Keywords for SEO and SEM

"Keyword research is the first step in SEO and a fundamental best practice." - Todd Kelsey, Introduction to Search Engine Optimization: A Guide for Absolute Beginners.

Keywords in search engine optimization are the key words or key phrases that are in your webpage or meta description that will help consumers find your website. Keywords will help you optimize your site so that consumers looking for what you are offering can find it sooner. It is important to know your audience and understand their behavior in order to get more search results. Going back to my original example of banana bread from SEO Ranking Factors blog post, someone looking for a banana bread recipe experienced with baking might simply type "banana bread recipe" while a beginner in search for the same thing is more likely to type "how to bake banana bread" in their search engine. These searches, although they both have the same end-goal, yield different results. Why? Because the keywords are different. One implies more knowledge in the subject (baking banana bread) while the other explicitly asks for step-by-step instructions. The results are as follows:

Search words: "Banana bread recipe."

Search words: "How to bake banana bread."

Our first search highlights the word "banana bread recipe" while our second search offers more video content for those beginner bakers. Chowhound is one site that appears on the second search, but not on the first one due to the difference in keywords used.

In terms of search engine marketing, keywords work similarly to SEO. The biggest difference is that in SEM, the owners of the site need to pay for these keywords. There are a couple of different ways in which marketers can pay for keywords, but the most common one is pay-per-click (PPC). According to WordStream, PPC is a "model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked." In other words, marketers pay the search engine a specific amount of money per keyword if their sponsored search is clicked by the customers. Below is an example of sponsored ads for the "best banana bread mix."

Search words: "Best banana bread mix."

There is a lot of competition for keywords and it is important to know which keywords will appeal more to your audience. For Google search engine, the way to go for SEM is GoogleAds.