Keyword Selection: How to Find the Right Search Terms for Your Site

Keyword selection determines which search queries a page can even appear for. If you set the wrong priorities here, you’ll be investing time in SEO text optimization for terms that either no one searches for or that never align with your own offerings.

Table of Contents

Criteria for Effective Keyword Selection

Short-Tail vs. Long-Tail in Selection

Tools and Resources for Keyword Selection

Incorporating Keyword Selection into a Strategy

Common Mistakes in Keyword Selection

Keyword Selection for Local Searches

Identifying and Avoiding Keyword Cannibalization

Criteria for Effective Keyword Selection

Search volume alone says little about whether a keyword is worthwhile. Equally important are the level of competition, how well the keyword aligns with your own offerings, and the actual intent behind the search query. A high-volume keyword with vague intent often yields fewer results than a less common keyword with a clear purchase intent.

Practical tip: Before making your final selection, take a look at the first ten search results for the term itself. If they mostly show online stores, how-to guides, or news articles, that reveals a lot about the actual search intent.

It’s also worth taking a look at related terms and questions suggested by search engines themselves. These often provide clues about subtopics that should be incorporated into your own content in order to address a search query as comprehensively as possible.

Consider Search Volume and Competition Together
Check for thematic alignment with the offering
Deducing Search Intent from Results
Include related terms and questions

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Short-Tail vs. Long-Tail in Selection

Short, generic terms usually have high search volume, but they also face high competition and often have unclear intent. Longer, more specific search phrases reach fewer users, but those users have a much clearer intent and offer more realistic chances of ranking. For new or smaller websites, it’s often worth starting with these more specific terms before tackling broader topics.

Key terms: high volume, intense competition
Long phrases: less volume, clearer intent
It makes sense to start with more specific terms
Address larger issues later

Tools and Resources for Keyword Selection

In addition to traditional research tools, internal sources also provide valuable insights: search functions on your own website, frequently asked customer questions, or phrasing from customer support. A well-maintained list of keywords serves as the foundation for content planning, internal linking, and subsequent performance measurement.

Use the internal search function as a source
Include Customer Questions and Support
A well-maintained list of keywords as a foundation
Laying the Groundwork for Content Planning

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Incorporating Keyword Selection into a Strategy

A single keyword list is of little use without an overarching SEO strategy that determines which terms to target first and which pages are responsible for them. Without this assignment, it’s easy for multiple pages to end up competing for the same term instead of complementing each other, which also leads to problems with on-page optimization.

Prioritization as Part of a Strategy
Clear Mapping of Terms to Pages
Avoid Internal Competition Over Terms
Aim for Complementarity Rather Than Overlap

Common Mistakes in Keyword Selection

A common mistake is focusing on a single main keyword, even though a page can realistically rank for several related terms at the same time. It’s just as risky to choose terms based solely on personal gut feeling without checking the actual search intent or real search volume. Some websites also choose terms that, while they fit their own offerings, nobody actually searches for in that exact form because the target audience uses different phrasing. Comparing these terms with actual user queries—such as those from your website’s search function or from conversations with customers—usually quickly reveals such misjudgments.

Don’t just include one main keyword
Supplementing Gut Feelings with Data
Take real user phrasing into account
Use the site’s own search function as a check

Keyword Selection for Local Searches

Businesses operating regionally should include place names and local phrases in their keyword selection from the very beginning, rather than adding them later. Local search engine optimization follows slightly different rules than those for national keywords, because proximity and availability are often more important than search volume alone.

It’s often worth creating a separate page for each location or region, rather than choosing a single keyword for the entire offering. This allows you to specifically incorporate local details—such as opening hours or location-specific offers—into your selection without diluting your visibility beyond the local area.

For local businesses, maintaining a well-curated company profile in relevant directories is also part of keyword optimization, because the same phrases that are relevant in traditional search often appear there as well. By examining both sources together, you can often find additional phrases for your region that you may have overlooked previously.

Include place names early in the selection process
Proximity is more important than sheer volume
It Makes Sense to Have a Separate Page for Each Location
Incorporate local characteristics in a targeted manner

Identifying and Avoiding Keyword Cannibalization

When multiple pages on the same site unintentionally compete for the same keyword, this is referred to as keyword cannibalization. Search engines must then decide for themselves which page to display, which often leads to fluctuating and, overall, weaker rankings than a single, clearly designated page could achieve. A regular content audit reliably identifies such overlaps.

The solution usually involves consolidating content or clearly distinguishing the focus of individual pages from one another. Anyone planning new content should therefore check in advance whether a page relevant to the chosen term already exists.

In addition, the search analysis in Search Console provides valuable insights into internal competition: If several of your own URLs appear alternately in the results for the same search query, this is a clear indication of incipient cannibalization, which can usually be detected earlier using this data source than through ranking monitoring alone.