What are Keywords for a Website and SEO?

You may have recently heard the term ‘Keyword’ or ‘Keywords’ and are wondering what they mean. Well, what are keywords for a website? The fact is you probably use keywords every day in your web browsing. Every search you run through Google, Yahoo, Bing etc… IS a keyword.

Web developers and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts collect data of the most popular keywords used by the general public. They then design their web sites to get high in the search results for those particular keywords and bring the web surfers using those keywords directly to them. Keywords are not just for websites and SEO though. You should also know that keywords are also used for advertising and that there are three types of keywords known as ‘broad, exact and phrase’. The differences are listed below:-

Broad Keywords in advertising. Broad keywords will trigger ads for variations of your chosen keyword. For example, if you used the broad keyword red apple, other keywords will be triggered during searches such as box of red apples, buy red apples etc… If you were using the a broad version of the keyword slippers, your ad could be triggered for blue slippers or shoes even.

Phrase Keywords in advertising. Like broad, phrase keywords will trigger variations but they will not be as vague. For example, you could target a phrase keyword of red apples and it would trigger ads for red apples in Manchester or delicious red apples. When using phrase keywords in advertising, particularly Google Adwords, you must use inverted commas to let Adwords know it’s a phrase. Like “red apples”.

Exact Keywords in advertising. Exact keywords speak for themselves. Your ads will only trigger when the exact same line of text is typed in the search engine. So if your exact keyword is red apples your ad will only show during a search for red apples. To use exact keywords in Adwords you use brackets like this [red apples].

More information on the 3 types of advertising keywords can be found here.

What are Keywords for a Website? A form of SEOing.

What are Keywords for SEO? Specifically targeted search terms used by large amounts of the general public.

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