Keywords: Basic Guideline And 4 Ways to Use It in SEO

Keywords are an important element in SEO. When searching on the internet, the first thing a user does is enter a keyword into the search box. In this guideline, we will discuss in detail what keywords are, the types, and how to use them.

What Are Keywords?

A keyword is a word or phrase that a user enters to search for something in a search engine. Keywords are also known as “search queries”. Search engines will crawl web pages that are relevant to that search query and display them in organic search results.

Web owners or content writers want the target keywords on their web pages to be relevant to a user's search query. They hope the content can reach these users and bring more organic traffic to the website.

As mentioned before, a keyword is a word or phrase so it is often not just one word but also several words. Target keywords should reflect the important information that will be covered in your content. Before using certain keywords, consider the following division of keyword types.

Keyword Types

Marketing teams usually categorize targets based on several types of keywords. The full explanation for each type of keyword is as follows:

Branded Keywords

This type of keyword includes any search query that relates to a product (brand) name, company name, or identifying word. Examples of branded keywords that internet users might search for are “Samsung Note 3” or “Louis Vuitton Bag”.

In addition, branded keywords can also be in the form of navigational intent or keywords used by users to go to certain websites. For example, a user wants to log in to a company website but is not sure which domain is the right one. The user can write the search query “cmlabs login” to open the official page of cmlabs.

Commercial Keywords

Commercial keywords are keywords that users use to find additional information before purchasing a product. Search queries entered regarding product reviews, product recommendations, or product comparisons. For example, a user searches for the keywords “cheap gaming laptops recommendation”, “Best skincare reviews”, and others.

Transactional Keywords

Transactional keywords describe the purpose of transactions indicated by internet users. Search queries entered tend to be more specific than other types because internet users already know exactly what they are looking for or buying.

This type of keyword usually contains words such as “buy”, “subscribe”, “sell”, “discount”, and others. For example, a user might write a search query such as “subscribe to youtube premium”, “sell BMW cars”, “buy batik clothes”, and so on.

Locational Keywords

Locational keywords are a type of keyword that contains a geographic query such as a country, city, or location name. Examples of search queries used include “Hotel in Malang”, “Best restaurant in Surabaya”, “Nearby tourist attractions”, or “Supermarket near me”. This type of keyword is suitable to be used as a target keyword for local SEO.

Long-tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are keywords that consist of 3-4 words. This keyword is quite specific, usually used when the user wants to do transactional activities. Therefore, long-tail keywords tend to generate higher conversion rates than other types of keywords.

Examples of long-tail keywords in commercial articles are "the price of the newest gaming laptop" or "buy a cheap Samsung smartphone". In the informational articles, long-tail keywords used can be “how to use the google keyword planner”, “tutorials on doing keyword research”, or “tips for choosing keywords”.

Not so many websites use long-tail keywords as the main keywords so the level of competition is quite low. When you target this type of keyword, the chances of the article showing will increase because it consists of a combination of several words.

Informational Keywords

It includes all the keywords that people use to search for specific information. Usually based on the use of 5W+1H. For example, people will write search queries like “SEO is” or “how to write SEO articles?”. This type of keyword is very rarely used for paid advertising.

Why Are Keywords Important In SEO?

Keywords are an important element in SEO because they can help Google and other search engines to find out what content is covered on your site. That way, you will make it easier for Google to crawl and index.

When a user performs a search, the search engine will display the most relevant sites. If your site contains keywords that match the search query, the search engine will prioritize your content in the top search results.

It will bring more organic traffic to your site. If your web page gets a lot of quality traffic, of course, the conversion rate will be higher. Therefore, keywords are one of the things that you can use to optimize your site's performance in organic search.

From a marketing perspective, keyword selection will also affect the total clicks generated from paid ads. Advertising services will allow your content to appear above the organic search results. The more attractive the keywords used as copywriting, it will bring more clicks to the ad.

On the other hand, the marketing team must consider how much cost per click (CPC) is required for each target keyword. So that it can evaluate the effectiveness between the costs used and the amount of traffic generated by these keywords. If you target the wrong keywords, your articles may find it difficult to attract potential visitors.

How to Use Keywords

Before targeting keywords, you should plan what kind of content you want to create and find out the user's search intent. Next, you need to research to determine which keywords are the most appropriate and relevant to your content idea or business niche. Thus, you can produce relevant articles.

The easiest step in using keywords is to position the keywords in the content. Make sure the target keyword is similar to a search query that a user might type in. So that your article has the potential to be displayed as a relevant search result and can reach these users.

Some things to consider when using keywords are:

1. Do Keyword Research First

Keyword research is a process carried out to find the right keywords for your articles. Before doing research, you should have gathered topics that are relevant to your business niche that can be used as keyword ideas.

Things to consider in doing keyword research are:

• Find keywords that are relevant to the user's business niche and search intent. It can help you produce targeted articles.
• Consider the search volume. The higher the search volume, the higher the audience's interest in the keyword. When you target keywords with high search volume, it is hoped that your articles can get more organic traffic.
• Observe the level of competition for keywords in organic search. The level of competition is categorized into low, medium, and high. If you target keywords with a high level of competition, it will be difficult for your articles to dominate organic search.
• Pay attention to how many average clicks the keyword gets each month. That way, you can estimate how much organic traffic you'll get when you target those keywords.
• If you're doing keyword research for ad copy, it's important to know the cost per click (CPC) of that keyword. So, you can determine the budget you need and measure cost-effectiveness by the amount of traffic generated.
• Determine the main keyword and its variants. Using the main keyword is not enough, add keyword variants to increase the visibility of the article in organic search.

2. Use It Naturally

Avoid entering keywords that seem pushy. The best way to use keywords is to use them naturally. Make sure the target keywords match the sentences conveyed in your content so that readers can understand the information well.

The main goal of SEO is to produce content that can provide users with useful information which answers their questions. Therefore, paying attention to keyword distribution is a must for content writers so that the keywords mentioned in the article look more natural.

3. Understand Keyword Placement

Search engines will crawl your articles to find keywords that match the user's search. Therefore, you need to understand the placement of keywords to help search engines find out the information presented in the article. That way, search engines can find the relevance between your content and the user's search queries.

If your article contains users' queries, it is tend to be displayed on the search result page. That way, your article will get more organic visits, and if they find it useful and will be happy to share it.

There are several recommendations for the best position to place keywords, including:

• Title
• First paragraph
• Heading
• Article link (slug)
• Meta description
• Image caption and alt tag
• Content

4. Avoid Keyword Stuffing

The thing to avoid in using keywords is keyword stuffing. Google or other search engines indeed perform crawling and indexing by looking for keywords that match the user's search query. However, the excessive insertion of keywords in the article is not good.

Instead of showing up as relevant search results, your site will be considered spam by search engines. To solve this problem, check the article's keyword density through cmlabs Word Counter. Ideally, keyword density should be around 1-2% for better content performance.

All in all, that is the complete guideline to keywords definition, types of keywords, and how to use them. Keywords are one of the things that must be considered to get better performance in organic search. Targeting the right keywords can bring in more traffic and increase the conversion rate on your site.