4 Reasons Keywords Still Matter in 2025

Search engines have changed a lot since the good old days of the 10 blue links, keyword stuffing, and easy traffic. If you have more questions than answers about SEM, you aren’t alone.

The rise of AI and its integration into search engines marks a pivotal transformation for digital marketers, many of whom were already scratching their heads about the nature of Organic Search.

But we hear one question more than all the others: Do keywords even matter anymore?

The answer is a resounding yes, but the reasons why may surprise you.

When you use Google Search, the results you see don’t come from the live web, per se. They come from Google’s index, which is an unbelievably massive collection of all the information Google has stored about the pages it has crawled.

Actually, Google uses many different indexes, each holding a different type of information. The Google Search index itself contains more than 100,000,000 gigabytes of data pulled from hundreds of billions of web pages.

Before Google can store that information, it has to crawl each page. Google’s crawlers, also known as spiders or bots, systematically visit websites and follow links from one page to the next, gathering information about each page as they go.

What’s one of the primary elements crawlers collect about each page? You guessed it: keywords. 

And when a user enters a query, how does Google Search retrieve and organize results? The first step is understanding the meaning of that query, which requires keywords.

Before you ask, yes, Google uses semantic search to understand how your query relates to synonyms.

When you search for “baseball caps,” the results will be full of baseball hats regardless of whether those pages use the term “cap” anywhere in their on-page content or meta tags.

But before Google can recognize and use synonyms to enhance your query, it must first identify the keywords you typed into the search bar.

So again, it all starts with keywords.

The more you look through Google’s documentation about how Search functions, the more you’ll see keywords mentioned routinely and in prominent positions.

It’s a not-so-subtle sign that regardless of how much Search has advanced, keywords remain at the heart of Google’s most valuable product.

Digital marketers looking to maximize Organic Search must remember every search engine's value proposition: helping users find what they’re looking for.

Each query starts with user input, and that’s not going to change any time soon.

The query is how a user tells Search what they’re looking for, and the specific terms or phrases included in each query help Search understand what the user is trying to accomplish.

By understanding user intent, Search presents relevant results in the manner most useful to the user at that moment.

So, keywords don’t just tell us how to make our pages align with what users are looking for.

They also tell us how to craft our pages to help users accomplish their goals, such as booking an appointment or finding the right skincare product for their specific skin concerns.

Understanding user intent is essential to optimizing for Organic Search visibility, clicks, and conversions. Designing pages to keep users engaged also helps us minimize bounce rates.

This is where structured data offers a key advantage for digital marketers vying for the top SERP positions.

Schema markup helps search engines understand your site, brand, and pages beyond on-page content. It isn’t new, but with the incorporation of AI across the leading search engines, optimized structured data is more important than ever.

When approached with an ROI-focused strategy, Organic Search is by far the most valuable digital marketing channel.

Where do winning strategies start? With keywords, of course.

Search volume is the number of monthly searches for a particular keyword.

Usually, when a keyword research tool shows you the search volume for a given keyword, that figure also includes the search volume for synonyms.

Why does search volume matter?

Because achieving visibility on a SERP for a low-volume keyword won’t contribute meaningful traffic to your site.

Keywords with low search volume are typically not suitable targets for driving growth, though there are a few exceptions.

For most businesses, especially e-commerce brands, the best keywords to target are those with a meaningfully high search volume that will drive new traffic (and revenue) from SERPs to your website.

But because these keywords are so valuable, competition is high. Unless your brand is prepared to outspend enterprise-level competitors, it’s exceedingly unlikely that you’ll be able to rank well for seed keywords.

That’s why long-tail keywords are often your best bet.

Long-tail keywords are generally more specific in nature than seed keywords, with a more focused user intent, which is why they tend to fall into the sweet spot where a meaningfully high search volume combines with an achievable difficulty rating.

By targeting long-tail keywords, you can achieve organic rankings high enough to drive a significant amount of traffic to your site, allowing you to see better ROI for your optimization efforts.

Here’s the kicker: Because long-tail keywords are more focused than seed keywords, the users behind them often have a higher purchase intent, which can enhance your conversion rate.

Once you’ve determined which keywords you want to target, the next step is optimizing your landing pages for those keywords.

But no matter how much effort you put into optimizing a page, your page will never rank if it isn’t relevant to the keyword.

Back when SEO was still the Wild West, you could simply stuff the keyword into a page hundreds of times, and that would be enough for Google to identify the page as relevant.

But Google Search has evolved considerably. Not only do outdated tactics such as keyword stuffing not work, but they also open your site up to penalties and manual actions from Google that can tank your site’s organic visibility long-term.

You simply can’t expect to rank for a keyword that isn’t relevant to your business.

That’s why, once you’ve identified keywords with appealing search volume, it’s vital to take an objective view of your brand, website, and offerings as you select which landing pages you want to optimize and rank for those keywords.

As you pick landing pages, ask yourself:

If you answered yes to both questions, you can rest assured you’re building an Organic Search strategy that will deliver the revenue, traffic, and ROI your brand needs to scale.

As you can see, keywords aren’t just another piece of the Organic Search puzzle.

Even with the rise of AI, keywords remain the linchpin of Search, which is why VELOX uses leading-edge technology to conduct thorough keyword research and build custom strategies for every client.

As an ROI-focused agency, VELOX conservatively targets 400-800% ROI and consistently exceeds client expectations. It’s one reason VELOX is recognized among the top 3% of agencies globally as a Google Partner.

Learn how our fusion of Organic Search, Paid Media, and Business Intelligence can achieve sustained search dominance for your business. Contact VELOX today for your free marketing plan.