a keyword in a search engine, it starts to look for that exact term, word, or its synonyms all over the internet. After completing the search, it shows the best possible results that contain the term you wrote in the search bar. Search engines also include other result pages that contain the related or similar words of your search term. That is what is a keyword meant for.

From the SEO point of view, if you have a website, you must know, how important keywords are, which type of keywords you need, and what exact keyword you’re looking for. We’ll try to cover all the details about keywords so that you won’t be confused when the situation comes.

Classification of Various Types of Keywords

We can classify keywords into many types depending on length, purpose, and other measures. We’ll discuss most of them here.

➲ Classification of Keyword Depending Upon Length:

Now that we have understood what is a keyword, now we can discuss various types of keywords.

We can divide keywords into two categories if we consider length as the primary metric to measure.

What is a Long-tail Keyword?

You may have heard people say that keywords containing over 5 words are known as Long-tail keywords. But a Long-tail keyword is a more detailed keyword that contains of course more words. When you start funneling your traffic into your leads, that is when you’re using a Long-tail keyword.

What is a Short-tail Keyword?

On the other hand, when the keyword is short and contains fewer queries and fewer words, then it is known as a short-tail keyword. A short-tail keyword is often called a seed keyword or just a generic keyword.

Example of Long & Short Tail Keyword:

For example, if we take “Apple Watch” as a keyword, it is a short tail keyword. Because it doesn’t have enough data to understand what we are looking for. This is a generic keyword or seed keyword.

Now, if we take “Buy Apple Watch Online in Kolkata”, this keyword has a more detailed query. Someone with this keyword can say that the person is looking for buying that watch.

Usually, a short-tail keyword has more search volume and more competition. A long tail keyword is a funneled keyword with less search volume and less competition.

➲ Classification of Keyword Depending Upon Purpose:

Depending upon the purpose, keywords can be divided into 4 broad categories.

What is a Navigational Keyword?

The easiest answer to this question can easily be given like, what is a keyword that navigates? A navigational keyword.

Navigational keywords contain the intention to navigate searchers to a certain page and turn them into their visitors. If I want to bring someone to my website, I will use navigational keywords on my landing pages and other pages as well.

“Social Media Optimization Services by DigiMarketings” is a navigational keyword, as this keyword contains an intention to bring a visitor to my website from SERP.

What is an Informational Keyword?

When a keyword serves as a query for some information or knowledge, then the keyword is informational. Mostly “Wh” words containing keywords are informational keywords. We use informational keywords in blogs, FAQ pages, and About pages.

For example, ‘What is a keyword’ this keyword will take me to the blogs that tell about keywords.

What is a Commercial Keyword?

A commercial keyword is one whose purpose is to serve as a query for some product or service. We mostly use these keywords on service pages to attract our potential visitors and let them know about our services.

For example, “Best digital marketing services in Kolkata” this keyword helps people to complete their commercial search intent.

What is a Transactional Keyword?

Transactional keywords are those used to invite visitors to make transactions. Most product pages and service pages contain these keywords.

For example, “Hire SEO agency near me” or “buy a laptop online” these keywords say that there is a firm intention of making transactions.

What is an LSI Keyword?

An LSI or Latent Semantic Keyword is a keyword that is related to your primary keyword. We use these keywords to increase the search intent of our article.

Let’s say, “SEO Services” is our primary keyword, then “SEO Strategies”, and “SEO agency near me” are the LSI keywords. Google always suggests LSI keywords to users at the end of the result page.

what is a keyword

Understanding Your Primary Keyword

Now that you’ve got a fair idea about the various type of keywords, let’s talk about how to understand which keyword you should choose as your primary keyword.

Let’s take an example to understand better. If a website shares a blog about keyword research, it should have an informational keyword on the blog pages about keyword research as the focus keyword. Such as “How to do keyword research” or its synonyms.

So first, you need to decide the niche and the intention of your webpage. Whether you want to write a blog to share information, make a transaction with your product or service page, or maybe you’re looking for a keyword that navigates people to your Landing Page, depending upon which you should decide on your primary keyword.

How to Find the Best Keywords for Your Website

So, here comes the most difficult task, finding the best keyword for your web page.

While choosing the keyword for web pages, we always need to keep a few things in mind, like we need a keyword that has a lot of search volume. At the same time, we need to keep an eye on the competition as well. Because a new website will find it difficult to rank with a high-competition keyword.

Researching competitors is always a good point to start with. When you know what your competitors are using to rank, you get a better idea about the keywords you need to choose.

How to Find the Best Keywords for Your Website

How To Optimize and Structure a Blog Post with Keyword Research

(Note: Keyword density doesn’t matter the most now, google focuses more on content that helps the users to solve their quires) 

According to SEO strategies and tricks, a web page should contain about 1% focus keywords of the total word count. Let’s say the total word count of your blog is 1000, then use at least 10 focus keywords. If search engine bots find over 1.5% focus keywords of the total word count in your article, it’ll count that as keyword stuffing, and eventually, it’ll ban your page. So try to maintain this 1% Keyword rule.

Also, include more LSI keywords that help search engine bots understand the subject of your article. Additionally, put at least one image on your page, that contains the keyword as alt text.

Conclusion: The Importance of Using the Right Keyword for Content Marketing Success

In this article, we’ve seen detailed information about what is a keyword. We’ve also seen that there are many types of keywords and various ways to use keywords in an article. It’s hard to find the best ones, but as you’ve gone through this article, I hope that you have gathered enough ideas now to kick-start your keyword search.

The conclusion is that using the right keywords for content marketing success is crucial because it will help you create better content and better traffic attraction. With the right idea and knowledge of keywords, it is easier to succeed in content marketing.

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