"Being" online is relatively simple – just set up a social media fan page, a business card on Google Maps, or build a website, and voila! – your business exists online!
Reaching customers, engaging them with your offer and effectively inviting them to stay on the website, however, requires more work, and to achieve this, online marketing and analysis of keywords and search engine user intentions will be useful.
Keywords are the foundation of building visibility
Keywords are the foundation that allows websites to appear in search engines . Well-chosen phrases are the foundation upon which subsequent elements of our website are based – titles, descriptions, headings, and content – in the broadest sense of the word.
A keyword is a phrase that best describes the content of an article or appears most frequently in it. In academic terms, key phrases are identified in the text after it has been written and edited. In online marketing, the opposite is true – the keyword is identified first, and only then is the text written. Why this difference?
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Internet search engines, including the most popular one, Google, are based on keywords. A keyword is an element that users enter into the search engine window, which then returns addresses of websites related to the phrase.
Their order is not accidental – as Google grows and gains popularity, so does the complexity of the algorithm that sorts the data collected in its index. The goal? To deliver the most relevant results and answer user questions as accurately as possible.
Keyword analysis from the inside
Navigating the waters of modern marketing requires not only considerable knowledge but also finesse and intuition. These last two points come with time – and Cicero's words apply here too – "Usus magister est optimus." When it comes to knowledge, it's also worth delving into theory.
In my article – How to Find Keywords? – I presented a basic breakdown of the keywords we're interested in. For detailed analysis, however, it's worth looking at keywords from other perspectives as well.
The general division of keywords that we most often use in the context of positioning focuses on the length of phrases:
- short-tail – Short-tail keywords, which consist of one or two words. These are frequently searched for, but due to their general nature, they may not lead to increased website traffic or a purchase,
- long tail – Long-tail phrases, which consist of a larger number of keywords. These phrases have lower search volumes, but because they are more specific, they have a greater chance of being clicked through and converting than more general phrases.
Some studies also highlight mid-tail keywords , but this term isn't very popular. Mid-tail keywords are a group of words that fall in the middle of the list. They are characterized by a higher degree of specificity than long-tail phrases. They are searched more frequently than long-tail phrases, and the competition within them is higher.
Keyword analysis will allow you to isolate phrases from both (or rather, all three) groups. When searching for keywords for SEO, you shouldn't focus on just one of them – diversification is the key to success.
Targeting short-tail keywords requires a larger financial outlay to overcome the intense competition (depending on the industry, these will most often be the so-called "big players" who have been operating in the market for years) and a more advanced strategy. In this case, achieving success is also more time-consuming.
Expanding selected keywords with long-tail keywords and incorporating them into your strategy in most cases allows you to achieve satisfactory results faster and with less time and money. Long-tail keywords are an excellent foundation for building a content strategy.
Brand keywords are phrases that include the name of a brand, brand, or company. This type of name can also be a surname or a pseudonym. In the case of a unique company name, such phrases naturally appear at the top of the results. However, in some industries, the situation can be more complicated – for example, due to a common name element or a keyword-like element, such as "windows."
Ensuring good visibility for your brand name is crucial for two reasons:
- Some customers search for services based on a brand they've used before or whose logo they've seen at trade shows or in advertising. Strategically placing your brand name on your website's homepage isn't difficult, and it can yield tangible benefits, such as ranking first in the SERPs.
In many cases, the brand name is the same as the website URL, which further facilitates orientation for web crawlers and potential customers searching for our services. - The competition never sleeps! Positioning Using the name of a competitor is not a popular practice (it requires placing the name of a competing company on your website, which may result in legal battles), but this is not what the black hat SEO specialists did…
A similar principle also works in Google Ads – it is worth advertising under the name of your brand and not risking that our space will be taken over by competing companies.
Industry-specific keywords lie close to branded keywords. They include phrases specific to a given industry and are more likely to appear in more extensive content, such as a company blog or a detailed offer description.
These types of words will be helpful in building your position as a specialist – they will associate people looking for industry information with your brand, which may pay off later.
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Keywords on the timeline – how is their value changing?
An in-depth keyword analysis should consider their place in the timeline. Taking into account the calendar and constantly changing trends, we can distinguish keyword types that will remain relevant regardless of the date and those whose lifespan is much shorter.
Short-term, fresh keywords are phrases whose importance decreases over time. These types of terms enjoy incredible popularity the moment they emerge in the minds of internet users, for example, as a result of a viral video or, to put it mildly, a political event.
This group also includes phrases related to film and book premieres, names of fashion collections, etc. Effective use of these phrases is based on knowledge of current (and future!) trends.
The most popular tool for tracking them is Google Trends. It allows you to observe trends and the level of interest in specific topics.
Take, for example, "The Force Awakens" – the title of Star Wars Episode VII. Over the past five years, the term has peaked once – directly related to its premiere – before its popularity plummeted.
The short-form appeal of a phrase is clearly demonstrated by the example of the name of a gadget/toy – a spinner. The phrase experienced a sharp rise in popularity, followed by a sharp decline. Targeting this type of phrase isn't particularly difficult – especially if you exhaustively cover the topic in your articles and present it in an appealing way.
Blogs like those that review movies benefit from this type of keyword (especially if the authors have access to previews). Achieving a high position will increase traffic to the page, but over time, it will lose value.
Long-term keywords are very stable phrases – their search volume doesn't tend to fluctuate dramatically. They are also referred to as " evergreen ." This category includes phrases related to historical facts (especially those discussed in schools) or, for example, phrases related to cooking:
The term "hard-boiled egg" saw a spike this year – during Easter. This trend is also visible in the graph showing searches for the term over the past five years:
Keyword analysis from long-term categories allows you to identify phrases that generate consistent traffic. These types of keywords can be found in every industry. Identifying keywords and creating appropriate content that allows you to achieve high rankings guarantees an influx of new visitors to your website.
This, in turn – with a properly designed website – will allow you to increase traffic throughout your site and perhaps gain new, long-term audiences. Phrases from this category work well in longer blog posts.
In the context of keyword analysis, seasonality is also discussed . This term refers to keywords closely related to the calendar, such as holidays, communions, weddings, and seasons. Seasonality is crucial when setting a Google Ads campaign budget . In SEO, it's less important—your website should be constantly working to maintain its good position.
To ride the wave of seasonality, you should prepare a dedicated subpage and fill it with content. It's also worth including it in your internal and external linking. For this purpose, online stores can use tags, for example. A page with the "Women's Day gifts" tag should have a dedicated URL and include text and a product list.
Placing a tag with a slogan and link on products will strengthen internal linking. During the peak season, the website can be additionally promoted using Google Ads and on the homepage.
Keywords in local strategy – how to reach customers in the area?
The internet is a great way to promote local businesses. Choosing keywords wisely and placing them in a specific location will allow you to reach the audience closest to your services and products.
Local keywords (Geo Targeting Keywords) are phrases that include the name of an area, town, or district, such as "veterinary clinic Warsaw Mokotów." These phrases help you reach users in your area and avoid calls from the other side of Poland.
When including these types of slogans in your strategy, you should avoid using names of towns where you do not have a branch – local SEO is much more effective when you include your office address on the contact page.
These activities are also supported by Google Business Card – taking advantage of the opportunities this solution offers us allows us to reach an even wider audience.
How does the user express his or her intentions?
When discussing keywords, it's also crucial to consider the user. Analyzing their intentions and the keywords they use allows us to determine what content will meet their needs and lead to the desired conversion.
Intent targeting keywords are phrases that precisely match user intent. Matching your content to the phrases searched for when making purchasing decisions will make it easier to reach both less-decided customers and those who are ready to spend money.
- informational – Keywords are used to find information, expand knowledge, and compare products. Phrases can take the form of questions, such as "how to make chicken soup?", "how to choose tires," or "why fabric softener?" By incorporating these phrases into your strategy, you can satisfy the user's knowledge and stimulate the desire to purchase. To achieve this, it's worth developing a blog or advice section on your website.
- navigation – aimed at finding a specific website or company. The phrases include names of specific brands or a fragment of a domain.
- transactional – also known as commercial phrases, suggesting a willingness to complete a transaction. These phrases include terms related to the speed of the transaction (with an emphasis on "fast" and "immediate"), as well as location and delivery costs.
Combining user intent with tailored content will keep them on your website longer. Well-chosen content in the texts that users encounter while searching will encourage them to make a decision.
Subtly suggesting products (e.g., via a carousel at the end of the blog post or simply via links embedded in the content) will help them move to the next step in the shopping journey and ultimately, to making a transaction.
How to assess the competitiveness of a keyword phrase?
When analyzing keywords, it's also necessary to determine their competitiveness. Each phrase has its own specific characteristics, which include the number of search results, the average number of queries, and the type of Google results. The level of competitiveness also depends on the industry and competitors, including the elements contained on their websites and the link profile.
The number of results, average number of queries, and result type are all directly related to Google search. The number of results is displayed directly in the search engine, below the query.
Average search volume is information you can obtain from one of the tools, such as Google's Keyword Planner. As for the type of results, here we need to pay attention to how Google prefers to present information.
Variations on the appearance of SERPs include, among others, culinary recipes:
In other cases, results in the form of response fragments are also included:
There's also the issue of the number of ads , which causes phrases to become longer. Other types of results also include hotel-related topics.
Optimizing for certain keywords may not be cost-effective due to the nature of the results – the user will get the information directly from Google and will not decide to proceed to another website. In this case, it's worth reallocating the resources that would otherwise be spent promoting this phrase to a longer-tail keyword that will convert better.
When analyzing keywords and assessing their competitiveness, it's also important to consider the industry's characteristics and direct competition. Industries that invest in marketing will also be strongly viewed online – the biggest threat here comes from brands that have been operating in the market for years, have a strong link base, and a strong website history.
Highly competitive industries, such as fashion, will require careful word selection (niche keywords) and a significant financial base – especially if competing with the largest players on the market. When targeting short-tail keywords, patience is essential – high rankings are the result of hard work and many months of work.
When assessing competitiveness, it's also important to consider the content of pages appearing in search results—their structure, the technologies used, and the amount of content. In many cases, Google selects sites with similar content—for example, a similar amount of content, headings, or graphics.
Depending on the research results, when evaluating a given keyword, you should take into account the cost of possibly rebuilding the website and filling it with content... and this will still not be the only element of the bill - the price of links and the time spent on acquiring them also come into play here.
How does keyword analysis affect your SEO strategy?
Collecting data, analyzing information from tools ( examples and descriptions can be found in the article on how to find keywords ) and organic results will allow us to establish a database of words that will serve as the basis for optimization efforts. Based on this, we can build a SEO strategy, for example, by determining the amount of text or planning changes to the website's code.
It is worth analyzing key phrases regardless of the current phase of the positioning process – the online reality is subject to rapid changes and good orientation towards these changes allows websites to stay afloat.
It is also worth taking a critical look at the list of phrases and observing how users search for information within our website.
Their suggestions – expressed through specific actions, e.g. moving to the next subpage or using the search engine – can improve the operation of our website, making it more pleasant for users and web crawlers.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- Keywords are the foundation of a website's visibility on Google, allowing you to tailor your content to user queries and improve your position in search results.
- An effective SEO strategy requires keyword diversification by combining general short-tail phrases, precise long-tail phrases, and brand and industry-specific phrases to optimize conversions and build brand authority.
- Keyword analysis should take into account their durability over time, dividing them into temporary trends, stable "evergreen" content and seasonal phrases, which allows for optimal planning of traffic and content strategy.
- Using local keywords and tailoring content to user intent – whether informational, navigational or transactional – allows you to effectively reach customers at every stage of the purchasing journey.
- Assessing keyword competitiveness requires analyzing search volume, the type of results on Google, and the strength of competitor sites, which allows you to select the most profitable phrases and effectively plan your SEO budget.
- Systematic keyword analysis allows you to build an effective optimization strategy and continuously adapt your website to changing trends and real user behavior.
