Keywords are relevant words in the SEO context that are strategically placed in a web text to draw the attention of search engines such as Google and Bing to the content of the text. Keywords are an extension of the Title and description in digital marketing. They are proof to search engines that the title of a page is not fictitious, but that the content of the page actually corresponds to the title and description.
Keywords are analyzed like the title and description with appropriate tools (e.g. Google Trends and Search Console), but used on a broader scale. Suppose a web page about bears in Austria is created on the website of an animal welfare association in Austria. After research, the title is "Bear in Austria - habitat and danger". The word "danger" was chosen because there are a lot of searches containing "bear danger" and "bear dangerous". The short description of the page is "Everything about bears in Austria. Habitat, lifestyle and danger. Is the bear dangerous?" The next step is to explore a wide selection of words (and expressions) that are relevant in web searches on this topic: bear, danger, dangerous, area, food, habitat, nutrition, habitat, number of bears, Austria, occurrence, weight, size, number of cubs, bear cubs, danger to humans, area. These words are used in the text about the bear.
It is important that the text sounds fluid and interesting despite the many keywords so that readers do not abandon it. The challenge is to find a balance between the original text (the text you originally wanted to publish on the website without considering the keywords) and a text that has been edited with keywords. If a text is too keyword-filled, it can sound "artificial" and readers will abandon it while reading. This would lead to a short dwell time, another important SEO metric, and the website would lose ranking in the search engines.
Keywords on three levels: However, as always in digital marketing and especially SEO, things get more complex. Keywords need to be used at three different levels: the site-wide level, the category level and the specific page level.
1) Specific page: In the last section, the use of keywords on the specific page was already explained using the example of bear. Keywords were used here that are relevant to this page (bear).
2) Category: The Bear page belongs to a website of the animal protection association. Suppose this website is divided into animal species, e.g. predators, birds, insects, etc. The bear belongs to the Predators category. So there is a Predators page that is linked to the Bear page. To strengthen the Predators category, the most important (now only the most important) keywords from the Predators page should also be used on the Bear page. So definitely the keywords "Predators" and "Predator".
3) Website: Both the bear page and the predator page are part of the website of the Animal Welfare Association for Austria. To reinforce the whole website for the central theme of “animal welfare”, every page of the website (i.e. bear and predators) repeats the main keywords of the website, i.e. animal welfare, animal welfare association and Austria. The words “animal welfare” and “Austria” are easy to integrate, “animal welfare association” on every page could be perceived as intrusive. A balance needs to be found here.
Long-tail keywords: Finally, we should mention a special type of keyword: long-tail keywords. These are key sentences or phrases. In other words, we look for sentences and phrases that are often used in search queries. These phrases or sentences are copied into the text one-to-one if possible. In the case of the bear, for example: "Places that the bear likes" or "other animals that the bear eats". Questions can be converted into answers or additionally inserted as structured data. For "What does the bear like to eat most?" the text can say: "The bear likes to eat fish, berries, insects and small mammals." In this example, it is important to note that the phrase "the bear likes to eat most" was copied verbatim, although this phrase is not something you would normally expect to find on a scientific site about bears. Instead of "the bear feeds on itself", "the bear eats" was chosen to do justice to the search queries.