How much will keywords have on SEO in 2022?

For many years, the SEO community has been obsessed with keyword ranking as one of the many viable indicators to prove the value of SEO.

After all, rankings are important – but only if they drive business value (i.e. traffic, revenue, and conversion rate).

Google has become smarter and better at understanding user intent, and algorithms now have a better understanding of context and meaning, so keywords should always be associated with your content.

Are keywords still important today?

There is no simple answer to this. If you ask whether the keywords in the query are necessary to provide a list of related documents to meet the information needs, then the answer is no.

However, if you ask whether keywords are important to Google’s indexing and retrieval system, the answer is definitely yes.

Let’s take a closer look.

Why keywords are important in SEO

Keywords are key phrases commonly used by consumers to find what they are looking for online. They use the search bar in the browser to enter terms, which usually consist of one or more words that describe the words they want.

There are many types of keywords, including:

• brand.
• Non-branded.
• Local and global.
• Brand + geography.
• Brand + products, etc.

Here are four ways keywords continue to help brands.

1. Keywords help indicate user intent

The keywords are targeted. They provide very good clues to the type of content that the searcher is trying to retrieve.

But there is still a vocabulary problem between the indexing system and the end user, and they have many different ways to ask for the same or similar things.

This is why Google and other search engines are very Advanced query expansion technology.

For example, an end user entering “fish tank” as a query is likely to see the first result of a tropical fish aquarium, which may be more relevant and useful than another page that only directly matches the word, and can meet the information needs “Fish” + “tank” to qualify it.

In addition, the timestamp attached to the keywords in the index for time analysis provides clues to the freshness to help detect trends, and then event detection must be performed on news results. there are more……

So, yes, the more users can get queries that match related content, the better the results.

However, users often don’t know what they are looking for (if they know, they don’t need a search engine), so search engines must be very complex in terms of definition and association discovery.

2. Keywords help find amazing distance opportunities

When I do research on potential customers, I always check visibility to understand the ranking of keywords in different regions, such as attack distance, development, etc.

For example, previous customers were at an astonishing distance when they searched for the term “business consulting.”

I checked the page to understand why their target keywords did not rank on the first page, and noticed that the page did not contain all the topics related to business consulting, and they needed to expand the content to make it more comprehensive.

Once they expanded the content based on our recommendations, we established external links and placed them on the first page of “Business Consulting” within three months.

Look Python SEO Script: Popular keyword opportunities at your fingertips Get a simple script with step-by-step instructions to help make this process faster and easier.

3. Keywords help determine the right target audience

When we perform a competitive analysis and look at the keyword visibility of potential customers or current customers versus the competitive set, we can find Content gap.

We may find that they do not provide content on the subject, or that the content they own is not ranked or optimized.

For example, I had a financial client who wanted to rank “children’s bank accounts”.

After checking the visibility of the competitor, we noticed that the competitor’s ranking is “youth bank account”, and my client does not have “youth checking account” in the page title, title, body content, etc., so there is no such word Perform ranking.

But children and adolescents are not synonymous.

Once we developed and optimized content for “youth bank account”, marked it with patterns, built content around it, made some internal links, promoted content, etc., the conversion rate increased by 13% year-on-year.

The keyword “youth bank account” helped us identify the right target audience.

Please note that only one site, USAA, contains any youth keywords in the title. The screenshot below shows that the top 10 websites do not include “Children’s Bank Account” in the title.

Author screenshot, November 2021

4. Keywords help increase traffic

It’s no secret that most clicks happen on Google’s homepage.In fact, only the highest result is required 28.5% The number of clicks.

So, for example, since SEO.com ranks first in “SEO companies”, the term has 16,000 queries per month, so 28.5% of clicks should translate into 4,560 visits from that single keyword each month.

If you increase the visibility of your homepage, your website can bring in a lot of incremental traffic, which may increase the sales of a large number of keywords.

It doesn’t make sense to rank high on low-traffic keywords. Instead, focus your efforts on keywords with large and overall content that can answer questions that end users find useful.

Too many customers and articles focus on calculating keyword success stories instead of measuring the impact of these successes (or unsuccessful).

Compared to placing 100 keywords on page 1, placing a single keyword on page 1 may have a greater impact on the brand.

Should we still track keywords?

The answer is yes: keywords still provide value by providing traffic, conversions, visibility, and sales in primary locations.

For enterprise-level brands with a large number of products and services, tracking keywords can be expensive, as there may be thousands or millions of keywords to monitor on desktop and mobile devices.

Keep a good idea Golden keyword list of terms Bring the greatest business value to your brand, namely traffic, revenue, and conversions, as well as a combination of non-brand, brand, and product keywords that are critical to your homepage visibility.

A brand wants to know what its highest number of words are doing and get as much traffic as possible from these keywords. For enterprise-level brands, it makes sense to track hundreds of keywords for each core business line and region.

Tips for finding the right keywords

Before you start using various keyword research tools, always think like a customer and ask: “What is the purpose of my website, and what problems will I help end users solve?”

If you can answer this question, you are on the right path Define your audience And your keyword strategy.

For example, I did some decorations in my apartment a few weeks ago.

The guy from the company is talking about a specific coating that can be used on window frames. I don’t know there is such a thing-if I don’t know it exists, I don’t know how to find it.

So I have to describe the problem to Google to find a solution.

All customers should think like end users and describe the problem and start their content before they start to brag about their excellent solution.

one of Keyword research data sources If available, I like to use paid search data. If you have historical paid search data, you can see which keywords have led to conversions and sales, which can help determine which content you should create.

read How to conduct keyword research for SEO: the ultimate guide More.

In the final analysis, SEO is about providing qualified traffic that turns into customers. What’s the point if your website gets a lot of traffic and no one converts?

(Of course, unless your website relies on advertising revenue, affiliate marketing traffic, or any other advertising model.)

When keywords are actually useless

It’s 2021, and we still see website and SEO professionals paying attention to keyword density. News: Keyword density does not matter.

Stop trying to fill the content with keywords-if your main keyword has a KD of 10%, then it will not help you get a higher ranking, etc.

Focus on writing content that meets information needs and provides users with the content they want.

I also see sites that use keyword meta tags.Google devalued a long time ago, it has No ranking value And will not move the needle.

Finally, use Match anchor text exactly Because all your links are not a good idea. The anchor text should be a mix of branded and non-branded with different keyword variations.

Google is complicated, if you have too many keywords with exactly matching anchor text links, you can send an alert and your website may be punished.

wrap up

When potential customers and customers rank a large number of terms on the first page of Google, keywords can provide business value, and more than 90% of clicks occur.

Run Ranking report Looking at keywords that rank in different visibility areas can help discover opportunities to create new content or expand the current content of an existing landing page.

Keywords will exist for a while and will continue to be used as signals, providing clues to the type of content searchers are trying to retrieve from the perspective of natural search.

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Featured image: Shutterstock/Sammby