What Is A Keyword?

So now that we’ve covered the very basics of how search engines work, we need to start planning our SEO strategy with sound keyword research. Keywords are simply words that describe the contents of a webpage. A keyword can be a single word or more often, a group of words. So don’t get confused! Even though the term keyword is singular you’ll often hear it in reference to a group of words.

Here’s how keywords work. Google makes its best guess at a page’s keywords based on many on-page and off-page factors such as the title of the page, the text within the page, the names of the images and alt text on the page and more. While there can be multiple keywords per page, it’s up to you to make those keywords crystal clear to the search engines and your users.

To help us understand, let’s review an example of a hypothetical wedding photography business in San Francisco by a fictitious photographer named Jennifer Reynolds. If she is a wedding photographer in San Francisco, she might choose to target the keyword “San Francisco Wedding Photographer” on one of her web pages. For this example, refer to the image below:

what-is-a-keyword

To remember the important keyword indicators, use the acronym “TUTI,” which stands for Title, URL, Text, and Images.

T | Title – Jennifer’s page would have a title that contains the keyword such as “San Francisco Wedding Photographer.” This is illustrated by letter B in the image above.

U | URL – The URL (also known as a permalink) would contain the keyword and be something like “exampledomain.com/san-francisco-wedding-photographer” This is illustrated by letter A in the image above.

T | Text – The text on the page would include many words and descriptions related to the words San Francisco Wedding Photographer including the exact phrase “San Francisco Wedding Photographer” multiple times. See the bolded text next to letter C in the image above as well as the text outlined in red. Note: Do not actually bold or outline your text.

I | Image Names – The image names and alt text would include the keyword. For example, the page would include an image on the page named “san-franciscowedding- photographer.jpg” with the alt text of something along the lines of “Wedding Photo in San Francisco.” The other images on the page would include words related to San Francisco Wedding Photography. If you don’t understand alt text at this point, don’t worry because we’ll be covering this in depth later.

Don’t Panic! We will get into each of these keyword factors later in this book. The main point here is that with so many references to one specific keyword, “San Francisco Wedding Photographer,” the example page has a very clear keyword that makes it easy for visitors and for Google to determine the overall content. This page has a better chance of showing up in search results for “San Francisco Wedding Photographer” than a page with no clear goal, haphazard naming of images and titles, and inconsistent textual content.

CHAPTER 1.01 – INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 2: 1.02 – SEO BASICS & KEYWORD STRATEGY

CHAPTER 3 1.03 – CREATING CONTENT

CHAPTER 4: 1.04 – SITE STRUCTURE

Chapter 5: 1.05 – ACCESSIBILITY, SPEED, AND DUPLICATE CONTENT

Chapter 6: 2.01 – LINK BASICS

Chapter 7: 2.02 – LINK VALUE FACTORS

Chapter 8: 2.03 – NOFOLLOW, RELATED LINKS, & ANCHOR TEXT

Chapter 9: 2.04 – LINK BUILDING STRATEGIES

Chapter 10: 3.01 – THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Chapter 11: 3.02 – MAXIMIZING SPECIFIC SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS

Chapter 12: 3.03 – MASTER LOCAL SEARCH

Chapter 13: 4.01 – Initial Decisions

Chapter 14: 4.02 – WORDPRESS AND Squarespace

Chapter 15: 4.03 – GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Chapter 16: PAID DIRECTORIES

ACCESS TO INDUSTRY-LEADING EDUCATION

Let SLR Lounge guide you in your photography journey with the best photography education and resources. Browse our complete, comprehensive solutions and take the next step in your photography.
BROWSE WORKSHOPS