What is keyword SEO? How to choose effective SEO keywords

Keywords are the bridge that helps customers find the information they need on the internet. In SEO, keyword optimization will help the website improve its search engine rankings, this process is called keyword SEO. So what is a keyword, what is keyword SEO and how is effective SEO keyword selection done? Join Viet SEO to learn through this article.

1. What is keyword SEO?

As defined from Google: “Keywords are words or phrases used to match your ad to terms people are searching for.” However, this definition is more inclined towards keywords in advertising, not covering the keyword factor in SEO. So Viet SEO will delve into the concept of what keywords are and what keyword SEO is specifically for you to better understand.

1.1. What are keywords?

A keyword is a word or phrase that describes the user's query intent about a product, service, or issue they are interested in, used for the purpose of finding information on the internet. Identifying clear, specific keywords associated with a topic will help your website be consistent, easy for users to find and thus reduce the burden of advertising costs. That's why keywords are important for a website.

So what are SEO keywords? Those are keywords that are distributed with a certain density and purposely in your article. When users search for these keywords, your article will likely rank high on search engines. Keyword density in SEO for an optimal article is from 1-2%.

Example: You want to learn how to make an attractive image to post on your website. At this time, depending on the user's needs and intentions, the keywords searched for can be: "how to create banners", "how to design banners", "how to create free banners", "how to design banners online" ”,… These phrases are called keywords, when properly utilized and optimized into standard SEO keywords will help bring your website to a high rank on search engines.

1.2. What is keyword SEO?

Keyword SEO is the process of optimizing a website based on the target keywords according to the standards of Google or other search engines (Coc Coc, Bing, Yahoo, ...), the ultimate goal is to put the keywords appear on the first page of search rankings.

For example: Also with the keyword "how to create a banner", when searching on Google the results will appear like the image below. Results include both advertised keywords (which only appear when you pay Google to show ads), and SEO keywords (which appear naturally and sustainably).

2. Types of keywords in SEO

After understanding the concept of keywords, what is keyword SEO, in this section, we will start to go into keyword classification, in which keyword research is the first step and plays an important role in a project. Keyword SEO. So before optimizing yourself or hiring any unit, you should know through the types of keywords in SEO to choose the right set of keywords, bringing the highest efficiency. Here are some types of keywords in SEO.

2.1. Keyword by length

2.1.1. Short Keywords – Short Tail Keywords

Short keywords are keywords that are three words or less in length. These are generic keywords used to describe user intent. It has quite a lot of search traffic, a high level of competition.

Examples of short keywords: seo, shoes, helmets, newspapers, Marketing Online, etc.

The content of short keywords is quite small, so it is difficult for you to understand what the user's search intent is. So, although the search volume of these words is high, most of them are more suitable for the purpose of promoting the brand than selling.

For example: With the keyword "Marketing Online" you cannot determine what information customers are looking for. It can be: the concept of Online Marketing, Online Marketing tools, or a complete Online Marketing strategy, etc.

Therefore, short keywords often make it impossible for businesses to focus on a specific audience, making it difficult to improve conversion rates.

Summary: Short keywords often have high search volume, high competition, unclear search intent, and low conversion rates.

2.1.2. Long tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are keywords with a length of 4 words or more, they describe the user's search intent more clearly and specifically than short keywords. This type of keyword usually has less search traffic, but makes up for it with lower competition than short keywords. Therefore, when implementing keyword SEO, your website will easily be on the first page of search engines.

Examples of long-tail keywords: SEO service quotes, bicycle helmets, press PR packages, what is Marketing Online, genuine zara female sports shoes, ...

Especially with long-tail keywords, you can easily know what the user's search intent is. This is crucial to attracting the right target audience.

For example: Also with the topic of Marketing Online, the keywords that customers are searching for right now are long keywords, so you can know the user's intent:

What is Online Marketing: Customers want to learn the concept of Online Marketing.

Online Marketing Services: Customers want to find a company that provides online marketing solutions.

Some Online Marketing Strategies: Customers want to see successful Online Marketing case studies.

In short: Long keywords often have lower search volume than short keywords, low competition, specific search intent, so the conversion rate will be higher than short keywords.

2.2. Keywords by time level

2.2.1. Short term keywords

Usually, short-term keywords will appear at the same time as a prominent event, activity, product, service, etc. at a time. At this time, the traffic of related keywords will increase dramatically, then gradually decrease according to the hotness of the event. If you take advantage and grasp the demand at these times, you can get a relatively good amount of traffic through short-term keywords.

Example: In the past, information about the covid-19 pandemic was the topic of most people's interest. So the topics, the most searched during this time are:

• Face mask
• Hand sanitizer
• Soap

At the same time, the search volume also increased sharply from the end of January 2020 (when the pandemic began to break out), and began to "cool down" from the beginning of May 2020 (the pandemic was under control).

In short: Short-term keywords that have a strong increase in search volume at a time, can be used to catch up with user trends in certain times.

2.2.2. Long term keywords

Long-term keywords are keywords that users can search at any time. The search traffic of these keywords may increase or decrease from time to time, but the change is not significant.

Examples of long-term keywords: how to make confetti, what is seo, cheap thermos, etc.



One advantage of this type of keyword is that you can use it for a long time, because users are still interested and searching after many years. Your task now is to regularly optimize and update the content to provide information to users quickly and promptly. Once you do this, you will easily maintain your position on the SERP (search results rankings) and maintain sustainable traffic from long-term keywords.

In short: Long-term keywords have stable search volume, can be used for long-term exploitation, are suitable to provide useful information to users.

2.3. Targeting keywords

2.3.1. Product targeting keywords

Product targeting keywords are keywords used to describe specific products or services. It is searched by users for terms related to an industry or a brand. So, these keywords often show that users are searching specifically for a product, the user intent is very clear.

Product targeting keywords are built on the list of products you offer, the more detailed the keyword construction, the easier it will be to reach customers.

Bottom line: These are keywords with low search volume, specific search intent. They are often associated with a product or brand.

2.3.2. Customer targeting keywords

Customer targeting keywords are search terms related to a specific audience group. When querying, customers will associate with object words. Some objects are often searched for: gender, age, job, interests, etc.

Examples of keywords to target customers: children's bicycles, women's sports shoes, office chairs, etc.

This type of keyword helps you to target the right target audience of your business. Therefore, before building a set of keywords of this type, you should carefully research who your target customers are, focusing on the information they need to choose the right keywords for their needs.

Bottom line: Customer-targeting keywords often have low search volume, specific search intent, and are used to address business's target customer needs.

2.3.3. Geotargeting keywords

Geotargeting keywords are search terms that contain geographic locations. Users searching for this type of keyword often expect to appear results in the area near them, or the area that they are interested in.

Examples of geotargeting keywords: restaurants in Tan Binh district, phone repair in Saigon, seo services from Hanoi, etc.

By inserting your address, or business area into the keywords will be extremely helpful for local businesses, helping you attract more customers in the vicinity. Besides, geotargeting keywords is an important component in Local SEO.

Bottom Line: Geotargeted keywords have lower search volume than generic, search intent-specific keywords that are more relevant to local businesses and geo-related services like restaurants , restaurants, hotels, entertainment venues,…

3. How to choose keywords for SEO different from keywords to run ads?

In this section, Viet SEO will go into the analysis of 3 target factors of keyword selection, user's purchase intention and cost so that you can see the difference between choosing keywords for SEO and keywords to run ads.

3.1. What is keyword selection goal?

Want a successful keyword SEO project and create good value, you need to research according to a set of related keywords, including: main keywords and auxiliary keywords. It includes all the keywords that users are interested in and searched for on a topic. Once you cover all the user intent on that topic with keywords, you will reach the right and more potential customers.

Meanwhile, the thing to consider when choosing keywords to run ads on is the bid. The keywords that are running ads need to maximize the cost per click, ensuring the best performance for the campaign.

Usually, when doing SEO you can choose any keyword (sales keyword or keyword for blog content). Meanwhile, the keywords chosen to run ads are mostly directly related to the products and services businesses are doing.

3.2. User purchase intention

With keywords with high traffic but low user intent to purchase, you should prioritize performing SEO to optimize keywords on Google search engines. Because SEO doesn't charge per click, anyone can access your post without any charge. Doing SEO for this type of keyword will help you quickly develop your brand.

In contrast to keywords with high purchase intent but low search traffic, you can both do keyword SEO and run ads. Now, the chances for customers to see your website and make a purchase increase. Because when advertised, the content will always appear in good positions on Google. At the same time, the keyword has just appeared naturally on the search results, helping to increase reliability for users.

3.3. Every mistake of keyword advertising always costs money

Unlike choosing keywords for SEO, when you choose the wrong advertising keywords, do not create conversion rates, etc., you have to pay the price. So in addition to choosing the right keywords, you need to monitor to re-optimize ads, classify keywords closely to increase quality score, reduce cost per click.

Meanwhile, when choosing the wrong standard SEO keyword will be less affected, you can easily choose a new keyword to optimize. And maybe in the future, this wrong keyword can help you improve your rankings on Google. Even in the process of website optimization, keywords that are not on your SEO list can still appear on the top of Google.

4. How to choose effective SEO keywords

Choosing keywords is the first step before implementing SEO for the website. It directly affects the time, effort you spend and the success - failure of an SEO project. So below Viet SEO will give you the mistakes that customers often make when choosing keywords to do SEO, then suggest you the most effective ways to choose SEO keywords.

4.1. Choose keywords that match the website's internal resources

What is the first mistake many people make when choosing SEO keywords? That is, they only focus on choosing keywords with high search volume, stemming from the desire to reach many people. Meanwhile, keywords with such a large search volume often have a high level of competition, with a website with weak internal resources, it takes a lot of time to SEO keywords to the top (maybe more than 1 year).

Example: When using the Keyword Planner tool to check the keyword "office desk", the results received were: 6,600 searches per month, with a high competition rate.

Keywords like these are difficult to appear on the top of Google, especially websites with weak internal resources or just starting to implement SEO. At this time, the number of searches does not determine whether your website can reach many customers. Instead, you must choose keywords that are suitable for the quality of your website such as moderate search volume, low competition, etc., so that keywords can go to the top faster, thereby quickly reaching customers. .

For example: With the same office desk product above, you choose the keyword "cheap office desk", the results are different: 1,300 searches per month but the competition rate is moderate.

Specifically, when searching on Google, you will clearly see the level of competition between keywords: The keyword office desk gets 179 million results, which means you have to compete with 179 million other websites. The keyword office desk price r has only 53.6 million results. At this time, the number of websites that you have to compete with is less than 1/3 of the websites containing the keyword office desk, the chance to be on the top will be 3 times higher.

This shows that you should choose long-tail keywords, niche keywords with less competition to do SEO. Although the search volume will not be as high as for short keywords, it will compensate for the opportunity to appear in the search results more than keywords with high search volume. When the website is well optimized and has stable traffic, it will be much easier to do SEO for high-traffic keywords.
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4.2. Choose SEO standard keywords according to each topic group

The next mistake many website owners make is choosing too many individual keywords for SEO. That is, in each topic, or product or service, they often choose only one key keyword to do SEO.

For example: A customer that provides wallpaper products only wants to choose one keyword in this product group, "wallpaper" to do SEO.

When choosing keywords in this way, it takes a long time to get to the top of Google. At the same time, there is no connection between the content on the website - that is, the content on the same topic is not enough to lead customers from one article to another. This makes it very difficult to convince buyers to choose your products or services.

In this case, Viet SEO recommends that you choose SEO keywords that follow each topic group to:

• These keywords will complement each other to make the SEO process more effective.
• The website has related content, leading users to learn more content on the same topic.
• Reach many aspects, many audiences for a product.

For example: With the same group of wallpaper topics above, you can SEO add other keywords such as:

Korean wallpaper.

• 3d wallpaper.
• Living room wallpaper.
• Beautiful wallpaper pattern.
• …

Alternatively, you can build keywords in groups. For example: With the keyword group "factory" you can have keywords such as: high-quality factory, factory construction, factory for rent, factory for rent, warehouse for rent, etc.

4.3. Do not choose keywords that are too general for sales purposes

The third mistake when building a set of SEO keywords is choosing keywords that are too general, but the goal you want to achieve is to sell. These keywords often encounter a situation where the search volume is high but the search intent is not specific. Therefore, if you have SEO keywords to the top, it is very difficult for you to improve the conversion rate on the website.

At the same time, most of these keywords do not contain purchase intent from users. And people who really want to buy will rarely search for such generic keywords. So it is more suitable for brand promotion purposes than sales.

In addition, if a website has a weak internal force, it is difficult for these keywords to get a high position on the search results. Unless you have to SEO at the same time with many niche keywords (as described in the section on choosing SEO keywords by topic group).

For example, if you choose 10-15 keywords for SEO for a topic, you can choose 1 or 2 general keywords, because more specific keywords can help to push these keywords to the top. However, if you SEO 10-15 keywords for many different topics, it is very difficult to improve rankings for these general keywords.

Therefore, if your budget for SEO is low, in order for keywords to reach the right customers with needs and create orders for businesses, you should choose specific and detailed keywords to do SEO. At this time, the level of competition is lower than for generic keywords, improving the chances of getting to the top of Google.

5. Conclusion

With the above sharing, Viet SEO hopes that you have understood what keyword SEO is, the keyword classifications and how to choose effective SEO keywords. Keyword SEO helps your website appear in high positions on search engines, quickly reach the right potential customers and bring in quality customers. However, to do this, you need to research and choose keywords that are suitable for your website's internal resources, business goals and target audience.