Keywords - All you need to know!

Keywords sind ein wesentlicher Bestandteil der Suchmaschinenoptimierung (SEO) und helfen dabei, dass deine Webseite bei Suchanfragen Top-Positionen bei Google erreicht. Die Auswahl der richtigen Keywords, um sie in die Texte deiner Webseite einzubinden, ist dabei eine echte Herausforderung. Im Folgenden erfährst du, wie die Verwendung von Keywords überhaupt funktioniert und mit welchen Tools dir die Keyword-Recherche einfacher gelingt.

Keywords are single words or short phrases that can be found in the texts of your website. It is assumed that these specific words are entered particularly frequently as search terms on Google & Co. For example, if you run a snack bar in Berlin, "Imbiss", "Imbiss Berlin" or "Restaurant Berlin" would be typical keywords for you.

Keywords are only one part of your SEO, also the design of your website, a generic backlinking structure and other aspects play a role. Nevertheless, you will only reach top positions in Google if your texts are keyword optimized. After all, you always have competitors on the Internet who want to achieve the best possible positions in search engines and will use keywords to do so.

By the way, it is not about including the same keywords as often as possible in your texts. This has long been penalized by Google. Instead, it's all about the intelligent use of terms and phrases in combination, which can be determined with a WDF*IDF analysis, for example. In the first step, of course, you should find out which keywords lend themselves to your website. This is not always intuitively clear and offers you the chance to occupy search terms on Google that are not yet covered by the competition.

Keywords are roughly divided into two groups. Shorttail refers to short keywords that consist of one word - in the example above, "snack bar". A long-tail keyword, in comparison, consists of several words and addresses the fact that users enter questions or several terms in their search query on Google. Choosing long-tail keywords gives you more opportunities to appear in top positions for queries. For example, instead of "Imbiss in Berlin" it makes sense to cover the keyword "günstig essen Berlin" or "Wo essen in Berlin?

The term refers to the proximity of two or more individual keywords to each other in a text. The closer they are to each other in the body text, the more likely it is that they will be evaluated as a unit in long-tail search queries and that your website will be listed in the search results.

This refers to a procedure from the early days of the Internet and Google. At that time, good positions could be achieved if certain keywords were stuffed into a text particularly frequently. This is now considered spam by Google and rigorously punished.

The term refers to a tool that can be used to determine suitable keywords and secondary terms including frequency in the text. Existing texts are also analyzed with such programs in order to optimize them and make sensible changes to keywords already used.

This term refers to the density in which keywords are used depending on the length of a text. If the density is too low, Google will not consider your website for the corresponding search queries. If the density in the text is too high, there is a risk of keyword stuffing and your page will be penalized.

This refers to the variety of keywords, which is indispensable for good positions in Google. It is therefore useless to optimize the text for a specific keyword alone. For Google it is important that also many topic-relevant terms appear in your texts. Through this alone, the search engine recognizes the importance of your website and assumes a real benefit for the human visitor.

Especially in OnPage optimization, keywords are among the most important SEO measures of all. In the OnPage area, you have a concrete influence on the structure and content of your website, whereby your texts are one of the most important elements. Images, videos and a contemporary design should not be missing for an appealing web presence, but only through texts with intelligently chosen keywords you will be able to convince Google. How strong your efforts have to be depends on your competition in search queries regarding your keywords.

In off-page optimization, keywords are subordinate, but not meaningless. The problem is that in the fewest cases you can actively influence the off-page optimization. First and foremost, it is about building backlinks, i.e. other websites refer to your website. Depending on the link partner, however, you can make an effort to provide this text for a blog or website. Here it is worthwhile to optimize the provided texts for keywords in the same way as you do in the OnPage area.

Keywords play a major role in Google AdWords, albeit in a different form than in classic SEO. AdWords is a commercial advertising measure to appear in a higher position through advertisements in search queries for certain terms. In advance you bid on certain keywords, the price depends on the demand for the respective keywords. Here it is worthwhile, also for cost reasons, to think about alternative keywords and to exploit niches that are not yet covered by the competition through exceptional search queries.

Choosing the right keywords becomes more difficult with each passing year. This is due on the one hand to the adjustments of Google's search algorithm, and on the other hand to the constant efforts of your competitors. That's why you should regularly take a look at your texts and keywords to make intelligent adjustments. Of course, you can't learn the right steps intuitively, instead you should ask for technical help in choosing the right keywords. Free and commercial tools with a variety of functions are available to you for the selection.

To get a basic overview of suitable keywords for a web project, Google's Keyword Planner is indispensable. The tool helps you to show not only the common terms, but also alternative keywords that are often used in related search queries. You probably wouldn't come up with many of these terms on your own.

Google Suggest is a practical function for finding out which keywords are searched for in the long-tail area. This shows you already when entering individual letters in the search engine, which terms are particularly often searched for around this keyword. This also serves as inspiration for the composition of keywords and enriches your texts.

Google is not the only search engine on the Internet. Videos should be found quickly on YouTube, products should be listed as high as possible on Amazon. With the Soovle tool, you can extend your keyword research to these and other platforms so that your texts are optimized on several levels.

Keywords have played a decisive role since the beginnings of SEO and have lost none of their importance to this day. Since mistakes in the selection and integration of keywords are quickly punished by Google, the use of analysis tools is indispensable. With them, you take a valuable step towards permanently establishing your website in high search positions on Google. But always keep in mind: Google updates regularly change the algorithm of the search engine, which affects the previous search results. The selection of keywords and adaptation of your web texts is therefore an ongoing process.