What is a Primary Keyword? Explained

As a web content creator, you must have heard the term “Primary keyword” in the context of Search Engine Optimization.

What exactly is a Primary Keyword? Do you know its definition? What is its importance in search engine optimization? How to find and use them?

In this article, I am going to give you every information you need about Primary Keywords to skyrocket your SEO journey.

So, without further ado, let’s start 🙂

Primary Keyword Definition

A Primary Keyword is a word or phrase for which you want a webpage to rank on search engines. This is the most simple definition of primary keyword.

A web page wanting to rank on a search engine should focus on the Primary Keyword, which is why we call them focused keywords as well.

By using primary keywords, a webpage can match the prime intent of a user’s search query.

Additionally, the definition of a primary keyword is to mark the context and purpose of a webpage, which helps search engines categorize and index it accordingly.

As a result, primary keywords enable you to directly engage with your target audience on the web.

Importance

They play a crucial role in search engine optimization. They help search engines understand the context of a webpage. Here is how primary keywords help the search engine to understand the content of a webpage.

1. Relevance: Primary keyword ensures the content of a webpage is relevant to the user’s search query (aka keywords).
2. Visibility: When you effectively optimize a webpage with a primary keyword by making the content of a webpage highly relevant to the user’s query, search engines promote such webpage to rank higher which in turn increases visibility and engagement.
3. Authority: Using primary keywords strategically and consistently on webpages throughout your website signals the search engine that your website is authoritative and valuable for the respective primary keywords. And, gaining authority promotes higher visibility.
4. Competition: Primary Keywords help you to differentiate your website from your competitors which in turn helps you to evolve in the crowded digital landscape.
5. ROI: It helps you to gain a better return on investment by filtering targeting the right audience and conversions.

How to Choose Primary Keyword?

Firstly, Choosing a primary keyword for a webpage can be a brainstorming task. To simplify it, you can first think about the words that reflect your brand story. After that, use those words to research relevant primary keywords. You can also look at the words for which your competitor’s web pages are ranking on the search engine.

How to research Primary Keywords?

There are several ways to research primary keywords for your website. One of the most effective ways is by using keyword research tools. These tools can be either paid or free, and each tool has its own unique features and advantages.

If you’re on a tight budget, then you can consider using free keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Google Autosuggest, Google Related Searches, Google Trends, Ubersuggest, and ChatGPT. These tools can help you to generate a list of primary keywords that are relevant to your business.

On the other hand, if you want more advanced features and analysis, then you may consider investing in paid keyword research tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, Ubersuggest, Keyword Tool, Mangools, and more. These tools offer more advanced functionalities like competitor analysis, keyword difficulty analysis, and more in-depth data.

Whether you choose a free or paid tool, it’s important to remember that keyword research is an ongoing process that requires constant monitoring and tweaking to ensure that your website is ranking for the right primary keywords.

Primary Keyword Example

Suppose you want to rank a webpage that is about how to make a vanilla cake. Then, in that case, the primary keyword of your page would be “how to make a vanilla cake” or “vanilla cake recipe”. These are the words people generally type on the search engine to find your page.

There are other words as well, which are called supporting words or secondary keywords. So, in our case, the secondary keywords of our primary keyword could be “ingredients for vanilla cake”, “best vanilla cake frosting”, “steps to make a vanilla cake” and so on.

To help search engines easily understand the context of your webpage, you must use secondary keywords supporting the primary keyword of your webpage.

Where to use Primary Keywords? Interesting Stats

• As per various SEO experts, using primary keywords in the title tag, header tags, URL, and first 100 words of the webpage boost ranking.
• Having a primary keyword in the domain name helps the content (falling in the context of the primary keyword) to rank easily.
• The Top 3 ranking factors to rank a webpage on Google search are Backlinks, Website Traffic, and Time on site. With primary keywords, you can influence all these 3 factors. You can use it on the anchor text of backlinks to establish a strong correlation for the webpage and that leads the search engine to rank it higher which in turn increases the website traffic.
• Using Primary Keywords in Internal Links helps distribute the link equity throughout the website which in turn improves the overall ranking of a website.
• Using Primary Keywords on Image ALT text has also shown a strong correlation for higher ranking.

Using primary keywords strategically and naturally on the website helps the web pages to rank higher. It also helps the search engine to understand the structure and context of your website which helps in higher visibility and better ROI. So, how many of you are using primary keywords effectively on your website? Let me know in the comments down below.