SEO key­words are the exact words for which you’d like your arti­cle to show up on search engine results pages (SERP) when peo­ple type their queries into the search engine. Besides that, the SEO key­words or phras­es should be the cen­tral words that describe the con­tent of your articles.

The importance of SEO keywords

Years ago, key­words were the most impor­tant fac­tor for search engines. If key­words were accu­rate and put in the right places, your con­tent was like­ly to rank for these key­words. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it led to var­i­ous sorts of mis­use of key­words, amongst them so-called “key­word stuff­ing”, until Google changed their algo­rithm to penal­ize such practices.

Over the years, search engines have evolved, and the impor­tance of SEO key­words has decreased. Google now uses over 200 rank­ing fac­tors in their algo­rithm, and looks for mean­ing rather than keywords.

Search engines inter­pret the data on your web­site, and try to under­stand what a par­tic­u­lar arti­cle is about, and the nature of your busi­ness as a whole. It became almost impos­si­ble to rank for key­words that are not close­ly relat­ed to your busi­ness. You can­not just come up with 50 or 100 key­words and expect an SEO expert to do their mag­ic, so your web­site would rank for these key­words in a short time.

Search Engine opti­miza­tion became all about writ­ing qual­i­ty, rel­e­vant con­tent fol­low­ing the Google SEO guide­lines, rather than try­ing to out­smart algorithms.

Everything starts with a keyword

Although the rank­ing fac­tor pow­er of key­words decreased, they still play a major role in Search Engine Opti­miza­tion, as a start­ing point upon which to build your content.

It is prefer­able to first define key­words and then cre­ate con­tent, rather than to adjust exist­ing con­tent to fit the cho­sen keywords.

When select­ing key­words, the first step is to con­duct key­word research, which will help you deter­mine val­ue and com­pe­ti­tion for spe­cif­ic key­words. The sec­ond step is to tai­lor the con­tent of your top lev­el pages, keep­ing the cho­sen key­words in mind. For a start, you should con­cen­trate on only a few key­words, depend­ing on the num­ber of pages and posts on your website.

How to choose the right SEO keywords

To choose the right key­words, ask your­self four sim­ple questions:

• Is the key­word rel­e­vant to your business?
• Will the key­word attract the right audience?
• Will this audi­ence find your con­tent valu­able or feel tricked when land­ing on your website?
• Can you mon­e­tize traf­fic drawn by this keyword?

Common mistakes when choosing keywords

The best key­words are usu­al­ly phras­es com­posed of two to four words that are high­ly rel­e­vant to what your busi­ness is about. The cho­sen phras­es should­n’t be too com­mon or too spe­cial­ized. Also, they should be sim­ple — some­thing your tar­get audi­ence will like­ly type in the search box.

These are the most com­mon mis­takes many busi­ness­es make when choos­ing key­words to rank for:

• sin­gle-word keywords
• terms that are not high­ly rel­e­vant to your business
• key­words that are too spe­cial­ized and rarely searched for
• high­ly com­pet­i­tive keywords

SEO keywords best practice: Quality over quantity

Qual­i­ty over quan­ti­ty is the num­ber one rule, and the SEO tac­tic that pro­vides the best results. Search engines pre­fer con­tent that is valu­able and useful.

Using short­cuts, SEO tricks that are in the grey zone, or worse — “black hat” SEO tech­niques, can have only tem­porar­i­ly results.

Rules to follow

• choose your key­words wisely
• pub­lish only qual­i­ty, rel­e­vant content
• fol­low the offi­cial SEO guide­lines and avoid all bad practices

Fol­low the rules and con­cen­trate on pro­vid­ing the best pos­si­ble expe­ri­ence to your vis­i­tors, and you should have no prob­lems get­ting the SERP rank­ings your web­site deserves.