We’ll discuss eight important keyword metrics you should know and how they affect your SEO strategy.
1. Keywords
Keywords are queries, and phrases users type into search engines to find relevant information, content, or products. SEO professionals and Paid Search Ads specialists often use keywords to describe their own content or products so that users can find their content or products in search engine results.
2. Keyword Clustering
Keyword clustering is the process of segmenting your keywords into smaller groups based on intent and relevancy. Say you’re creating a keyword cluster for “Search Engine Optimization”; it might look like this:
- What is search engine optimization?
- SEO benefits
- SEO best practices
- SEO vs. SEM
- SEO tools
Keyword clustering allows you to build topical authority for your content and “own the SERPs” for target keywords.
Gone are the days when you could write just one piece of content targeting one keyword and rank high in search. With Google’s E-A-T and now E-E-A-T update, you need to provide exhaustive content for all of the keywords related to the topic you want to rank for. This will increase your chances of ranking high in the SERPs.
So, you’re not writing one article about search engine optimization — rather, you’re covering everything people need to know about SEO in multiple related blog posts.
Use SEO tools like Frase, Ahrefs, and Content Harmony to research keywords and create topic clusters.
3. Keyword Density
Keyword density — or keyword frequency — is simply the number of times a keyword appears on a webpage or within a piece of content. It is calculated as:
- (Total number of keyword occurrences ÷ Total number of words on the page) X 100
- Say a keyword is used 10X in a 2,000–word text; the keyword frequency is:
- (10 ÷ 2,000) x 100 = 0.05%
The ideal keyword density depends on the length of your text. Generally, SEOs suggest that the keyword appears once in every 200 words — especially in your title, introduction, and headings.
Having a clear understanding of keyword density can help you avoid keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing means that your target keyword occurs too often in the text, even when it does not naturally fit in.
4. Keyword Difficulty
Keyword difficulty — or SEO competition — is how hard it would be for a piece of content to rank for a specific search term. It is measured on a scale of 1 – 100, with 1 being the easiest to rank for and 100 being the most difficult.
Four core factors determine how difficult it will be to rank for a particular keyword:
- Who is already ranking for it — your competitors?
- Your website’s domain authority — how influential your entire website is in the SERPs. High domain authority (DA) websites are more likely to rank for difficult keywords
- Content quality — how well your content matches search intent and is optimized for on-page SEO
- The number and quality of backlinks you have. The more high authority sites link to your content, the higher its chances of ranking top in the SERP
You can check keyword difficulty with popular rank tracking and keyword research tools.
5. Keyword Cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization is when two or more content pages (from a particular website) target the same keyword. It is bad for SEO because the cannibalized pages compete with one another for SERP ranking, leading to a drop in organic performance.
You can search for cannibalized content manually using Google Site Search Operator or automate the process with SEO tools. Once you discover cannibalized content, fix the issue by:
- Merging all the content into one comprehensive page
- Using 301 redirects to divert organic traffic from one page to another
- Adding a no-index tag to the content that shouldn’t be ranking for the keyword
- Optimizing and updating the other content pages to target new keywords
6. Keyword Ranking
The process of tracking the movements and ranking positions of a specific set of keywords to determine its visibility in relation to your website. This is done with keyword tracking tools like Keyword.com.
7. Keyword Research
Keyword research is the process of finding relevant search terms that you’d like your website to rank for. Say you’re a local eCommerce company; you might want your website to rank for an eCommerce store in the U.S.
To pick the right keywords, you need to focus on three things: relevance, volume, and difficulty.
- Relevance means that the keyword is closely related to your business and its service
- Choose a keyword with a decent volume to drive sizable traffic to your website
- Ensure that the keyword isn’t too difficult to rank for — especially if your website has a low domain authority
Read this article to learn more about conducting keyword research for your business.
8. Keyword Search Volume
Search volume is the number of times users have searched for a particular keyword within a specific timeframe. A high search volume shows that the keyword will drive tons of organic traffic to your website if you can rank high for it in the SERPs.
Keyword search volume is further categorized into:
- Monthly Search Volume: The number of times users in a particular location search for a particular keyword every month
- Global Search Volume: The total number of searches for a particular keyword regardless of users’ location
You will find keyword search volume data in SEO tools like Seobility.
