30-second summary:
- Exact-match keywords are useful for researching patterns and trends but not so much for optimization purposes
- When optimizing for keywords, optimize for intent and solve problems, don’t just match your page to the keyword
- Brand-driven keywords should be your top priority because you cannot control SERPs but you can rank assets that will drive people back to your site
- Instead of focusing on keyword strings, research your niche entities and find the ways to associate your business with those through on-site content and PR/link building efforts
If you ask an SEO expert to name one SEO tactic that has changed the most over the years, they are likely to confidently answer “link building.” Some will point out to “technical tasks”, and very few will ever think of “keyword research.”
The truth is, most SEO tasks look completely different these days but few SEO experts have changed the fundamental way they do keyword research and optimize content for those keywords.
Yes, we seem to have finally left keyword density behind (unless Google forces[1] it back) but fundamentally nothing has changed: We run keyword tools, find relevant keyword strings and use them as much as we can throughout a dedicated page.
In the meantime, Google’s understanding and treatments of keywords has changed completely.
1. Exact-match keywords are getting obsolete
Google has a long history of trying to understand search queries beyond matching word strings in them to the documents in the search index.
And they succeeded.
It started years ago with Hummingbird being first quietly introduced then officially announced in August of 2013.
Yet, few SEOs actually understood the update or realized how much of a change to everything they knew it was.
With Hummingbird Google made it clear that they were striving