What Are Keywords & Why Are They Important for SEO?

Written by Emilie Martin, updated by Jo Cameron, edited by Miriam Ellis, images by Meghan Pahinui,  November 7 2024.

Keywords are ideas and topics that define what your content is about. In terms of SEO, also known as search engine optimization, they’re the words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines to discover content, also called “search queries.” If you boil everything on your page — all the images, video, copy, etc. — down to simple words and phrases, those are your primary keywords.

As a website owner and content creator, you want the keywords on your page to be relevant to what people are searching for so they have a better chance of finding your content in the search engine result page (SERP.)

Keywords help you understand what people are searching for. They give you direction on how to connect you with your audience. And, if implemented correctly, you can use keyword-optimized content to connect with your audience when they are ready to make a purchase. This is where the money is made. Many more advanced SEO and digital marketing strategies start from the humble beginnings of generating, grouping, and clustering keywords and using these to create the right content to appeal to and hopefully attract your ideal audience.

SEO keywords are essential for improving website ranking and attracting organic traffic. If your goal is to drive organic traffic to your site, the keywords you choose to target (meaning the keywords you create content about and optimize your pages for) will determine how people find you through search. If you own a golf shop, for example, you might want to rank for “fancy new clubs” — but if you’re not careful, you might end up attracting traffic that’s interested in finding a new place to dance after dark. That is why identifying and effectively targeting your primary keywords is the foundation of a good SEO strategy designed to drive more organic traffic to your site.

Keywords are as much about your audience as your content. You might describe what you offer in a slightly different way than how your audience actually searches for it. This could lead to missing traffic due to content gaps, or draining resources by focusing on the wrong keywords. To create content that ranks well organically and drives visitors to your site, you need to understand the needs of your audience — the language they use and the type of content they seek.

Keyword metrics are essential in understanding the performance of your keywords and making data-driven decisions to improve your SEO and PPC campaigns. Here are some key keyword metrics to track:

• Search volume: This metric represents the average number of searches for a keyword within a specific time frame. Understanding search volume helps you gauge the potential traffic and visibility a keyword can bring to your site. High search volume indicates a popular keyword, but it also often means higher competition.
• Keyword Difficulty: Keyword difficulty is a score that indicates how challenging it is to rank for a particular keyword. This metric helps you assess the level of competition and determine whether it’s feasible to target a specific keyword. Balancing high search volume with manageable difficulty is key to a successful keyword strategy.
• Cost Per Click (CPC): CPC is the cost associated with each click on a paid ad. This metric is crucial for budgeting your PPC campaigns and understanding the financial investment required to acquire traffic and conversions through paid search.
• Conversion Rate: This metric measures the percentage of users who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter, after clicking on a paid ad. A high conversion rate indicates that your PPC campaigns are effectively driving valuable actions from your audience.
• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): ROAS is calculated by dividing the revenue generated from a paid ad campaign by the cost of the campaign. This metric helps you evaluate the profitability of your PPC efforts, ensuring that your investment is yielding a positive return.

By tracking these keyword metrics, you can make informed decisions to optimize your SEO and PPC strategies, ultimately driving more relevant traffic and achieving your marketing goals.

Step 1: Talk to your customers

Your existing customers are likely a representative sample of your potential future customers. What are their pain points? How do they express themselves? What bothers them, and what soothes them? Find a way to gather feedback directly from your customers, or from the teams who work with them, and use this as the foundation of your customer language.

Step 2: Frequent forums and community groups

There is a lot you can glean from hanging out in relevant community forums and groups. Subreddits, Facebook groups, or even Discords contain a wealth of information you can gather and use to write FAQs, support documents, or even to inform product descriptions. You may find in a wild swimming Facebook group that the fit of neoprene gloves and boots is really critical and causes people to hesitate when buying. This could lead to creating a comprehensive size guide and more clear information on your enterprise's return policy to put those concerns to rest.

Step 3: Investigate the SERPs

Think outside the box. Where can you go to find the keywords that your audience is searching? Check out SERP features - specifically the ‘People Also Ask' and ‘Related Searches' features. These particular elements provide suggestions on what else your audience may be searching for.

SERP Features like People Also Ask and Related Searches can help you find relevant keywords.

Step 3: Do your own keyword research

Keywords and keyword research go together like milk and cookies. Starting your own keyword research is simpler than you might think. Using a free keyword research tool like Keyword Explorer, you can run a handful of searches completely free.

Generating keyword ideas from tools like Semrush and Google's Keyword Planner can help you identify valuable terms that cater to your target audience.

To sort, filter, and group up to 1000 keyword suggestions sign up for a free trial of Moz Pro. Here, you can type in your seed word, and with the click of a button, you’ll discover a whole wealth of keywords to help you understand and cater to your audience.

Find and group more keywords with Moz Pro

Keywords can be broad and far-reaching (these are usually called "head keywords" or “seed keywords”), or they can be a more specific combination of several terms — these are often called "long-tail keywords."

The long tail of search, according to Moz's Marketing Scientist Pete Meyers is the “limitless space of low-volume (and often low-competition) keywords. Tactically, long-tail SEO centers on competing for a large number of low-volume keywords instead of focusing on a small set of high-volume keywords.” As illustrated by the search demand curve the long tail is often more detailed and has more rich intent when comparing a search term like ‘bicycle' to ‘best ebikes for commuting' it's much clearer at a glance what the second searcher is looking for.

Targeting and ranking for singular keywords might appear to be your ultimate goal as they often have a temptingly high search volume, meaning, more people are searching for them. However, they usually have extremely tough competition. For example, you may want your boutique clothing store to rank for "clothes," but it's going to be tough to rank above websites like Amazon, H&M, and Nordstrom.

On top of that strong competition, singular keywords can be infuriatingly vague. If someone is searching for "dog," you don't know if they want a list of dog breeds, information about dog food, a place to buy a dog collar or just a site with cute photos of dogs.

Long-tail keywords usually have more clearly defined intent. For example, "best organic dog food for a puppy," or "inexpensive dog walkers Seattle." You may find that long-tail keywords have less competition, with room for a smaller site to break in and make their mark on the SERPs.

Want to understand how long-tail keywords can help you get a leg up on the SERP? The SEO Keyword Research Master Guide can help!

Keyword placement is where the work of SEOs and content creators converge. This is a key part of on-page SEO and is one of the core three categories of SEO as a practice, the other two being off-page SEO and technical SEO. There are some basic keyword usage rules you should follow to get started. Unique keywords should be employed on each page of your site in the areas that bots and humans normally look to reassure them that you have what they’re after.

Incorporating relevant keywords is also crucial for search engine marketing (SEM), which focuses on attracting traffic through paid ads.

The key areas that you should place your keywords on your page include:

1. URL - A URL is the web address for your page and will show up in the search results, it is used to create links and is displayed in the address bar. URLs should be created so they are easy to read and include your target keywords. Engage in a simple and understandable URL structure from the beginning to avoid making changes down the line.
2. Title tags - Title tags show up in the search results and the browser tab. They should be written for humans and optimized for robots, which is a tricky balance to strike! As this is prime real estate, all your skills in brevity and encouraging clicks will be put to the test. This leads to an important point: the pitfalls of clickbait. You may believe you’re enticing more clicks by offering tantalizingly vague titles for your content, but by disguising what the page is actually about, you’re masking the true intent of the page, and opting out of some of the power of keywords.
3. Meta description - Meta descriptions are displayed in the search results, are known to impact user behavior and in some cases can be rewritten by Google. Include a unique meta description for each page and don’t forget to include your target keywords.
4. Page title (H1) - H1 tags show on your page content and can help format your content so it’s consumable by humans and demonstrates topic relevance to robots.
5. Subheadings (H2) - Heading are an important part of CMS and content design and management. It’s important to format your page for your visitors so they can navigate your content, and so that search engines can understand what your content is about.
6. Body of your content - The body of your content should naturally include the keywords you’re targeting. It’s no good just throwing keywords on your page. Your goal should be to create compelling content that provides real value for the user. Writing relevant content that is high quality, accurate, unique, and engaging for human visitors that sends strong signals to our robot friends at Google is often the most time-consuming and rewarding part of optimizing your content for target keywords.
7. Image Alt attributes - Image Alt text is often overlooked by site owners, provides value to visitors unable to view images, and can have the additional benefit through providing robots context for your images.

Many of these elements can be optimized after you’ve published your content. Except for the URL, which you should avoid changing unless absolutely necessary.

Including your keywords in these areas is the most basic way to target your content to searchers. It’s not going to immediately shoot you to the top of the results, but it is essential SEO; failing to take these basic steps can prevent you from ranking by other means.

Using keywords effectively in PPC search campaigns is crucial to driving relevant traffic and conversions. Here are some tips to help you use keywords in PPC:

• Use relevant keywords: Ensure that the keywords you choose are closely related to your business, product, or service. This relevance will help attract the right audience, increasing the likelihood of conversions.
• Use long-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords are more specific and often less competitive than broad keywords. By targeting these specific search queries, you can attract more targeted traffic, which is more likely to convert.
• Use keyword match types: Utilize different keyword match types (broad match, phrase match, exact match) to control how your ads are triggered by search queries. This allows you to fine-tune your targeting and improve the relevance of your ads.
• Use negative keywords: Implement negative keywords to prevent your ads from appearing for irrelevant search queries. This helps reduce wasted ad spend and ensures that your ads are shown to a more relevant audience.
• Optimize your ad copy: Incorporate relevant keywords into your ad copy to increase its relevance and appeal. Well-optimized ad copy can improve click-through rates and conversion rates, making your PPC campaigns more effective.

By following these tips, you can enhance the performance of your PPC search campaigns, driving more relevant traffic and achieving better conversion rates.

1. Do keyword research to better understand your audience and gather industry-relevant keywords.
2. Match your keywords with intent.
3. Use your primary keywords in title tags, on-page content, H1 tags, and, when possible, in the page URL, meta description, and alt attributes—of course, only where it makes sense. Don't stuff keywords in where they don't make sense!
4. Perform keyword research regularly to stay on top of trends.

Here are some common keyword mistakes to avoid:

• Using too broad keywords: Broad keywords can attract a lot of traffic, but much of it may be irrelevant. Instead, focus on long-tail keywords that target specific search queries, reducing competition and increasing the likelihood of conversions.
• Not using keyword Research Tools: Skipping keyword research tools can lead to poor keyword selection. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or SEMrush provide valuable insights into relevant keywords and competition, helping you make informed decisions.
• Not Optimizing Ad Copy: Failing to optimize your ad copy can result in low click-through rates and poor conversion rates. Ensure your ad copy includes relevant keywords to increase its relevance and effectiveness.
• Not Using Negative Keywords: Without negative keywords, your ads may be triggered by irrelevant search queries, leading to wasted ad spend. Use negative keywords to filter out unwanted traffic and improve the efficiency of your campaigns.
• Not Tracking Keyword Performance: Monitoring keyword performance is crucial for optimizing your campaigns. Track metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty, and conversion rate to understand how your keywords are performing and make necessary adjustments.

Avoiding these common mistakes can help you create more effective keyword strategies, driving better results for your SEO and PPC campaigns.

While you can often start with a keyword and create a piece of content around that term, sometimes your content already exists, and you need to figure out how to match it to keywords. To do this, create what's known as a "content to keyword map." Creating this map can help you understand the impact of your existing content and identify weak links or gaps that need filling.

As keywords define each page of your site, you can use them to organize your content and formulate a strategy. The most basic way to do this is to start a spreadsheet (your "content to keyword map") and identify your primary keyword for each article. You can then build your sheet to your own requirements and add keyword search volume, organic traffic, Page Authority, and any other metrics that are important to your business.

Ideally, you want each page on your site to target a unique primary keyword. Generally speaking, your homepage will target a very broad industry term and as you create category pages, product pages, and articles, they will drill down into your niche and target more specific needs.

“So, when it comes to using product synonyms to scale your SEO strategy, the key is to align user search intent with a product use case that helps them.”

Adriana Stein - How to Use Product Synonyms to Build Use Case Awareness & Scale SEO on the Moz Blog

How do you know if your strategy isn't working? If you're tracking success metrics such as traffic, rankings, and conversion rates, you'll know if you're straight isn't driving results. You may notice that:

1. your rankings aren't increasing
2. you're not driving enough organic traffic
3. your traffic isn't converting

My rankings aren't increasing

A primary KPI for most SEOs is your keyword ranking position over time. To cut out the manual labor of checking results manually and to avoid skewing from personalizing, you can track using an SEO tool, like keyword rankings over time in Moz Pro. If your rankings aren't increasing, it usually comes down to the fact that your content or site isn't determined to be authoritative or relevant enough, at least in comparison to sites that are ranking for those keywords.

It may be that your site lacks quality backlinks and doesn't have a high enough Domain Authority, you're targeting keywords with tough competition and need to adjust your focus, or your content isn't deemed to be quality or relevant and needs to be improved.

I'm not driving enough organic traffic

If you're not able to increase your organic traffic, you'll want to have a keen eye on your ranking positions across your target keywords. Knowing if there is enough demand for a keyword will help you determine if you want to spend time and effort ranking for that keyword. Using keyword tools, like Moz's Keyword Explorer, gives you easy access to search volume for individual keywords and for keywords collected into lists, so you can target keyword clusters more effectively. 

My traffic isn't converting

This can be caused by two factors: you're not attracting the right traffic, or your website isn't optimized for a clear conversion funnel.

A keyword strategy that isn't delivering traffic that converts can also come down to a disconnect between what you're targeting and what users actually want, meaning a search intent mismatch. While choosing keywords might seem as simple as picking popular search terms in your industry, effective research requires a deeper understanding of search intent. By looking at what's currently ranking and how users interact with those results, you can build content that truly serves your audience's needs.

What makes a good keyword?

A good keyword depends on a combination of metrics like Search Volume, Difficulty, Organic CTR. You're looking for keywords with higher volume, but lower level of difficulty so you can drive more traffic to your site, ideally the kind of traffic that converts. Don't forget to assess for relevancy and intent and create content that satisfies your target audience. You're trying to capture the audience you want that also wants you, which is what SEO and keyword research is all about.

How do I discover popular keywords?

You can discover popular keywords by looking at competitors in your industry, as well as understanding the keywords that your customers are searching. A great way to discover popular keywords is to use Moz's Keyword Explorer tool. You simply input a keyword to do with your primary topic, and the tool will then show you other related keywords, along with a search volume metric. You can then filter to see those keywords with the highest search volume. But be careful, as highly searched-for terms, may not always be the best keywords to use!

What is a keyword strategy?

A keyword strategy is a plan you create upon the findings of your keyword research. This involves the target keywords you have chosen, and where and how you choose to place them on your page. Your keyword strategy supports your larger SEO strategy. Strategies involve setting goals and doing the work to achieve those goals, they help you to benchmark the success of your hard work. You can learn more creating a profitable keyword strategy with the Moz Keyword Research Certification.

How many types of keywords are there?

Keyword types can be defined in many different ways.

The search demand curve defines three main keyword types: head, long-tail, and middle keywords. Where the long-tail is the many different ways people search a combination of words and phrases around a defined niche (typically has lower search volume and lower competition, but when grouped could be a more appealing prospect than the head), the head being the simple and popular industry term (typically has higher search volume and more competition) and the middle is somewhere in between.

There are also branded and non-branded keywords. Helpful to understand when you're talking to a client about their current rankings and presenting a strategy for broadening their visibility.

Location-based keywords, or geo-modified keywords are search phrases that typically include a city or neighborhood name or a zip code (i.e. ‘best coffee spot in Seattle.'). They are critical for brick-and-mortar or service area businesses.

There are also intent-based keywords. The four commonly-recognized intents are: informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional. Keywords can be broadly grouped into these four intents and applying this to your strategy helps you tailor content to your audience's immediate needs.

What is a primary keyword?

A primary keyword is a keyword that a piece of content is centered around. The primary keyword is the primary topic of the page. This primary keyword can be used as a launchpad to find additional keywords that relate to the topic.

What is the difference between a key phrase and a keyword?

There isn't really any difference between a keyword and a key phrase. "Keyword" is used more widely to describe single and multi-word search queries. If you wanted to get pedantic, a keyphrase could be defined as a string of keywords you're more likely to see in the long tail of a search.

Keywords are a crucial component of SEO and PPC campaigns. Understanding keyword metrics, using keywords effectively in PPC campaigns, and avoiding common keyword mistakes can help you drive relevant traffic and conversions. By following the tips and best practices outlined in this guide, you can improve your keyword strategy and achieve your marketing goals. Remember to always track keyword performance and adjust your strategy accordingly to ensure optimal results.

• The SEO Keyword Research Master Guide - Become a master with our guide to all things keyword research.

• Moz Academy’s Keyword Research Certification - Understand the fundamentals, gain a plethora of new knowledge, and level up your skills with this Moz certified coursework.

• What is Keyword Research?

Learn on the Moz Blog:

• Metrics for Better Keyword Research - Whiteboard Friday

• Diving for Pearls: A Guide to Long Tail Keywords - This is a super helpful resource for taking a deep dive into those long tail keywords that account for most of the traffic to a site.

• Long Tail SEO: When & How to Target Low-Volume Keywords - Learn why targeting keywords with a lower search volume is definitely well worth your time.

• Daily SEO Fix: Competitive Keyword Research - Understand how to get ahead of your competition in keyword research.

• Map Your Keywords to the Buyer's Journey and User Intent - Whiteboard Friday