Written by Anastasia Kurmakaeva
What is a keyword?
As defined by Fernando Maciá in his book Posicionamiento en buscadores, keywords are:
A word or a combination of words with which search engine algorithms classify our web page and place it in a series of categories within their database.
If, for example, we have a website where we offer our services as an online marketing agency, probably an average user who needs these services will type in the search engine box the formulas “online marketing agency”, “online marketing consultant” or “online marketing company”.
Keywords always respond to a need of a user or potential customer. Behind these searches there are some motivations that we must find out if we want to succeed with our SEO strategy. Depending on the user’s profile and motivations or stage of the research process or purchase decision, a person will search in one way or another.
Keyword consulting
Every search engine positioning strategy begins with the definition and choice of keywords. These represent the concepts with which we want our customers to identify us and the terms with which we want Google to classify us. Therefore, it is of vital importance that we choose them very carefully: a wrong choice would make us focus our efforts on keywords that will not bring us the desired profitability.
Keyword category
Keyword categorization serves a dual function:
- Determining your site’s generic keyword ceiling is an unequivocal starting point for effective keyword consulting, where resources are not wasted.
- By grouping words with similar characteristics or that share levels of architecture on the web (for example: all long tails are tags, all semi-generic words are services…) we can monitor large scale changes in rankings and determine if these are problems in a particular group of words.
Keyword categories can be:
References
Article ‘Defining a keyword list: aspects to take into account’.
Article ‘Tools for keyword consulting’.
