What Is A Keyword - And What Makes a Good Keyword?

Keyword research is the foundation of online marketing. But what exactly is a keyword - and why is it so important?

A keyword is a phrase that you type into Google (any search engine) when searching for information on a particular topic. For example, if you were looking for information on dog training, you could add 'dog training tips' or 'dog training information' to a search engine. In this case, the words 'dog training tips' and 'dog training information' are considered keywords.

You probably use keywords all the time, you never know what they are called.

You may have noticed that the two examples above were more than one word. That is because a keyword can be more than one word. Kind of a 'key phrase' if you like. But these also fall into what are known as keywords. If you want something very specific, your key phrase can be several words long, such as 'springer spaniel puppy training'. The more specific you are in the search, the more targeted you will get.

Why Are Names Important?

To help you understand why keywords are so important, let's take a look at how a search engine, Google, works.

Google has intelligent little robots that crawl all over the Internet, reading, recording, and targeting every website. (Don't worry, they don't visit your machine, only web servers.) These robots type the keywords used by websites. They realize what words are very important to that website, and how they are used. By this they decide what a website, or webpage, is about. That way, Google will be able to customize the site. So when people use Google to search for information, Google knows if the given website matches what that person was looking for.

Now that you have a website about 'dog training' you want to make sure Google knows this, so use keywords to train dog content on your website. You can also use them in articles, and elsewhere. Of course, if your website is more specific, and you use specific keywords, Google will read this, and you will find more visitors looking for that specific topic. Therefore, finding the best keywords for your website and content will increase the number of visitors to your site. And that is why using the right keywords is so important.

What makes a good keyword, or keyword phrase.

Simply put, a good keyword or keyword phrase is what will attract visitors to your website; name people search on Google, so that Google can direct them to your website using the search results page. So, if you can learn what names and names of people (future customers), they use in their search, you can use those keywords to your advantage. So think about it - if you were someone else, looking for information or products you had on your website - what name or words could you put on Google to find your website? That's the essence of identifying good keywords.

And often the best keyword is not a word at all, it is a sentence.

Keywords have a long tail, Why?

A long tail keyword is just another keyword phrase that contains three or more words, which together are much clearer than a single keyword. These long tail keywords are the ones people use to search for the most specific topic.

Benefits of long tail

These long-tailed keywords are more likely to generate sales, than standard search terms for the same name, for two reasons. The first is that there is a little competition to rank high on Google search results pages. For example, there are 1.3 million results that Google has shown on the search results page for 'dog training'. However, there are only 317,000 results for long tail keywords 'springer spaniel puppy training'.

Second, people looking for something are closer to buying a product than people who do regular searches.

For example, if you have a springer spaniel puppy training product, and direct 'dog training' as your Health Fitness Articles keyword, you will find many visitors who did not really want what you are selling.

 

But if you meant ‘springer spaniel puppy training’ especially those people who were looking for your information they would find your website. This is free targeted traffic. Very nice type.

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