Many companies and organisations struggle to increase brand visibility, generate leads, improve conversion rates and generate revenue. It is because their brand outreach is less. SEO is a digital marketing strategy to improve brand visibility, awareness and redirect organic traffic to the website. One potential and most popular solution is to use keywords to drive traffic to your website. By targeting your audiences with relevant keywords, websites can rank for maximum search queries.

Let us learn how setting up keywords for your website can improve its ranking on SERP.

What is a keyword? 

A keyword is a word or phrase that contributes to building the essence of a concept or content posted on any website online. Semantic learning is a concept on search engines that helps build content reference and association, as specific keywords represent certain concepts. Contents that lack keywords somewhat fail to convey any idea or information.

Content with relevant keyphrases at its best has a higher chance of ranking high on search engines, making it more straightforward and accessible for the reader to understand and make sense of the content. For example, customers looking for new shoes are more likely to type phrases like- ‘shoes for men’ or specify brand names to address products like ‘Nike shoes for men’. These keywords form images of concepts in our mind and therefore help in having a clear picture of complex concepts. 

How do search engines use keywords? 

In terms of search engines, keywords have quite a crucial role. They suggest a word or phrase the user may enter as a search query to find relevant content. The primary goal of keywords is to completely represent the concept and the blog or website. Search engine algorithms have a way of analysing a website or webpage for keywords related to audience search queries and show it as a part of SERP.

Search engines work on semantic indexing, and therefore, they look for keywords or synonyms of keywords in the content to analyse the quality of content and organically rank it as a result in LSI questions or the result page. Therefore content writers are asked to put relevant keywords into the content. Without keywords, even high-quality content can go unnoticed by audiences. 

Why are keywords important for SEO? 

In search engine optimisation(SEO), keywords are necessary for understanding user intent and providing them with high-quality content based on what they are searching for on the search engine. Keywords used by a website are a link between search engine results, users and your website. Search engine optimisation helps to know the user market and their demands so that content can be strategically optimised based on keywords to target maximum audiences and solve their queries.

Moreover, the importance of keywords in a website is that it helps communicate with the search engine about the website or webpage and give necessary context. For example – if content addresses keywords such as colourful ink, cartridges, copier, and scanner, it becomes easier for the search engine to recognise that the content is about printing. 

What are the different types of keywords used in SEO? 

The importance of keywords in SEO cannot be undermined when achieving organic ranking on search pages. These are the SEO keyword list for different types of keywords. 

1. LSI keywords- Google displays a range of suggested questions based on the most searched queries by the users on the concerned topic. Latent semantic indexing allows websites to rank their pages by uploading similar content. These questions or queries can be picked up as LSI keywords and contribute towards improving website rank.
2. Long tail keywords- It is generally a phrase that helps specify a subtopic or concept. These terms are less competitive, and it is easier to rank. They are precise search queries that the users have entered time and again.
3. Core keywords- These are direct keywords that point directly to your content’s intent. It can also be referred to as anchor keywords that encapsulate the concept directly.
4. Supportive keywords- Besides the core keywords, the supportive ones are mostly synonyms and related to the core ones.
5. Evergreen keywords- Any topic or content must contain evergreen keywords that are common queries users search for. Numerous users consistently search these keywords throughout the year—for example, pros and cons, an overall guide, etc.
6. Informational keywords- These keywords are entirely dedicated to providing information. Users looking for information about a topic may use these keywords.
7. Transactional keywords- Such keywords intend to promote transactions and improve conversion rates. For example – buy, sell, rent, purchase, etc.
8. Interlinking keywords- Your content is demanded to have an interlink to other blogs or webpages of your website. It helps in building authority and redirecting users towards more helpful content.
9. Locational keywords- These help local SEO and get international users. Most of the time, users look for information concerning a specific location. For example- keywords such as ‘restaurants near me’, ‘shipping ports in the US’, etc are locational. 

How to choose keywords for your website? 

Keyword search refers to finding and analysing different search terms that people often use in their search queries. Keyword research helps people understand the popularity of keywords and their ranking difficulty to help content writers and SEO service providers post high-quality content on their sites. Choosing the correct and relevant keywords with medium to high competition and high search volume is crucial when putting keywords on your website. Any content written and optimised by considering the filtered keywords will yield good rankings for your sites. 

Elements of keyword research 

The three main components of keyword research are-

1. Keyword relevance- The target or focus keyword must be relevant and explain the essence of the title. Core and supportive keywords must align well with your website and its audience to complement it. The keywords must be skillfully chosen based on the semantic indexing of the search engine. 
   
   
2. Keyword authority- You must check the competition of your keywords. If the authority of the keywords comes from big companies, it isn’t easy to compete with them in terms of ranking and content. You can check your website’s domain authority to compare the website ranking for your target keywords. 
   
   
3. Keyword volume- It is essential to check keywords’ popularity before putting them on your website. Use tools to see how frequently audiences search for those keywords. Keywords with high search volume will drive more traffic to your website. Google keyword planner is a valuable tool for estimating keyword volume and variations. 

How to research keywords for your SEO strategy? 

1. Writing intent- The website may display different kinds of content, including blogs, off-page SEO, newsletters, and informative content. Keywords can be moulded for all these contents. So through thorough research, you can easily use keywords to drive traffic to your website.
   
   
2. Use relevant keywords- Google gives great importance to the relevance of content on the search engine. Your content must be the best resource on Google for that keyword search query to get a higher organic ranking. Therefore, your content must have relevant keywords that match the searcher’s intent and the topic. 
   
   
3. Use keyword research tools- Most of us have limited keyword and topic ideas. Keyword research and SEO tools help you know more relevant keywords and phrases, their search volume, and difficulty level. SEO keyword tools such as Google keyword planner and SEMrush are deemed high. 

How to find and use keywords to drive traffic to your website? 

1. Use Google keyword planner- It is essential to search the potential keywords on the keyword planner to know their search volume and the traffic they generate. After filtering keywords from the planners, put them on Google Trends to get more relevant keywords related to your trending topic, which may help gather maximum traffic. 
   
   
2. Keywords with low competition- Generally, keywords with high search volume have been dominated by large companies on search results. It’s difficult for many other websites to compete and get better rankings for high-volume keywords. Whereas for low to medium-volume keywords, since the competition is low, it becomes easier to achieve the highest rank for those keywords. 
   
   
3. Latest trends- Even after choosing keywords with low to high search volumes, you may need to consider their monthly search volume to rank. It helps in knowing how many times a keyword has been searched in a month. Google Trends is an SEO keyword tool that helps in collecting monthly insights. 
   
   
4. Use keywords for graphics- SERP feature snippets include images, videos, paragraphs and lists. By using relevant keywords, websites can get their snippets to rank. This way, the chances of being discovered by audiences increase. 
   
   
5. Blending keywords- Any content uploaded on the website must have an appropriate blend of head and long-tail keywords. Head terms are the most frequently searched, improving the chances of a higher ranking on SERP. Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for as they are more user-oriented. 

These are a few ways organisations and companies can use keywords to drive traffic to their website and increase their organic ranking on SERP.
Banyanbrain is a global digital marketing company in Gurgaon that offers digital marketing services, including SEO, PPC, SMO, and content writing to drive organic traffic to your website.