SEO Keyword: What are SEO keywords?

Your SEO keywords are the key words and phrases in your web content that make it possible for people to find your site via search engines. A website that is well optimized for search engines "speaks the same language" as its potential visitor base with keywords for SEO that help connect searchers to your site. In other words, you need to know how people are looking for the products, services or information that you offer, in order to make it easy for them to find you—otherwise, they'll land on one of the many other results in the SERPs. Implementing keyword seo will help your site rank above your competitors.

This is why developing a list of keywords is one of the first and most important steps in any search engine optimization initiative. Keywords and SEO are directly connected when it comes to running a winning search marketing campaign. Because keywords are foundational for all your other SEO efforts, it's well worth the time and investment to ensure your SEO keywords are highly relevant to your audience and effectively organized for action.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of misconceptions about the "right" way to do keyword research for SEO. Read on to learn some basic best practices for SEO keyword research and management.

How Do I Find My Best SEO Keywords?

Most beginning search marketers make the same mistakes when it comes to SEO keyword research. These mistakes include:

• Only doing seo keyword research once, and neglecting to update and expand your SEO keyword list
• Overreliance on third-party keyword suggestion tools that offer the same data to everyone
• Targeting highly competitive head terms that reveal no intent

Many SEO marketers don't realize that it's crucial to diversify your keyword sources. If you use the same free web tools as your competitors, you'll have no way of standing out. Your private website data (from web analytics and search query reports) is another great, personalized source of keyword suggestions. In addition, marketers should grow their lists and, subsequently, traffic streams by incorporating as many long-tail keywords as possible. Conducting keyword research for SEO is imperative for developing a successful search marketing campaign.

SEO Keyword Tools: Best SEO Keyword Analysis

WordStream's Keyword Research Suite is a set of SEO keyword tools that help you find your best, most relevant keywords—keywords that will drive ongoing web traffic and conversions on your site.

Benefits of using the Keyword Research Suite for better SEO include:

• Exclusive Keyword Research - The Keyword Research Suite gives you deep access to WordStream's industry-leading, trillion-keyword database. Only subscribers have access to this data, so your SEO content has greater competitive edge.
• Keyword Data You Can Act On - Instead of just a list of keywords, our tools give your structured, actionable data, ready to use in search marketing campaigns. You'll be able to organize and put into action insights surrounding your keywords and search queries.
• Keywords When You Need Them - Don't be held back by the limits of web-based keyword research tools. The Keyword Research Suite is a robust toolset designed for full-time search marketers and business owners, and offers virtually unlimited access to our huge keyword database, giving you unprecedented accuracy and depth of data.

The complete SEO pack delivers more long-tail keywords than other keyword research tools, so you can target highly qualified and specific segments of your website audience. It's the best SEO keyword tool on the web, aiding you in developing a list of key words to help SEO.

Using WordStream's Keyword Tool for Keyword Research

WordStream's Keyword Research Suite, including the keyword tool for SEO, makes finding keywords for SEO a breeze. Keyword research in SEO is very important and often times overwhelming, but with WordStream you'll discover how to do a SEO keyword search and how to get better keyword results. The suite's SEO keyword density tool lets you easily measure keyword density for SEO, with the SEO keyword tracking showing you where you have already inserted keywords and making suggestions for where to put new seo keywords in text.

Now That I've Got My Keywords, What Do I Do With Them?

Obviously, simply creating a list of keyword opportunities isn't enough. Now you need to actually do something with them to get SEO results—search-driven traffic and conversions, that is.

SEO best practices dictate that you include relevant keywords in a number of prominent areas on your site, from the titles and body text of your pages to your URLs to your meta tags to your image file names. However, successfully optimized websites tend to have thousands or even millions of keywords. You can't very well craft a single, unique page for every one of your keywords; at the same time, you can't try to cram everything onto a handful of pages with keyword stuffing and expect to rank for every individual keyword. It just doesn't work that way!

So how does it work? The answer is keyword grouping and organization. By dividing your keywords into small, manageable groups of related keywords, you cut your workload significantly, while still enabling the creation of targeted, specific pages.

For example, an online pet store might create one group for all its dog-related products. The next step would be to segment that group into smaller subgroups for each product (dog collars, dog beds, dog cages, etc.) and then even smaller groups for each type of product (leather dog collars, studded dog collars, personalized dog collars and so on). Now, the pet store can create a single page optimized for each small keyword group.

Manual keyword grouping can be very time-consuming, but we offer seo keyword tools to help!

• Our Keyword Niche Finder works just like a regular seo keyword tool, but returns you suggestions pre-grouped into relevant clusters.
• If you already have a list of keywords for SEO, drop it into our Keyword Grouper and get the grouped for you, automatically!
• The Keyword Density Checker tool for SEO content creation makes it easy to keep track of where you've inserted keywords into your content while suggesting additional keyword variations to use.

A marketer attempting to optimize a web page for the "leather dog collars" keyword group should consider doing most if not all of the following:

• Using the keyword in the title of the page
• Using the keyword in the URL (e.g., www.online-petstore.com/dog-collars/leather)
• Using the keyword, and variations (e.g., "leather collars for dogs"), throughout the page copy
• Using the keyword in the meta tags, especially the meta description
• Using the keyword in any image file paths and in the images' alt text
• Using the keyword as the anchor text in links back to the page from elsewhere on the site

When optimizing your web pages, keep in mind that keyword relevance is more important than keyword density in seo.

SEO is a complex undertaking and there are many other considerations for full optimization, but these are some of the basic keyword-related tasks.

Need help finding SEO keywords?

Take our Keyword Research Suite for a free test drive and try out the best keyword tool for SEO. Or learn more about SEO and keywords with our collection of search marketing EBooks and Google SEO Guidebook.