Keyword Optimization: What It Is & How to Do It

In the context of search engine optimization (SEO), keywords are words and phrases that act as shortcuts for summing up the content of a web page or site. But researching relevant keywords is only one part of this process—you still have to optimize the content of your pages to include those keywords. Doing so is both an art and a science. The art is making sure the keywords are woven into text naturally—not stuffed in. The science involves placing keywords in strategic spots throughout your pages, like headlines.

Keyword optimization bridges the gap between user searches and your content, with the aim of enhancing visibility and attracting more targeted traffic.

Learn more about how keyword optimization works and how you can use it as an inbound marketing strategy—one that potentially costs much less than paid search or other performance marketing efforts.

What is keyword optimization?

Keyword optimization is the practice of ensuring that the words and phrases you use in your website content—especially in high-value areas such as page titles and section headings—align with the words and phrases users most frequently search in search engines. This practice is a core part of search engine optimization (SEO), and it aims to increase the website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). Optimizing for relevant keywords can help you improve search engine rankings and ensure that your content meets user intent, engaging a more qualified audience.

Keyword optimization is only one phase in the larger SEO process, which first involves researching keywords to target, selecting which keywords are most relevant to your business and have the most monthly search volume (MSV), and then implementing those keywords in the right places. After using keyword research tools to find and assess keyword ideas, keyword optimization is the process of incorporating keywords in your content to increase search engine rankings.

How to do keyword optimization

1. Audit keyword performance
2. Create a keyword roadmap
3. Optimize for your target keyword(s)
4. Enrich your content
5. Track progress

From auditing keywords to implementing strategic changes, here are a few best practices and steps to consider when performing keyword optimization:

1. Audit keyword performance

Start by analyzing the keywords your website already ranks for, using both paid SEO tools like Ahrefs, Surfer SEO, or Semrush in tandem with free SEO tools like Google Keyword Planner and Google Search Console. Each tool can help you see the keywords you rank for and sort them by various performance metrics, which will help you understand how much value your site is currently getting—or could get—from those keywords:

• Average position. This is the position a particular page on your site achieves for that keyword. 

• Monthly search volume. This is the total number of searches for that keyword in a month. 

• Traffic percentage driven by the keyword. This is the estimated percentage of your domain’s overall traffic that’s being driven by a keyword. 

• Impressions. This is the number of times your page is seen in search results. You can view this in Google Search Console for a period of time. 

• Clicks. This is the number of times a searcher clicks your page from their search results. This is the same as page views driven by organic search.

During this analysis, ask yourself:

• Are the keywords that are currently driving traffic to my website relevant and strategic keywords for my business? Essentially, are you ranking for the “right” keywords? For example, if you sell hiking shoes and your top traffic driver is “best hikes in the alps,” you might be getting substantial traffic, but is that traffic driving shoe sales? In this case, you may want to focus on optimizing your site to rank for more transactional keywords. 

• Is my website ranking in the top positions for the keywords that are most important to my business? If not, look for opportunities to improve the pages that should be ranking for those keywords.

• What’s my click-through rate (CTR) from the SERP? If you’re getting a lot of impressions in search results but not a lot of clicks, look for opportunities to improve your metadata. 

• Am I getting enough traffic from organic search? If your overall traffic from search is low, you might want to optimize for higher volume keywords or simply try to target more keywords, either on your existing pages or with new pages, like category pages or blog posts. 

2. Create a keyword roadmap

You should come out of your audit and analysis process with a keyword list you want to improve your ranking for. You might also add new keyword discovery to your process. If you do, you’ll generate a list of new keywords you want to try to target, either by re-optimizing existing pages or creating all-new pages.

Map each keyword on your list to a page on your website. You can try to rank for more than one keyword per page—in fact, you’ll likely want to target clusters of closely related keywords—but make sure they share the same search intent. Search intent for keywords falls into four main categories:

• Navigational searches. Queries about a specific page, product, or company; these searches have a specific intended destination. 

• Informational searches. Questions and prompts focused on learning more about a specific topic.

• Commercial queries. Research and comparison of different products or services.

• Transactional queries. Shows an intent to purchase and often involves words like “book” or “buy.”

As you map your keywords, check to make sure you’re mapping the right kind of page for the keyword’s search intent. Product pages usually rank for transactional queries, while articles tend to rank for informational searches. But some keywords might have mixed or non-obvious intent. To be sure, type your target keyword into a search engine and see what kinds of pages rank highest for that particular keyword.

3. Optimize for your target keyword(s)

Now that you know which keywords you want each website page to rank for, it’s time to infuse them with keywords. First and foremost, you’ll want to add your target keyword(s) to all of the surface areas of the page.

Here are some of the most important elements of your web pages to keyword optimize:

• Page titles. Your page title tells readers and search engines what your page is about. If your website’s content management system (CMS) allows, you can have multiple pages per title—a search engine or “meta” title, plus an on-page title. The meta title shows up only on the SERP. The on-page title shows up on the page itself. 

• Meta description. This is a short preview of the page contents that shows up under the meta title on a SERP. 

• Section headings. These headings break your pages up into navigable subsections. 

• Body copy. Body copy is the written text that typically comprises the majority of web pages on your ecommerce site. Prioritize readability using compelling language and finding natural places to incorporate occasional keywords relevant to the specific web page you're optimizing.

• Alt image text and captions. Captions and alt text both tell readers what an image is about. Alt text is specifically for people who use screen readers. 

• URL. Use one or two primary keywords in the slug portion of the website URL. Keep URLs short, include hyphens to break up words, and use only relevant keywords that directly tie to the main purpose of a web page.

4. Enrich your content 

Beyond incorporating your target keywords into the page copy, use SEO tools to understand which related terms commonly appear on competitor pages—and include as many of those as you can, without “stuffing” the page. When you use too many keywords in a way that feels unnatural to readers, search engine site crawlers may rank those pages lower based on their poor quality.

To incorporate more terms into your copy, you might have to add new content to the page. Make sure the content you add is relevant to a potential searcher and aligned with the search intent of the primary keyword you’re targeting.

Most SEO tools also include content checkers that you can use to analyze your keyword usage per page, often represented as keyword density, a metric that represents how many times a keyword is used in a piece of content. They’ll provide a content score based on additional factors like content length compared to top-ranking competitive web pages, content organization, readability, and image usage.

As you go, ensure that keywords feel natural and actually improve, rather than detract from the readability of your content, avoiding any spammy or forced keyword placements that could detract from user experience.

5. Track progress

Use your SEO tools and Google Analytics to track your website’s performance over time. Check in once a month on the same keyword metrics you used in your audit, with an eye toward improving average position and increasing traffic. But remember: while increasing overall traffic is generally good, you also want to make sure that the traffic you’re attracting is high-quality and actually serves your business goals. To do this, look also at KPIs such as time on page, scroll depth, number of pages per session, and conversion rate.

Continue making adjustments at regular intervals until you notice improvements. But be patient; increasing your rankings on SERPs can take time. Remember: Your ultimate goal is twofold. You want to rank well and fulfill users’ search intent. Ranking without fulfilling user intent will only deliver traffic; to also get engagement and revenue, you have to fulfill user intent.