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For some, its the most simple term in Search Engine Optimization(SEO) while many still don’t know what it actually means. Search Optimizers keep using the word ‘Keyword’ in every sentence of their conversations, not that the word is something unique but the meaning in holds in Search Engine Optimization is of great importance.

So what exactly is a Keyword??

In a Layman’s terms, a Keyword is a word that may be put into a search engine to search for a website. Well, even a phrase put into a search engine is considered a keyword or you may say a keyword phrase. As far as the searching part of Keywords is considered, everyone understands what it is but its the technical part i.e. how the search engine interprets a keyword is what takes people for a ride.

Search Engines have a high level of AI(Artificial Intelligence) which understands and analysis keywords in a way which is different from how we do it.

For an understanding of how search engines interpret keywords in text from various websites taking Google into consideration lets take an example :
Say you want to search for ‘green apples’, when you type in ‘green apples’ in Google, it distinguishes the term out of billions of bytes of other text in this way :

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah green apples blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah green apples blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah green apples blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

Now if you typed ‘blue cherries’, Google would read :

blah blah blah blah blue cherries blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blue cherries blah blah blah blue cherries blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blue cherries blah blah blah blah

In the first example, blah = any and all text except ‘green apples’
In the second example, blah = any and all text except ‘blue cherries’

Search Engines don’t understand languages, they don’t understand meanings of different words, for it ‘green’ and ‘red’ is the same, i.e. both are ‘text’, both are ‘keywords’ for it. Whatever you type, be it ‘i want a frog’ or ‘where is my car’ or ’saekuqieqsbiq’,etc. Google will try to distinguish these particular set of characters from various sites and depending various factors(200+) like the density(number of occurrences) of these keywords in that particular site, importance given to that keyword in the particular site, Pagerank of the site, relevance of that keyword occurring in that particular site, etc. etc. etc. Google will give out the search results.

Though search engines consider hundreds of complex procedures before giving out relevant, good results, these are the basic understandable ways to know how search results are achieved from keywords.

So as explained, a keyword is the most important term without which a search cannot be defined. Many complex theories are emerging(like the ‘latent semantic indexing’ concept) on how search engines will interpret keywords in the future, but for now, this is how things basically work.

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