Keyword strategy
What are keywords and how do I choose them?
The word keyword is unhelpful, because almost nobody searches with one word. What you are really choosing is which question a page exists to answer.
What are keywords and how do I choose them?
A keyword is the phrase a person types or says into a search box, usually a whole question or a short description of a problem rather than a single word, and search engines match meaning rather than exact strings, so one well-written page can rank for many phrasings of the same need.
Choosing keywords means deciding which intent each page serves: whether the searcher wants to learn something, compare options, find a specific business or buy now. Pick the phrases where your page can genuinely be the best answer and where the searcher is someone you could actually serve, not the ones with the biggest volume figure attached.
A keyword is just a query
Strip the jargon and a keyword is the exact thing somebody typed. The industry name survives from an era when people really did search with two words and a hope.
Modern queries are longer and more conversational, especially spoken ones. Emergency dentist open sunday near me is a keyword. Why does my crown feel loose after a week is a keyword. So is the name of your own business, which is a category people forget to count.
Two useful labels. Head terms are short, broad and heavily contested: dentist chicago. Long-tail terms are longer, more specific and individually rarer: same day crown repair lincoln park. Long-tail queries are searched less often each, add up to a great deal in aggregate, and usually come from someone much closer to acting.
One more thing to unlearn. Google matches meaning rather than characters, so a page can rank for phrasings it never contains and for synonyms nobody thought to list. Writing to cover every variant of a phrase produces worse copy and no extra benefit.
You are choosing intent, not vocabulary
Two queries can share almost every word and want completely different pages. Teeth whitening cost and teeth whitening near me look similar and behave nothing alike: the first wants an explanation with numbers and honesty, the second wants a business that can do it this week.
Give one page to each intent and both can succeed. Try to serve both with one page and it usually satisfies neither, because the explanation slows down the person ready to book and the booking prompts irritate the person still researching.
Read the full breakdown: You are choosing intent, not vocabularyHide the full breakdown: You are choosing intent, not vocabulary
This is also the answer to the most common objection in keyword planning. A business owner looks at an informational phrase and says nobody searching that is going to buy from me. Often true on that visit. The page still earns its place if it collects the people who will buy in six weeks, if it is what gets referenced by other sites, and if it is the page an assistant reads when summarising the subject.
The discipline is to be honest about which pages are for which job, and to stop measuring an explainer by the same yardstick as a service page.
Two searches, two different businesses
Every keyword list splits into people looking for you and people looking for what you do. The two need different pages and different expectations.
Brand queries are the easiest to win and the ones most often left out of a keyword plan entirely, on the grounds that you already rank for your own name. Worth checking anyway: businesses with similar names, an old address, a closed location or an aggressive directory can all appear above or beside you for your own brand.
Intent queries are where competition lives. Someone searching for a service and a place is comparing, and the results page is full of options including a map pack, directories and competitors.
Track them separately. Mixing branded and non-branded queries into one traffic chart is the single easiest way to make flat performance look like growth, because brand search rises for reasons that have nothing to do with SEO.
The four kinds of intent, and what each one needs
Sort any keyword list into these four buckets before deciding anything else. The right page type falls out of the bucket.
| Item | What the searcher wants | The page that serves it | Fair measure of success |
|---|---|---|---|
| Informational | To understand something: what it is, why it happens, what it costs | A guide or an answer page that explains without selling | Impressions, engaged reading, later branded search |
| Commercial | To compare options before committing | A comparison, a pricing explanation, a what to look for page | Enquiries that arrive already informed |
| Transactional | To book, buy or call now | A service or location page with an obvious next step | Calls, forms and bookings |
| Navigational | To reach a specific business or page they already have in mind | Your home page, your profile, your contact page | Owning the whole first screen for your own name |
If you cannot decide which bucket a keyword belongs in, search it. Google has already decided, and the results page is the answer.
Five questions that settle whether a keyword is worth a page
Run every candidate through these in order. Most lists shrink by half, which is the point.
- Would the person searching this be someone we could actually serve, in a place we actually serve, for work we actually want?
- Can we make a page that genuinely deserves to be the best result for it, rather than an adequate one?
- Does the current first page look like something we could join, or is it entirely national brands, directories and publications?
- Does an existing page already cover this intent, in which case it needs improving rather than duplicating?
- Is the phrasing what a customer would say, or what the industry says internally? Nobody searches for dental prophylaxis.
- Is there a location component, and if so does the page carry real local substance rather than a swapped city name?
Nothing on that list requires a paid tool. It requires being willing to disqualify keywords that look good in a spreadsheet.
The results page is the answer key
Before writing anything, search the query and look at what Google chose to show. That is the clearest available statement of what the query means.
If the first page is entirely explainers and guides, a service page will not rank there no matter how it is written, because Google has established that this query wants an explanation. If it is a map pack and local businesses, the query is local and a national blog post will not do.
Look at format too. If every result is a long comparison with a table, the format is part of the expectation. If the results are short and direct, a two thousand word essay is the wrong shape.
Then check who is actually there. Three national directories and a publisher is a much harder page to join than four local businesses with dated websites, and that judgement should happen before the writing starts rather than after.
One intent, one page, and the problem when you break it
The rule that prevents most keyword trouble is simple: one clear intent per page, one page per clear intent. Related phrasings of the same intent belong on the same page, not on near-identical pages spun out to cover each variant.
When two of your own pages target the same intent, they compete with each other. Google has to choose which one to show, may choose differently on different days, and splits the internal links and references that would otherwise have accumulated on one. The visible symptom is two pages flickering in and out of the same position, neither ever settling.
Read the full breakdown: One intent, one page, and the problem when you break itHide the full breakdown: One intent, one page, and the problem when you break it
The fix is consolidation, not deletion for its own sake. Merge the useful content into the stronger page and redirect the weaker one, or differentiate them properly so they genuinely serve different intents. If you keep both, use a canonical so Google knows which version to consolidate on, and remember that canonicalisation consolidates duplicates for search rather than removing pages from your site.
Grouping helps you see it coming. Put keywords into clusters around a topic, give the cluster a hub page, and let each supporting page take one distinct question. The structure that results is also the internal linking plan, which is a second benefit for free.
The mistakes that cost the most
Every one of these is common, and every one is easier to avoid at the planning stage than to unwind later.
- Repeating a phrase unnaturally to hit a density target. Keyword stuffing is named in Google's spam policies, and it makes copy worse for the people you wanted.
- Choosing by volume alone, since a high volume phrase you cannot win is worth less than a small one you can.
- Building near-identical pages for each city or each phrasing, with nothing changed but the words, which produces thin duplicates rather than coverage.
- Optimising for industry vocabulary that customers never use.
- Ignoring your own Search Console data in favour of a tool's estimate, when Search Console shows the queries you already appear for.
- Forgetting branded and navigational queries entirely, then wondering why the first screen for your own name has a directory on it.
- Treating the keyword list as finished. Language moves, competitors publish, and Google changes what it shows for a query without telling anyone.
If a keyword plan cannot explain why each page exists and who it is for, it is a spreadsheet rather than a plan.
Related answers
The next questions in sequence: finding keywords without a budget, then turning the chosen ones into pages.
How do I do keyword research for free?
The actual tools and the order to use them, including what Google's Keyword Planner hides unless you are spending.
How do I do keyword research for free?What is a meta description?
How the chosen query shapes the sentence that earns the click, and why it is not a ranking factor.
What is a meta description?Content that ranks and gets cited
What separates a page that deserves the position from one that merely targets it.
Content that ranks and gets citedThe local SEO guide
How keyword choice changes when the searcher has a location and you have a service area.
The local SEO guideWant a keyword plan that explains why each page exists?
We will map the intents worth owning in your market and say honestly which ones are realistic to pursue first.
Straight answers.
How many keywords should one page target?
One intent, expressed in however many phrasings people use for it. That often means a page naturally ranks for dozens of related queries without anyone listing them.
What does not work is one page targeting several different intents. If the page has to explain a procedure, compare providers and take a booking, it will do all three worse than three pages would.
Do exact-match keywords still matter?
Less than people think. Google matches meaning, handles synonyms and understands context, so a page can rank for phrasings it never uses.
It is still sensible to use the natural phrase once in the title and once in an early paragraph, because it confirms the subject to both a reader and a search engine. Beyond that, repetition is a cost rather than a gain.
Should I target high volume or low volume keywords?
Start with the ones you can win and that bring people you can serve. A specific, local, lower volume phrase often produces more enquiries than a broad one where you would sit on page three.
Volume figures are also estimates, and grouped estimates in free tools. Treat them as a rough ordering rather than a forecast of traffic.
What is keyword cannibalisation?
Two or more of your own pages competing for the same intent, so Google has to choose between them. Symptoms are pages swapping positions, neither settling, and internal links and references split across both.
Fix it by merging the content into the stronger page and redirecting the weaker one, or by rewriting them so they serve genuinely different intents.
How often should I revisit my keywords?
Quarterly is a sensible rhythm for most local businesses, plus any time you add a service or a location. The trigger to look sooner is a change in what Google shows for a query you care about.
The best input is your own Search Console queries report, because it shows what you already appear for, including phrases nobody would have thought to put on a list.
Do keywords matter for AI assistants and AI Overviews?
The underlying idea does: people still express a need in words, and a page that answers that need clearly and specifically is easier for any system to use.
What changes is the shape. Conversational, question-form phrasing matters more, and covering a topic properly matters more than matching a string. How assistants choose which sources to cite is not fully documented, so nobody should promise placement in one.
Where this comes from.
Primary documentation and published research behind the guidance on this page.
- Google Search Central: SEO Starter Guide (opens in a new tab)
- Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content (opens in a new tab)Google's published self-assessment questions for content quality and experience.
- Google Search Console Help: About Search Console (opens in a new tab)
- Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search (opens in a new tab)Includes the link spam policy that covers bought and exchanged links.
- Google Search Central: Influencing your title links in search results (opens in a new tab)
Talk to the team
A short call, a look at how the business currently shows up, and a straight answer on what we would do first.