What’s A Keyword? A Keyword Phrase?

What are Keywords and Keyword Phrases?
How are They Utilized Effectively for High Search Engine Rankings?

For many professionals who are embarking upon the experience of building their internet marketing website, understanding keyword usage can be puzzling. There are also many of you who already have your websites up and running, however never understood the need for applying SEO techniques. This search engine optimization article will attempt to enlighten you on keywords and what they’re all about.

Let’s discuss the basics – the concept of how keywords come into play when writing your website’s content pages and how to utilize keywords effectively for both SEO purposes and for your all important website visitors.

What’s a Keyword? That’s a Great Question!

Because search engine optimization terminology throws many people new to e-commerce for a loop, let’s clear up the confusion. There are two ways of looking at keywords and both of them are correct. The first is from the Internet marketer’s (i.e., your) point of view. For example:

What is your site about? “eBooks”. What’s that web page about? “Writing eBooks”. And what’s that other web page about? “Free online eBooks”.

“eBooks” is called a keyword and “Writing eBooks” and “Free online eBooks” are considered keyword phrases. The content you create about each page should focus on a keyword or keyword phrase. In simple terms, a keyword or keyword phrase is merely the topic for the content of a particular web page.

Keyword and Keyword Phrase Explained

The term keyword normally is used to refer to a one-word term. A keyword phrase refers to the use of two, or three or more word-combinations. However, one-word keyword terms are extremely hard to obtain high rankings for, and unless that one-word term is very obscure with little online competition, I would not encourage you to use them.

As a matter of fact, very RARELY would I suggest to write content around a one-word keyword. Reason? Think about it … a one-word keyword, such as “eBooks”, is much too general. Most searchers nowadays have learned to enter two or more words in their searches to get better (more precise) results. Such as “eBook to learn SEO” or “learn guitar eBook”.

On a side note, yes indeed, internet searchers have gotten much more savvy over the years. But this is good! The more specific the terms the searcher uses to search for something online, the more targeted that individual will be when they land on your well written, keyword phrase focused page of information.

All the words on each web page are “content”. The content provides supporting information about the keyword phrase you’ve targeted for that web page. And on it goes, with each page you write focusing on a specific keyword phrase.

What’s the Second Point of View?

The second viewpoint is that of the surfer’s … in our case, a potential client or customer … a person who is typing keyword phrases into the search engine trying to find a specific product or service that YOU wish to provide.

When a surfer searches for certain keywords, the search engine delivers a number of SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). The pages are a list of all the pages that contain the keywords the surfer was searching for. Each of the listings offers a title, short description and a link.

That Link is What it’s All About

Ideally, (please note I said “ideally”) one of your pages is among the Top 10 (no worse than the Top 20) listings on that SERP. When a surfer enters their keywords into Google, for instance, they will see your relevant keyword-focused content page among the top listings. And then …

They read the keyword focused title and informative description that you have provided. Learn more about why the Title tag and Description Meta tag are so important to your rankings: Meta Tags: Worth Their Weight in Gold

These two pieces of information grab the surfer’s attention over all the other competing entries on the SERP and they decide “this information sounds like what I’m looking for” and CLICK. They click the TITLE (which is in blue on the results page). The Title is an active hyperlink and off the surfer goes to visit your site.

This is the Very Best Traffic that Money Cannot Buy

Your content is “editorial” and not an ad. It’s informative, well written and provides your visitor with the answer or information they were searching for. It is, therefore, more credible and visitors do not feel “pitched” on arrival.

Your new visitor sought out information on specific keywords they typed into the search engine; your Title and description were targeted to those keywords; that information grabbed their attention; and when they landed on your web page there was keyword-targeted well written content containing the information they were searching for. Voila – mission accomplished!

There is a great free trial version of a keyword research tool that I highly suggest you try out if you are planning on building a list of keywords that are relevant to your product or services. Please go to: Free Keyword Research Tool.

Don’t Want to Do the Keyword Research Yourself?

For a very thorough and detailed listing of keywords appropriate to your marketing niche, I will be happy to provide that professional SEO service for you. Please refer to my Keyword Research Report page for more information and pricing.