“What in the World Wide Web Are Keywords? What do they do for my website and how do I get more?”
I mean, yeah. What are they and what do they even do? Good question! Let’s dive into a short explanation of that today.
Search Engine Keywords
The simplest way to understand what keywords are, is the search terms you type into a search engine when you’re trying to find something. If you stumbled upon this article, you probably searched for something like “What are keywords?”, or “Do keywords affect SEO?”. The search engine then goes to work on finding results that are likely the most relevant to what you’re searching for.
Search Engine Algorithms
Now, you wanna know a little more than a basic explanation? Let’s dive a little deeper!
To start, search engines such as Google and Bing are always updating their algorithms and changing the way they locate and rank keyword presence. This is pretty hard to track and isn’t always an exact science. Just about everything that is uploaded on the internet is searchable by the terms used with it. That’s including the pages on your website, blog posts like this one, the names attached to photos, etc. So, when trying to increase your keyword findability through SEO, it’s important to make sure all of these things are done appropriately, and it will greatly increase your chances of being found.
Examples: If you’re a music artist in Nashville some beneficial keywords would be phrases or names that are closely associated with you like your name and album names, names of singles, genres, etc. If you’re a business that sells rocking chairs in Nashville, then you would likely want keywords like “rocking chairs Nashville”. Keywords are all about findability, and you want to be found.
SEO can be Confusing!
So, you figured out some keywords that represent your brand pretty well, so what now? Well, it of course gets more complicated.
Who would have guessed that? SEO is one of the most important marketing components of today, and it can be a battle. With every keyword that you “rank” for, there are likely other people who are also trying to rank for the same thing. From our above examples, there are two totally different markets and complexity levels. Whereas the rocking chair business may not be as saturated as being a musician in Nashville, the ability to rank higher for keywords regarding “rocking chairs Nashville” is likely going to be significantly easier to rank higher than “local musician Nashville” for an artist.
How do you make it easier to be able to find things with keywords then?
That’s part of the reason why Apex Creative offers SEO services along with our web design services. As stated above, the algorithm is always changing how results are found, but there are some ways that almost always help your findability. More established and trusted websites are usually more likely to be suggested results because search engines find them to be more authoritative on the topics covered by their keywords. Think of this as like your website or blog being considered more of a subject expert than someone who hasn’t set up their website to be SEO friendly. Blog posts that share relevant and insightful information help build relationships and keywords along with them, as well.
In short, TL;DR, keywords are important to finding things and being able to be found through search engines. There are ways to increase your chances of being found, but if you aren’t sure of how to do that or aren’t ready to commit to becoming an SEO expert, there are companies such as Apex Creative that can help optimize your presence and get you more keywords and more findability.