Keywords are the words and phrases that people type into search engines in order to find what they're looking for. By extension, they also describe what a piece of content (or an entire website!) is all about, and they're the words at the heart of on-page optimization. They still play an important role in a site's ability to rank, so by identifying the right words and phrases to target you can have an outsized impact on achieving your SEO goals.
This page is your home base for learning all about keywords and keyword research. You'll find resources here that are useful to learners of all skill levels.
How to Target Multiple Keywords with One Page
In this post we'll show you an easy workflow for targeting multiple keywords with a single page. Read on and level up!
Diving for Pearls: A Guide to Long-Tail Keywords
One of the biggest obstacles to driving forward your business online is being able to rank well for keywords that people are searching for. This post covers researching, assessing, and targeting long tail keywords so you can start attracting the best visitors to your site.
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The Illustrated SEO Competitive Analysis Workflow
One of the most important activities for any SEO process is the initial competitive analysis - what you learn can help establish your overall strategy moving forward. Learn how to conduct a comprehensive competitive analysis in this post.
Keywords to Concepts: The Lazy Web Marketer's Guide to Smart Keyword Research
Many people in the SEO space mistakenly assume that because Google withholds keyword referral data in the form of (not provided), keywords no longer matter. Nothing could be further from the truth. Read this post to learn more.
A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Site SEO
As the "O" in SEO has broadened in scope, the most effective elements of on-page optimization have changed. While there is arguably no "perfectly optimized page," this update to a 2009 post provides a comprehensive guide to steer you in the right direction.
How to Rank: 25 Step Master SEO Blueprint
When you are new to online marketing, the process of mastering SEO can be overwhelming. Despite the wealth of information, it’s often hard to figure out what to actually do in order to achieve search engine success. To simplify this process, we created this SEO blueprint. Think of it as an intermediate SEO instruction manual for beginners!
Introduction to SEO: Tactics and Strategy for Entrepreneurs
Rand Fishkin on Skillshare
Join founder and “Wizard of Moz” Rand Fishkin for a Skillshare class on optimizing your content and organically raising the web presence of your business and brand!
Helpful Tips for Doing SEO in a Low-Volume Niche
Harmonizing your organic, paid, and CRO efforts is key to finding success when you do SEO in a low-search volume niche. Get inspired by these tips and strategies for maximizing what you have to work with.
How to Uncover Hidden Keyword-Level Data Using Google Sheets
Keyword-level data isn’t gone, it’s just harder to get to. By using Google Sheets to marry the data from Search Console and Google Analytics into a sheet, you’ll have your top keywords and landing page engagement metrics together (for free!).
What We Learned From Analyzing 1.4 Million Featured Snippets
Anecdotally, SEOs have been reporting that pages that answer questions — such as who, what, when, where, and how — tend to be great at earning featured snippets. Learn if these “gut feelings” were backed by data in this study.
Google Keyword Planner's Dirty Secrets
This post walks through a number of the "gotchas" in Google Keyword Planner data so you can do better keyword research and make smarter decisions for you or your clients' sites.
Hummingbird Unleashed
The objective of Google's Hummingbird algorithm update was to better understand the users' intent when searching in order to offer them the most relevant results. Learn more about what that means for ranking and visibility in this post.
MozCon Video Bundle
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Advanced Keyword Research Use Cases
This post takes a look at how modern keyword tools (in this case, Keyword Explorer) can be used to accomplish far more than page-level keyword targeting. Dive in and learn more!
Hunting Down SERP Features to Understand Intent & Drive Traffic
This post covers the tools and the knowledge needed to finally capture ourselves a SERP feature. Read on and level up!
Featured Snippets: From Start to Finish
What are featured snippets? Why do they matter, and how do you obtain them? Once you've obtained a snippet, how can you track it over time? Learn in this post.
Tactical Keyword Research in a RankBrain World
How should RankBrain change our approach to SEO and specifically to keyword research? Learn in this post.
What Is Semantic Search and What Should You Do About It?
Learn what semantic search is all about and why it matters to both search engines and SEOs.
Keyword Research in 2016: Going Beyond Guesswork
Traditional keyword research focuses on discovery, leaving you with a pile of keywords and a lot of guesswork to prioritize them. What if there were a better way? This post explores four metrics you can use to evolve your keyword research.
How to do Keyword Research in 90 Minutes
Learn how to do keyword research in ninety minutes or less with this post from the Moz Blog.
Illustrated Guide to Advanced On-Page Topic Targeting for SEO
This post provides a simple framework for on-page topic targeting in a way that makes optimizing easy and scalable while producing richer content for your audience.
How to Solve Keyword Cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization can be detrimental to potential rankings for several different reasons. Learn why it matters and how to solve cannibalization issues in this post.