Understanding Keyword Importance in SEO

As you may know, people use search engines to find products and services based on the keywords they type into the search box. That’s why keyword value in website optimization is such a big deal. Search engines use an index as a reference to storing all of their information, much like a book does. When you type a work into Google’s search box and hit “search,” Google looks in it’s index for those words. Suppose you typed in “painting companies.” Generally speaking, the search engine looks for:

Pages that contain the exact phrase “painting companies.”

Pages that have the words “painting” and “companies” in close proximity.

Pages that have the words “painting” and “companies” somewhere, but not exactly in close proximity.

Pages with word stems; for example, pages with the word “paint” and “company” somewhere on the page.

Pages with synonyms like “stain” and “veneer,” or synonyms like “firms” and “contractors.”

Pages that have links pointing to them; specifically, links that contain the phrase “painting companies.”

Pages that have links pointing to them that contain the words “painting” and “companies,” but not necessarily together.

Obviously, the process is a lot more complicated than the above, but keywords make up about 15% of Google’s ranking factors. Search engines don’t actually look for these things in the order I listed, but they try to relate websites to the words that somebody searched for. If you’re a painting company who doesn’t use these words on your website, it’s almost a guarantee you won’t show up for that search.

It’s essential to pick the right keywords when doing SEO. Showing up makes up a huge part of online success, and you can’t win if you don’t play the game. If a specific keyword doesn’t appear in your pages, your site will not appear when someone enters those keywords into the search engine. For instance, say you’re a designer in Nashville, and you have a site with the term “designer” scattered throughout. You will not appear when someone searches for “Nashville designer” if that keyword is not in your pages, unless you’ve taken the time to put your business on the map.