Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in 2022 can be an overwhelming concept for any brand to wrap their head around. With an ever-evolving environment full of confusing concepts and terminology (AI, RankBrain, E-A-T, BERT!!!???) and a million and one opinions online from search engine optimization experts, its difficult for businesses and their marketing executives to know what’s important when it comes to improving their organic search presence.
One regularly debated topic amongst the SEO community is whether in modern SEO strategies, are keywords still important? Well, as a SEO marketing agency, we’d argue “yes!”, but first let’s look at what keywords are, what their history has been in SEO, and then why they’re still relevant in a 2022 SEO strategy.
What Are Keywords?
To put it simply, keywords are words and phrases that represent the product and service offering of a brand, and correlate to the things a potential customer may type into a Google or Bing search bar when they’re trying to find those products or services. For example, for a brand like Nike, words like “sneakers” and phrases like “black mens running sneakers size 11” are keywords. Keywords can range from short tail to long tail (shown in the two example above), depending on their length and level of specificity.
The History of Keywords
In the old Wild West days of the internet, search engines like Google used to prioritize a section of a website’s HTML called “keyword meta tags.” Back in those days, it was simple enough to load this section of your website’s code with as many keywords as you’d want that page to rank for in search results. It was a blunt process, and easy to game, and because it would often lead to spammy intent, and poor results for Google’s users, the search engines abandoned this practice back around 2009. Now a days, keywords are used more naturally on a site, woven into the HTML and body copy elegantly so search engines can recognize them without it interfering with a web visitor’s browsing.
The Modern Debate on Keywords
So why are keywords a divisive topic in 2022? Search engines have gotten much smarter than they were back in the early days of the internet. They use complex algorithms and Artificial Intelligence to scan through the content of a website to analyze its meaning and catalog it for future refence. Because of this complexity, some search engine optimization experts argue that focusing on keywords in an SEO strategy is an outdate practice. They say instead focus on quality content, and while we 100% agree with that sentiment, we’d still argue keywords are integral part of any SEO approach. Here’s why:
Why Keywords Are Still Important
Focusing Your Efforts
With the infinite combination of words available to searchers, its impossible to know all the phrases a potential customer may/does use to find the types of products or services your brand offers. While a Google product like Search Console does provide some data on the queries searchers use to find your website, it gives you only limited data. That’s where keyword research and working with a reputable SEO marketing agency comes in handy. Utilizing creative thinking and third-party tools to create a list of keywords relevant to your brand, with healthy search volume, allows a modern SEO to focus their efforts for tangible strategies.
Something to Build To/For
By focusing on keywords, search engine optimization experts have something graspable to build content for and build backlinks to. Including these keywords in web page HTML, body copy, and blogs, as well as in referral backlink anchor texts, means we know we’re targeting our strategy on relevant and popular search queries, that will result in improved organic search traffic (and hopefully leads!).
Measurable Performance
And finally, keywords are still important because they give us a way to accurately measure the performance of our SEO efforts. Using those third-party services, we can measure the performance of our list of focus keywords by seeing how a brand’s website has changed position for them over periods of time. If we’ve seen improvement, we know our strategy is working! If we see stagnation, we know we need to change up our approach. This type of regular analysis is critical in a modern SEO strategy, and impossible to do without a keyword focused process.
While search engines are becoming more intelligent and more complex every day, keywords are still just as important to Search Engine Optimization as they’ve ever been!
Contact us at Mascola Group to learn more and improve your SEO strategy with a reputable SEO marketing agency.