For those of you who have faced search engine optimisation, you may have wondered why keyword research is important in SEO – we thought we’d cover that for you.
As with all journeys to a destination, the sooner that a mistake is made, the further from your destination you can end up, with all travel time equal.
The way we see search engine optimisation (SEO) is the following:
SEO = Keyword research & on-page optimisations & off-page optimisations
≈ Keyword research & keyword placement & technical optimisations & high quality backlinks
The tough part of this equation is that you can work for years on digital content creation across technical optimisations and link building and have your keyword positioning down to a tee. But if your keyword research isn’t right from the beginning, you may not see a single lead through a search engine.
You might see a few through the link building process, but that’s for another time.
What Are Keywords for SEO?
It’s a fair question. When we research keywords for a website, we begin by thinking about the audiences we want to reach and what their search intent may be.
For businesses, we ideally want to reach both commercial audiences and wider audiences looking for information on our subject matter. The commercial audiences help us keep the lights on today, but it’s reaching those informational audiences and sharing knowledge that can keep the lights on in years to come.
For example, a website design company wanting to reach trade audiences should target keywords such as ‘website design services’ on core services pages, and questions such as ‘how to design a website?’ in their blog posts.
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Beyond Search Intent: How Do I Choose Keywords for SEO?
Beyond search intent, it’s best to focus on the competitiveness of a keyword (keyword difficulty) and its search volume.
I prefer to look at competitiveness first and filter by search volume second. Otherwise, I risk getting carried away with nicer-sounding keywords instead of the lower-hanging fruit for someone new to SEO.
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What Is Keyword Difficulty?
When we (the Pomegranate founders) first started learning SEO, we wondered: What is keyword difficulty, and why is it important?
Keyword difficulty is a mix of how many competitors are targeting that keyword, how precise their targeting is, and how strong their referring domains and backlinks are.
Short-tail keywords tend to have the highest keyword difficulty because most brands target them, even indirectly, through long-tail keywords.
For example, ‘web design services’, ‘web design agency’, ‘web design consultant’ and ‘web design consultancy’ all indirectly target ‘web design’. So all of those websites play a part in the ranking competition for the keyword ‘web design’.
Targeting a longer-tail keyword, such as ‘web design services in London’, will have a lower search volume but also much less competition.
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Which Keywords Are Most Popular?
The most popular keywords are unfortunately the hardest to rank for.
This happens for a few reasons:
- They’re easy to think of without much research.
- Without understanding SEO, people don’t consider searcher intent.
- Shorter phrases look more appealing.
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How to Do a Keyword Search Within a Website
To check if keywords are in the right places, it can help to do a keyword search within a website.
The main places they should appear are:
- Title
- URL (or URL slug)
- Headings and their following body text for the top-priority keyword
- Headings and body text for lower-priority keywords
To check titles and URLs, you’ll need to look manually. For headings and body text, a quick ctrl+F search will usually do. If you need to confirm whether something is a heading, press F12 and look for h1–h6 tags in the HTML code.
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How Do I Check My Keyword Ranking?
This one took me a while to work out!
We settled on spreadsheets and Google Search Console. Keep track of all your keywords in spreadsheets and avoid using the same keyword in key places (titles, URL slugs, headings) on multiple pages.
Once your page is indexed in Google Search Console, you’ll be able to see your average ranking for each keyword on the ‘Performance’ page.
There are also tools such as Semrush that track keyword rankings, but we appreciate that not all SEO learners can afford these agency tools.
About the Author
Karim Chehab is the founder of Pomegranate Marketing, where he helps small businesses grow online through practical SEO and thoughtful web design. He works closely with public bodies, local authorities within the UK to deliver free SEO workshops and tutoring, supporting small businesses to build long‑term digital skills.
Karim’s experience spans local and national SEO, keyword strategy, and content‑driven website design. He is also part of the team at Impact Digital Collective, a supportive Digital Charity Agency helping charities & nonprofits strengthen their online presence.
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