Keywords: What Are They and How They Do They Affect Google Rankings

It is imperative to know what keywords are and how they are essential to your websites SEO (search engine optimization) and Google Rankings. So let’s dive into the world of Keywords.

What Are Keywords:

These are words or phrases that describe to the search engines what you are looking for. For example, if you live in Cape Coral and want to get impact resistant windows to replace your old ones, you might type in “Impact resistant windows in Cape Coral”. The keywords are Impact Resistant, Windows, and Cape Coral.

How Google Uses Keywords to Find the Most Relevant Results

Google’s main objective in searches is to find results that are the most relevant to the user’s search. Because of this, Google understands the importance of keywords and will rank websites on how your site reflects what your audience is searching. With the above example, “Impact resistant windows in Cape Coral” Google will search for companies that are in Cape Coral, Florida. From that, it will search for companies that have windows as their keywords, and finally, from those companies, it will get all the ones that are related to impact resistant. If those keywords are not on your website, Google will overlook you as a result of that search.

Placement of Keywords

Now that you understand what keywords are and how they help Google find you – you might want to go throw keywords into your website, everywhere you can. Please don’t. The placement of these keywords is equally as important as the keywords themselves. Google looks in Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, Headers and the First 100 words of your content. But even with that, you can’t place a keyword too many times or too close together. Google can also sense this and will flag you for keyword stuffing. This can drop you in the rankings. Which brings us to the next section.

Keyword Density – Content is Still King

Although keywords are critical, quality content is even more crucial. Google’s algorithms can identify keyword stuffing and will give well-written, relevant content the win for search results over keywords. A good rule of thumb is to place a keyword or phrase once for every 150 words. Alternate the keywords. Don’t use the same keyword more than once on a page. Use 10 different keywords that will bring the same outcome. Using the same example, instead of using “impact resistant windows” multiple times, use, “hurricane windows cape coral” or switch the words around to say “Cape Coral impact windows”. Think of how a user would search for your services and use those as your keywords.

Keywords For Local SEO

The example we have been using includes keywords for local searches. If the user was searching for something that didn’t need to be local, then Cape Coral would not have been included. So if you are a company that offers something that someone anywhere could use, then Cape Coral would be left out of your keyword phrases. At the same time, if you offer services or products that are for multiple cities near you, your keywords would reflect this. Many times companies will have locations listed. By doing this, they are able to rank in multiple places for the same keywords. Our example company also does impact windows in Fort Myers, FL. So the keywords they would want to have listed would be both Impact Resistant Windows in Cape Coral plus a location page for Fort Myers which would have Impact Resistant Windows in Fort Myers as a keyword phrase. If your company only has one city that it represents, then location pages wouldn’t be needed. If you want Google to find your company in both areas, then both areas need to be included with your keywords.

Research Help

Don’t worry. No one expects you to come up with your own keywords and all of its variations. There are tons of programs out there to help you with your keyword research. Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Google Keyword Planner are only a few of these programs that will identify keywords that are high-value. They even allow you to see what keywords your competitors are using so that you can use them also. The key with this is to find keywords that have high search volumes and a low keyword difficulty (KD).

So there you have it. Are we telling you that you can now fire your marketing company and do this yourself? Not really. Over the years Google has gone from allowing companies to have a list of keywords to get noticed with to now having algorithms that are far more complex. Today Google doesn’t even look at the list you were able to create. Today it looks for content quality with the emphasis on context and user experience. Google now has semantic search to decipher the meaning and context of the searches. It examines the whole meaning of your material plus the keywords that match. You can no longer fill your pages with keywords. Instead it is critical that you concentrate on producing relevant content that will address the

user’s questions. Hey – we never said this was going to be easy. That is why you hire the experts!

Keywords are the cornerstone to any successful SEO plan, even with the ever-changing criteria needed. Keywords connect you with your audience and assist Google in knowing you are a good match for the person searching. In-depth research and carefully selecting the best keywords for your business is crucial. WIth that being said, remember also that content will always be King and quality content to include the best keywords is how you will be ranked highest in Google.

If you read this and have no desire to do any of this yourself, or don’t have time to do all this yourself, you can send us a message and rest assured, we will happily help. We have experts to get paid to do all of this for you. They even like doing it. So have no fear, we are here to help.