Fundamentals
Keyword
A keyword is the word or phrase a user types into a search engine, and the term content is optimised to rank for.
Keywords range from short and broad ("shoes") to long and specific ("waterproof trail running shoes size 44"). They are the bridge between what people search and the content you create to meet that search.
The working unit is not the keyword but the intent group behind it. Twenty phrasings of one question are one target, and trying to rank a separate page for each is how sites end up competing with themselves. Group by what the searcher wants, pick the phrasing with the clearest demand as the primary, and let the page collect the variants naturally. The other discipline is writing in the audience's vocabulary: businesses name things by internal jargon, searchers by symptom, and the gap between the two is where rankings quietly fail to happen.
Example
A physiotherapy clinic maps its service to real search language: "physio bangkok" (900 searches a month), "back pain treatment" (700), "office syndrome exercises" (2,400). Each becomes a target for a different page. The clinic's own wording, "musculoskeletal rehabilitation", gets 10 searches; the keyword research is what stops them building the site around it.
Frequently asked questions
- How many keywords should one page target?
- One primary intent, which usually means one main keyword plus its natural variants. A page trying to rank for several unrelated terms typically ranks for none, while a page that owns one intent collects dozens of related phrasings automatically. Separate intents deserve separate pages.
- What is the difference between a keyword and a topic?
- A keyword is one phrasing; a topic is the cluster of questions around a subject. Modern ranking rewards topic coverage, so plan content around topics and use keywords as evidence of demand and the language to mirror, not as one-page-per-phrase assignments.
Related terms
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