SEO glossary entries for ‘K’

Keyword: A very popular, but imprecise, term for the words in a ‘Search Expression’. Its narrowest meaning, it refers to a single word within a Search expression, i.e. it is both a ‘Search Term’ and a ‘word’, whereas some ‘Search Terms’, like mathematical symbols, may not actually be words. However, phrases and even entire search expressions are often loosely, and confusingly, referred to as ‘Keywords’.
Keyword Demand: How much competition there is for the highest SERPs ranking for a given keyword, or Key Phrase.
Keyword Density: The proportion of words and phrases that are designated keywords within a given area of web page content, e.g. proportion of all the words on the entire page, proportion of the words in title element text, proportion of words in heading element text, proportion words in of emphasised text, etc.
Keyword Difficulty: A measure of how hard it is to rank first for a given keyword search.
Keyword Discovery: The process of identifying the search phrases people use to find given products and services. Also the name of keyword discovery tools. See ‘Trellian Keyword Discovery’ and ‘Google Keyword Discovery Tool’.
keyword effectiveness index: Is a formula/term, originally coined by Sumantra Roy to indicate the most effective keyword which you could use to optimize your web pages for given subject matter. The KEI score can be calculated in a number of different ways, but was originally formulated by dividing the number of local monthly searches squared by the number of competing pages on the targeted search engine (KEI=Searches²/CompetitorPages). But many SEO ̵experts’ and tools simply divide the number of competitor pages by the number of searches. Other ‘refinements’ claim to take account of the fact that many of the ‘competing’ pages in a given result set may not actually be ‘on topic’. According to many KEI advocates, the best keywords are those that have many searches and that don’t have much competition in the search results. A low KEI is therefore preferable. Their critics, including ourselves, suggest that uncritical use of KEI’s is either ‘snake-oil’ or ignorance. Also known as ‘keyword efficiency index’.
keyword efficiency index: see ‘keyword effectiveness index’
Keyword Exclusion: See ‘negative matching ’.
Keyword Marketing: Placing a marketing message in front of users based on the keywords they’re using to search.
Keyword Not Provided: Prior to 2014, Google Analytics provided data on the keywords used in link referrals. Now Google Analytics typically reports ‘Keyword Not Provided’, which is percieved by most SEO experts as a major constraint on their ability to diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of both website content and the quality of links to given content.
Keyword Poison: See ‘Poison Keyword’.
Keyword Stuffing: Keyword Stuffing is an SEO term which usually refers to the excessive use of keywords in page copy and HTML markup; hurting page readability/usability in an effort to boost a page's search engine rank (‘SERPs’ position). Hiding such keyword stuffing (e.g. with JavaScript, CSS or HTML formatting) is considered by Google et al. to be a form of ‘Cloaking’. Some SEO practitioners use the term simply to mean the insertion of keywords into copy and markup, regardless of whether it is excessive or not.
Keyword Testing: Any method of testing keywords and phrases to learn which words are the most effective for achieving your site goals.
KeywordSpy: A proprietary tool for discovering what keywords your competitors are targeting.
Knowledge Graph: The Knowledge Graph is a database, derived from many sources, which Google uses to enhance its search results pages. This information has been displayed in a box on the right had side of many SERPs since 2012. It provides a summary and structured details of a topic associated with the user's search, including a link to the primary web source and often a list of links to other sites. The aim of the Knowledge Graph display is to enable users to resolve their query from its summary information alone, i.e. without having to navigate to/though a range sites and then compile the information themselves. The Knowledge Graph summary is frequently spoken in answer to ‘Google Now’ queries. Wikipedia is one of the most commonly used sources for Knowledge Graph information and is reported to have experienced a significant decline in visits to the pages from which that information is drawn.
KPI: See ‘Key Performance Indicator’.