Top keywords

When it comes to SEO, every single piece of content is written with a certain keyword in mind. This word or phrase is what the content is written around with the hopes of having the content show up at the top of search results when somebody searches for that keyword or other closely-related keywords.

With how essential keywords are to the content of a website, it’s important for you to figure out what these keywords are and dive into them a little bit more!

First of all, it’s fairly easy to find out what a website’s top keywords are for its pages. Most times you’ll be able to look at a page, it’s title, and it’s content and be able to determine what the keyword is.

Using a tool like Ahrefs will also allow you to pull up the pages of a website and take a look at the keywords that it ranks for. While it’s not the most accurate, especially when it comes to traffic estimates, it’s a great jumping-off point.

With keywords, the first thing that you’ll want to check for is that they’re all for relevant topics. If a website presents itself as an interior decoration website, but its top keywords have to do with bodybuilding, then something’s off. You want cohesiveness in a website’s content.

Another thing to check for is if the keywords have evergreen potential, meaning that they’re able to be ranked for and receive traffic indefinitely. If a website’s top keywords are all related to events or topics that fade in popularity quickly, then the website likely isn’t going to last long before it loses its traffic.

Search volume of keywords also needs to be considered. There’s really two types of keywords in this regard: high traffic and longtail.

High traffic keywords are keywords that are very broad and get a lot of searches, like “back exercises”. If a website is ranking for keywords like these, then it’s likely fairly authoritative and has a good chance of ranking for other high-volume keywords. However, competition is fierce for these keywords, so the website may be overtaken by a competitor.

Longtail keywords are keywords that are a lot more specific and get less volume, such as “best back exercises for people with sore backs”. These are usually a bit easier to rank for, and blog posts will often rank for several different longtail keywords. These have less competition, so websites primarily ranking for these are usually less authoritative but less stressful to maintain.

Neither type of keyword is preferable to the other, but each has their own benefits and downsides.

With the top keywords, you’ll also want to find trends among them. Are they all in a particular style or related to a specific topic? This could give you ideas for future content or monetization methods.

Overall, you’re just making sure that the top keywords make sense for the website and the niche.