‘Search Query’ vs ‘Keyword’ - Important for Digital Marketers

What is the Confusion?

It is seen that most of the people interchangeably use the word ‘query’ when they actually meant the word ‘keyword' and vice-versa. However, these two words have different meanings and are hardly the same.

Many people don’t know the difference-

Many people don’t know the difference between a ‘Search Query’ and a ‘Keyword’. Let alone the common people, the people working in the world of digital marketing have not realized that ‘Search Query’ and ‘Keyword’ are two different things!

Source: adespresso.com

The reason why common people aren’t aware of the difference-

The sole reason is that they have nothing to do with marketing aspect of it. Common people will use search engines to find answers to their questions or solutions to their problems, and then will simply move on with it. They do not need to know the difference! Do they?

Users simply type what they are looking for, and they are not bothered about what the keyword is all about. It is jazzing in the marketing realm, and not in the world of common folks.

Source: stoodi.com.br

The reason why many 'SEO and Digital Marketing professionals' aren’t aware of the difference-

Source: Wordpress

‘Mediocrity’ is the sole reason. Nowadays many people who work as an SEO or a Digital Marketing professional are mediocre and lack the inquisitive nature that drives the need to know!

There is lot of mediocrity in the field of marketing than you can ever have imagined! There are absolute nuts that you'll find here!

Know the real difference between the two!

Source: Giphy.com

Queries are fired by the users, who want to search something on the internet. Whereas the ‘keyword(s)' is an SEO term which has a marketing oriented view to look at things!

Let’s take an example. If an user wants to search - 'web development London based company' - over the internet, then the users can fire queries such as:

• Which is the best web development company UK based?
• Company with Web developer in London
• London based web development companies
• Web application development company London.

There are ‘n’ number of possibilities and hence it is hard to predict the search queries.
The search queries can not be targeted directly, they are to be pin-pointed by finding out the keyword. i.e web development London is the keyword, here in the case above. The reason why it is said that the keyword is web development London, because it is found in every search querie. It is the common thing in the search queries fired by the users!

So now we can define both as below,

• Query: That users fire in the search engine.
• Keyword: The common set of words in the similar kind of queries that the marketing people are targeting at.

What is a 'Keyword'?

'Keyword' is a common set of words that are recurrently occurring in many search queries fired by various people for a particular service, product, or a quest!

In general, the keyword is that set of words that are helpful in targeting the audience searching for the said service or product by firing different queries in the search engine.

In general, you can say that a 'search query' is related to 'users' and a 'keyword' is related to 'marketer or SEO professionals'.

Being a search engine optimizer you have to take care of both, as query has that keyword which is of your mean!

Why a 'Search Query' is more real than a ‘Keyword’?

'Keywords' are the inevitable pillar of SEO and it is of very vitality to use them to get your webpage rank higher for, however, you should also understand that keywords are factual stuff and are not real. It is just the recurring set of words that keeps arriving in the search queries with similar concern. It doesn’t represent what users actually fire.

Keyword is the essence of the search query but not the query itself.

Bottomline -

Understanding the nature of search queries is very important to derive the keywords.