How to Choose SEO Keywords | Grasping Search Intent and Using Them Effectively
Whether you can achieve results with SEO is largely determined by your first step: choosing keywords. No matter how high-quality an article you write, if the keywords you target are off the mark, you will not reach searching users. This article clearly explains the role of keywords in SEO, the procedure for choosing them, how to grasp search intent, and how to use your chosen keywords effectively.
Keywords in SEO are the words users enter into a search engine. For example, if someone searches “Tokyo lunch recommended,” those three words are the keywords. In SEO, you decide which keywords to target and prepare pages useful to users who search with those keywords, aiming to attract traffic from search results.
Keywords are the verbalization of user needs such as “want to know,” “want to buy,” or “want to go.” In other words, choosing keywords also means deciding “for what kind of needs you create a page.” That is precisely why keyword selection is the starting point of SEO and one of the most important steps.
Keyword selection is important because it determines the foundation of “who you write for and what you write.” If you mistake the keyword you target, the following problems arise.
Conversely, if you can choose appropriate keywords, you build the foundation for creating pages that “have search demand,” “let you compete,” and “lead to results.” Keyword selection is the strategy itself for deciding where to invest your limited resources.
Keywords are broadly divided into three by the size of their search volume. Because each has different characteristics, using them appropriately matters.
In general, when your site is newly launched or when you are just starting on SEO, the standard approach is to target small keywords (long-tail) with weak competition. They are easy to answer with specific search intent and likely to lead to results, and by accumulating them you can nurture the evaluation of your site as a whole.
Rather than deciding on a whim, keyword selection becomes more precise when you proceed through the following procedure.
First, decide on a central word related to your service or site theme. For example, if you handle accounting software, “accounting software” or “tax return” would be the core. Because this becomes the starting point for everything, choose it based on “who you provide what to.”
Based on the core keyword, broadly gather related terms that users search together. Using Google's autosuggest (search suggestions), “People also search for,” and tools such as keyword research tools or Keyword Planner, you can efficiently list out the phrases actually being searched. At this stage, it is important to gather as many candidates as possible.
For the keywords you gathered, check the search volume (how many monthly searches) and the strength of competition. Grasp the rough search count with tools like Google Keyword Planner, and actually search to see what kinds of sites line up at the top. Keywords with a high search count and weak competition are attractive, but in reality such “juicy” keywords are limited.
Actually search with your candidate keywords and check what kind of content the top pages have. The lineup at the top is the collection of answers Google has judged that “users want” for that keyword. Here you determine whether you have misread the intent and whether it is content you can answer (how to grasp search intent is explained in detail in the next section).
Finally, prioritize by comprehensively considering “the size of search demand,” “competitiveness,” and “relevance to your business and closeness to results.” Rather than targeting everything at once, the realistic approach is to start with keywords where you can compete and that are likely to lead to results.
Just as important as keyword selection is correctly grasping the “search intent” behind it. Search intent is the purpose of “what the user really wants to know or do” when they search with that word. Even with the same keyword, if you misread the intent, the page ends up off the mark.
Search intent is generally classified into the following four types. Being conscious of which type your target keyword is helps set the direction of the page.
The most reliable way to know search intent is to actually search with that keyword and observe the pages displayed at the top. By looking at what headings the top pages use, what they explain, and what form they take (explanatory article, comparison article, tool, etc.), the answer Google has judged “appropriate” for that keyword comes into view. If there are commonalities in the top trends, that is the search intent for that keyword.
Search intent has “explicit needs” that appear in the words and “latent needs” that lie behind them. For example, someone who searches “how to choose SEO keywords” wants to know how to choose (explicit) and at the same time carries the background of “ultimately wanting to achieve results with SEO” (latent). A page that answers the explicit needs while also satisfying the latent needs has high satisfaction and tends to be well evaluated.
Once you decide on a keyword, using it appropriately within the page conveys the content to both users and search engines. However, the basic principle is to use it “naturally and clearly,” not to “cram” it.
Include your target keyword naturally in the title (title tag), h1, and main headings. The title in particular is the part users see first in search results, and it is also an important element that shows the page's theme to search engines. While including the keyword, aim for an appealing expression that makes people want to click.
Keywords appear in the body too, but you do not need to repeat them many times forcibly. There was once an era when “the more keywords you put in, the more advantageous,” but today unnatural cramming (keyword stuffing) is actually counterproductive. If you write natural, easy-to-read text for users, you can naturally cover the search intent, including related terms and paraphrases.
If you appropriately incorporate not just a single keyword but also terms related to it (co-occurring terms), the comprehensiveness of the theme increases. For example, for the theme “SEO keywords,” related terms such as “search intent,” “search volume,” and “long-tail” should naturally appear. Including these makes it likely to be evaluated as a page that covers the field deeply.
As a rule, the basis is to focus one page on one main keyword (and search intent). If you get greedy and try for this and that on one page, the theme blurs and becomes hard to convey to both search engines and users. If you want to target multiple keywords, the effective approach is to split pages by keyword and cover them across the site as a whole.
Finally, let's note the mistakes that tend to happen in keyword selection. First is choosing by the size of search volume alone. Even if the search count is high, if the competition is too strong or the relevance to your products is thin, you will not get results worth the effort.
Also, starting to write an article from the keyword alone without confirming search intent is a source of failure. If you misread the intent, the content will not mesh with the top pages and will not be evaluated. Furthermore, the misconception that cramming keywords raises rankings should be avoided. In today's SEO, how accurately you answer the search intent is valued more than keyword matching.
Keywords in SEO are the words users search with, and they are the foundation for deciding “who you write for and what you write.” Keyword selection becomes more precise when you proceed through the procedure of deciding the core, listing out related terms, confirming search volume and competitiveness, confirming search intent, and prioritizing.
And what matters most is correctly grasping the search intent behind your chosen keyword and answering it accurately. Include keywords naturally in the title and headings, while prioritizing readability in the body and avoiding cramming. Keeping the basics of not choosing by search count alone and writing only after confirming intent is the first step to achieving results with SEO.
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