Impact Media's SEO Blog

What are Keywords and why are they Important to SEO?

Keywords are one of the most important parts of any SEO project. Essentially, they are the terms that you would expect people who come to your site would search for. By defining these key phrases, you can then optimise your website’s pages to accommodate them.

They can be as specific or as vague as you choose. It is often a good idea to use a search term like Google AdWords or Wordtracker to hone in on exactly what will have the best results for your site. These will highlight the best related words and phrases, how often they’re searched for and what level of competition they currently have. The greater the search volume and the fewer competitors vying for the same term, the better your chances of success.

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Optimising a website with any notion of your targeted keywords is like setting off in a dinghy without any navigational tools, heading west and hoping that you’ll discover America. Yes, there’s a chance you’ll make it, but you’ll have an epic struggle and could well end up lost in the search wilderness.

Think of SEO as a cartographic process, with keywords acting as the perfect route. It helps you to map out exactly where you’re going with your site, defining what areas are good to explore and those that are best left alone. Key terms are essential in every aspect of SEO, without them you’ll be working on sheer chance alone, just as you would in a dinghy across the Atlantic.
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Internet marketing professionals and SEO copywriters are always discussing the importance of keywords; but what exactly are they and what can keywords do for your site?

A keyword by its very definition is simply an important term, phrase or, of course, word. Whenever you visit a high ranking website you can be sure that someone somewhere has been optimising the site for keywords throughout. As with any SEO technique, they are designed to coincide with, and even premeditate, what Internet users are searching for in search engines.

Keyword Optimised Site Copy

The frequency with which the keywords are used, obviously within reason, will ultimately help your site achieve a better ranking for particular phrases. Some keywords are clearly more popular than others, so an important part of any good strategy is picking up on special niches. In a crowded marketplace like the Internet you have to find ways to make yourself visible, which is where a watertight SEO strategy, backed up by keywords, is invaluable.

Depending on the size and content of your site, the keywords could range from just a few essential phrases to hundreds of individual terms. Ultimately they are a reflection of what your company offers; whether that’s something as simple as a single specialist product or a complex construction of various brands and categories all from a range of different fields. Driving traffic to a site is no simple task though, so ensuring each page is optimised with relevant wording and as much quality content as you can muster is absolutely essential.

Boost Website Search Engine Visibility

Whilst Internet copywriting is, or at least should be, a largely organic process, keywords help to give you added focus and ensure that your copy remains on target; both for your audience and search engine spiders. In the bad old days you could fill pages with impenetrable language offering a keyword density that was so baffling it rendered the text unreadable. Search engines such as Yahoo, MSN and Google have made huge strides in eliminating such sites from their rankings; they have instead given greater weight to those who offer copy that is relevant, regularly updated and offers genuine quality.

Therefore you need to avoid the temptation of endlessly repeating the same phrase in the misguided hope that it will convert to ranking domination. There’s a fine balance to tread and everyone has their own opinion of what density is acceptable these days. But as long as your keywords are used within a free-flowing and informative body copy and in a natural manner, you should be on to a winner. Including them in Header 1 (H1) tags, Meta tags and sub-headings (H2 tags) will also help to really optimise your site’s content.

Copy plays a large part in the success and failure of any site. Attempting to cut corners and doing it all yourself or outsourcing to the cheapest available supplier can invariably end in disaster. Impact Media offer a professional SEO copywriting service to suit businesses of all sizes, helping to provide quality copy that can really make a difference.

The words or phrases that are targeted and optimised for in search engine optimisation and pay per click.

US based SEO consultant, Dustin Woodard, has just published a guest blog post over at Hitwise, the Internet research company.

In his article, “Sizing up the Long Tail of Search” he highlights the gulf between the top search terms when compared to overall search volume.

Naturally, he used Hitwise for his research and in September of this year reviewed the previous three months data for the US. He discovered that, in this period, 14 million search terms had been tracked and then exported the top 10,000 searches:

Long Tail Top 10000 Searches

Source: Hitwise

Clearly the chart is of little value other than to highlight the extreme tail-off (pun intended), bearing in mind this is just reflecting the top 10,000 search terms.

Long Tail Dominates Search Traffic

In his article, he goes on to show the result of narrowing his search to the top 100. He concludes that the top 100 terms account for 5.7% of total search traffic and even extending to the top 1,000 searches would only be responsible for approximately 10% of searches. The point here is that there’s 90% of all search traffic in the long tail; you could argue even more depending on where you believe the tail starts.

As a site owner or online marketer, you should be aware of the value of long tail searches and find ways to capitalise on this traffic. It may be tempting to go after ‘golden goose’ search terms but you need to be realistic with your aspirations given the competitive landscape of the Internet.

SEO Advantages of Long Tail

Towards the end of 2007 it was established that, for the first time, the average search was made up off four words. As searchers become ever more ‘net savvy’, searches will continue to become more precise and you should try and accommodate this in your marketing efforts. From an SEO point of view, that means performing keyword research and, rather than simply ignoring the perceived low volume terms, find ways to blend the relevant terms into your web copy, blog posts and articles.

As part of our SEO copywriting services, we research long tail keywords and take these into account when creating new copy. This can provide a boost to your site’s traffic that is not short-lived and likely to suffer from swings in the search rankings for ultra-competitive terms.

It has long been known that searchers very often search for a brand for research purposes or even as a preference to typing the URL straight into their browser.

By way of example, Google estimate that there are an average of just over 300,000 searches for ‘coca cola’ every month.

To reinforce this message, Hitwise UK have announced in their recent newsletter that 88% of searches for the top 2000 most popular keywords performed during May 2008 were for brands. Not surprisingly, ‘facebook’ was top of the brand searches accounting for 1 in every 72 searches performed. (Facebook Becomes Third Most Visited Site in UK)

Clearly, it is impossible to know the intent of the individual user when they search for a specific brand but UK online advertisers will need to consider the implications of this, particularly after Google removed restrictions on bidding on trademarked terms within their AdWords Pay per Click platform back in April.