What defines what words in a title are considered Keywords?

[ezable]

Hi, sorry if this is a silly question.

I'm curious how keywords are defined. Is every word in a title a possible keyword? If I have a keyword titled "Linear Shower Drain | 40" Long", does it take the whole thing as a keyword? Is just "Linear Shower Drain" the keyword? Would "Shower Drain" pop up as a keyword, since its nested in the title?

Thank you in advance for your answers!

[Nozzle]

Any combination of any of those words used in the title tag would be keywords that that page could potentially rank for in the SERPs.

So all of the following are some of the keywords in that title tag that you are optimizing for:

• linear shower drain
• shower drain
• 40" shower drain
• 40" long linear shower drain
• etc.

[Chris.Menke]

Yes, this can be confusing when you're first starting out.

A keyword is a word or a phrase that your target audience would use when they perform a query in a search engine for a product or service, etc. For example, if the target audience for a particular landing page is a professional plumber, the copy on your landing page might really focus in on "40" linear shower drain" because a plumber might know to search for that right off the bat.  However, if the target audience for a landing page is a DIY'er who is researching how to build a shower pan for the first time, their initial searches may revolve around simply "shower drain". While both "40" linear shower drain" and "shower drain" may be considered potential keywords for your overall web marketing plan, you might only focus on one of those for any particular piece of web content,  while the other would not be considered a keyword for that page.

The reason different web pages might be crafted to target these individual terms is that the more specific a page can be in tailoring content to a certain keyword, the better able it is to compete with strong competitors who are also targeting that key phrase. If your page uses terminology that broadly applies to both audiences, Google is less likely to rank your page higher than a competitor page that focuses granularly on only one of them when that's what the searcher queries.

Simple, huh!

I know, not really. : )