What are target keywords?

Question: What are target keywords? Why am I seeing a warning from the app saying "Target keywords NOT found" or "Add exact target keyword phrase"?

Answer: The target keyword phrase is the search phrase that you're targeting for potential customers to find that product or page through a web search. Ideally, you want your target keywords to be a phrase that is commonly used by your potential customers to find products like yours: they type that phrase into Google, and Google matches that phrase to your product page that targets that keyword, and your page will then appear higher up in the search results.

Here's an example: Jane looks up "chocolate covered espresso beans bulk" in Google. You and a competitor are very similar companies who both sell espresso beans in bulk, and so you both appear in Jane's search results. However, if one of your product pages is optimized using that same exact keyword phrase and your competitor's page is not keyword-optimized, it’s your website that appears first in the search results, and it's your product that Jane will click into and buy. So if your pages aren't keyword-optimized, you’re going to miss out on a lot of customers, simply because they won't find you.

SEO Optimizer makes it easy to keyword-optimize your products and other pages.

How target keyword phrases work in SEO Optimizer

At the top of each product or page audit in SEO Optimizer, you'll see a target keyword phrase:

This is the search phrase that you're targeting: in other words, what your potential customers will look up in Google to find your product. In each step of the audit, the app will warn you if the target keyword phrase is missing. For example:

To keyword-optimize the product or page, simply add in the exact target keyword phrase (the same words in the same order) wherever you see these warnings.

If you are missing keywords in the page title or meta description, see "Add exact target keyword phrase" in page title or meta description?

For a more in-depth guide to keyword optimization, including a quick video walkthrough, see our guide How to use effective keywords.

Once you've fixed any keyword issues in an audit, that page's search ranking for that keyword phrase will increase. Well done! 👍