Government Digital Service
Use popular keywords to make the most of search engine optimisation (SEO)
Search engines are where most users start their search for information. If they cannot find your page, they will not get to your content.
If you use their vocabulary, starting with your page title, summary and first paragraph, users will be more likely to find it.
Find out how popular keywords are
Use search tools like the Google Ads Keyword Planner to find the keywords that people are searching for in Google. The words you use to describe your content may not be the words your users use to try and find it.
To use Keyword Planner, you need to register with Google Ads:
- Click Start now, then click Switch to Expert Mode, and then click Create an account without a campaign
- Confirm your billing information (you will not be charged as long as you do not set up any campaigns)
- Click tools and settings from the top menu, and then Keyword planner under the Planning heading
To search for a term:
- Click Discover new keywords
- Enter your keyword in the search field
- Make sure your results are filtered to UK - the area is shown next to the keyword search bar on the results page
The results page will show the average monthly searches for your keyword (in a range, rather than the exact number). It also shows other keyword ideas and their average monthly searches.
Compare keywords over time
The Google Ads Keyword Planner gives average monthly search figures within certain ranges, such as 1,000 to 10,000 or 10,000 to 100,000. This means it might be less useful if comparing two or more keywords and they fall in the same range. It also does not show variations between different months.
Google Trends allows you to compare alternative keywords, and shows trends over time.
You can enter a search term to see the interest over time. At the top of the results page, you can add other terms to compare them on the same graph.
Make sure your results are filtered to the UK - you can change this under the search terms on the results page.
Optimise content for search
Once you know the most popular keywords you can prioritise them in the:
- title
- introductory sentence/summary
- headings
- chapter/part titles
- metadata descriptions (only for mainstream content)
Example
When updating guidance on getting an MOT for large vehicles, we wanted to check whether users more commonly search for heavy goods vehicle (or just HGV) or lorry.
At the time of checking, the Google Ads Keyword Planner showed that HGV MOT and Lorry MOT both had an average of 100 to 1,000 searches per month. Heavy goods vehicle MOT only had 10 to 100, so this also suggests the acronym is well recognised and worth using.
When comparing HGV MOT and Lorry MOT on Google Trends over the same period, it showed that HGV MOT was the more popular term most of the time.
If we had just been checking whether users were searching for the full term or the acronym, using the Keyword Planner would have given us the information we needed. But checking on Google Trends as well helped with the decision between HGV and lorry.