Keywords in writing: Why they are important and how to use them

Keywords funny word or? So what are keywords and how can I use them to be found better by search engines? And where should I place keywords in my texts? These are probably all questions you ask yourself, right? Most likely yes, otherwise you would never have landed on my site 😀

But we’ve beaten around the bush enough now! Today I’m going to show you how to handle keywords and how to use them optimally in your texts. So let’s get started.

What are so-called keywords anyway?

I assume that you are still a complete beginner when it comes to search engines and SEO. That’s why I will explain to you quite simply what keywords are.

Germany - Google Suche - Google Chrome

Keywords are nothing else than terms that you use to get information about a certain topic. In the following GIF, you can see how I googled the keyword “Germany”. Our search engine, in this case, Google, then searches its entire index of web pages for the keyword “Germany” and returns web pages that contain information about our keyword.

So keywords are quite simply the words you type into a search engine.

Besides the web search keywords are also important for website owners or online store owners. Because you can modify your texts on your website or in your product description with keywords so that they are more likely to be found in a Google search.

Keywords: where are the differences?

We have already learned what keywords are. But even with keywords there are some small differences that I would like to explain to you briefly. Because there are:

  • Keywords
  • Long Tail keywords
  • Main Keywords

Keywords

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When you write a text, it is usually quite useful to include several keywords in your text to be found better by search engines. In the above case, we had the keyword “Germany” should you now write a text on the topic of “Germany” it would be important to include other keywords such as ” Germany capital” or “Germany population”. Google will recognize that your text is about Germany and will show your website to people searching for the term “Germany”. Keywords usually consist of only 1 or 2 words and no more.

Long tail keywords / Phrasen

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But sometimes it can be that people are looking for something very specific. Then people type more than 3 words into the Google search. This is called “long tail keywords” or “phrases”. These are mostly search queries that contain more than 3 words. In our case, this could be for example “German Content Writer Offenburg” as you can see we used 4 words to find a content writer on google.

Long tail keywords should definitely be found in your texts because it is easier to be found for them on Google. On the one hand, the monthly search queries for such phrases are not so high and on the other hand, they are more difficult to find in the keyword search. Therefore, your competitors probably use them less and you can perfectly optimize your texts for these long tail keywords. In the SEO world, this is also referred to as a low competition keyword.

Main keyword

And what the heck is the main keyword now? That’s just another keyword, isn’t it? Basically yes!

But before you write a text, you probably did some keyword research to find the best keywords for your text. If we go back to our example, our main keyword would be “Germany”, because “Germany” is probably what most people search for on the internet. So the average monthly search volume should be quite high.

So it is important to optimize our text for the main keyword “Germany”. However, we should also include long tail keywords like “German Content Writer Offenburg” or normal keywords like “German Content” or “Germany Capital” in the text.

Why do you use keywords?

If you need information about a topic on the Internet, then you probably make a search query on Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo. These search engines will then return the matching websites that have information on your topic.

But why should I now include keywords in my texts?

Let’s take a little look at the world of search engines. Let’s take a quick look at how they work.

Just imagine the Internet as a huge network of billions of Internet pages. The search engines use so-called crawlers, bots or spiders, which move back and forth from website to website and work through this huge network. The video below shows the internet visualized. Each point is hyperlinked to another. Through these hyperlinks the search engine bots navigate from page to page.

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If the Google Bot finds a new web page that is not yet in its index, it downloads it and looks at the content. By content, however, only the texts and images are meant here. Now linguistic techniques such as lemmatization and stemming are applied to the content and the content is stored in the index. Here is a good example of what these linguistic techniques do with your content:

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If you now make a search query on Google, Google searches its huge database (index) of stored content in seconds and sees which one matches your search query best.

So Google really cares about the content you offer on your website. If you don’t use important keywords, phrases or anything else in your texts, your text will most likely not be found for a certain search query. Therefore, you should definitely include important keywords on a topic on your website.

How to find keywords on your topic?

You already know how important keywords are for your texts. Now you probably want to know how to find the best and most relevant keywords for your topic.

However, I want to write a separate blog post in the future on the topic of keyword research because this topic is extremely extensive. However, I still go briefly and superficially on it:

Keyword Research tool

Since we all (me included :P) are pretty lazy we use keyword tools that can help us in the search for keyword ideas. This saves us a lot of time and especially nerves!

However, there are two types of keyword tools. There are free keyword tools and paid keyword tools. Enclosed I have created a list for each category.

Paid Keyword Research tools:

  • Ahrefs
  • Semrush
  • KWFinder
  • SISTRIX
  • Surfer SEO

Best keyword research tools for free:

  • Google Search Console
  • Google Keyword Planner
  • Ubersuggest
  • Keyword Sheeter
  • Google Snippets

Know your topic

However, if you are not a fan of SEO tools then you can also just use your mind. Put yourself in your topic and think about what search queries people might ask about a topic. Then simply use them in your texts. If you know your topic, it’s even easier.

Competition

You can also make it easy for yourself and simply analyze your competitors. In another blog post of mine about “content writing” I explain in detail how you can analyze the texts of your competitors. So you can simply steal the keywords of your competitors.

Where should you place your keywords in a text?

So now let’s get to the most important part of this blog post. Namely where you should place your keywords or better said the main keyword.

Because through the ideal placement of your keyword Google or any other search engine knows exactly what your text is about and for which word you would like to be ranked and found.

In order for you to understand the whole thing super easy we use an example. Better said my last blog post: https://german-content.com/content-writing on this blog post I show you how you should place your keywords best.

H1 Headline

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You probably would have thought of this position yourself. However, the H1 heading is the most important position where you should place your keyword. The H1 heading tells search engines what the website is about in general. So be sure to include your main keyword in your H1 heading.

In the first sentence of your text

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Another position where your keyword should be placed is the beginning of your text. To be even more precise, it should be in the first sentence. In my example above, I even used the keyword as the first word.

H2, H3 or H4 Headings

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If you write a longer text, which you divide into many smaller blocks with separate headings, then you should also place your keyword in these headings.

At the end of your text

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It is also important to use your keyword at the end of your text. The best place would be the last sentence. However, it is perfectly ok to simply include your keyword in your last text block. Just see how it fits from the text flow. Even I didn’t use it in the last sentence in my example.

In the meta title

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It is also important to use your keyword at the end of your text. The best place would be the last sentence. However, it is perfectly ok to simply include your keyword in your last text block. Just see how it fits from the text flow. Even I didn’t use it in the last sentence in my example.

In the Meta Description

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For the meta description is actually exactly the same as for the meta title. This is the first small description that people get about your website after a google search. Google even automatically marks the search keywords and the meta description content in bold if they match. You can see this in the picture above.

Avoid keyword stuffing for better SEO

Now that you’ve read all this, you’re probably thinking to yourself: “If Keywords are so important, then I’ll fill my whole text with them”. Sounds good in theory, but in practice it hasn’t worked for years. Try to place your main keyword in your texts as naturally as possible and don’t stuff your whole content with it. Because even Google is now so smart that it can recognize “keyword stuffing” as one calls the whole thing in the SEO scene. So make sure that you use your keywords naturally.

Conclusion on the topic: Use keyword in texts correctly

I hope you were able to learn some important information about keywords today. You have learned today what types of keywords there are, why keywords are so important for search engines and where you should place keywords in your texts. If you still have questions about the topic, feel free to contact me. In the future there will also be a blog post about how keyword research works best.

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Mario

Kiefer

CEO