What is a Keyword?

If you have ever blogged, used Google Adwords or tried to create a Social Media Strategy, than you probably have asked yourself "What is a Keyword?"

Keywords defined Offline.....
Keywords are the words that academics use to reveal the internal structure of an author's reasoning. While they are used primarily for rhetoric, they are also used in a strictly grammatical sense for structural composition, reasoning, and comprehension. Indeed, they are an essential part of any language. 
There are many different types of keyword categories including: Conclusion, Continuation, Contrast, Emphasis, Evidence, Illustration and Sequence. Each category serves its own function, as do the keywords inside of a given category. Source: Wiki Keywords
Keywords defined Online.....
Keywords are words or phrases that describe content. They can be used as metadata to describe images, text documents, database records, and Web pages. A user may "tag" pictures or text files with keywords that are relevant to their content. Later on, these files may be searched using keywords, which can make finding files much easier. For example, a photographer may use a program like Extensis Portfolio or Apple iPhoto to tag his nature photos with words such as "nature," "trees," "flowers," "landscape," etc. By tagging the photos, he can later locate all the pictures of flowers by simply searching for the "flowers" keyword. Source: PC Definitions: Keywords
Keywords defined by PushYourRank.com

Online, in the world of SEO, Blogging, etc; Keyword has a very specific definition.

For SEO: Keywords are the phrases of words that the website owner is focused on monopolizing to show his website on major search engines.  For example, the phrase "PushYourRank" is a keyword for this blog, and is put into metatags, tags, etc..

For Google Adwords: Keywords are phrases or words that Google allows you to enter into a system that will show your advertisement every-time an internet user searches those keywords.

On Twitter, hastags are keywords, for example "Check out our collection of #coins" Here coins is hashtagged thus making it a keyword.

In short, it is an informative word or phrase used in an information retrieval system to indicate the content of a document.

Webopedia has a 3 part Keyword definition which is quite helpful...

 (1) In text editing and database management systems, a keyword is an index entry that identifies a specific record or document. 
(2) In programming, a keyword is a word that is reserved by a program because the word has a special meaning. Keywords can be commands or parameters. Every programming language has a set of keywords that cannot be used as variable names. Keywords are sometimes called reserved names . 
(3) A word used by a search engine in its search for relevant Web pages.

Have useful tips or information about the subject matter in this article?  Feel free to comment below...

Hope this was helpful,

The PushYourRank Team
Author: Nicholas Coriano

About The Author: Nicholas Coriano is an Entrepreneur, Web Developer, Social Media Marketer, SEO Consultant and the founder of this blog and The NewYorkWebsiteDesignCenter.com.  While developing websites for his own businesses and marketing his entrepreneurial ventures online, he began blogging useful tips and "how-to" articles on PushYourRank.com for reference purposes.  To retain Nicholas for help with your Website, Social Media, SEO or other online/technology needs, email PushYourRank@Gmail.com

About PushYourRank.com: PushYourRank.com (the Blog) is a blog that helps small businesses, start-ups, developers, amateurs website builders, bloggers and entrepreneurs develop their websites, their social media presence, their search engine optimization techniques and more ....online.  The Blog publishes articles about Ecommerce, Email Marketing and How To Make Money Online...as well as any topic that pertains to the Internet or Online.  If you need help developing a website, SEO or Social Media outsourcing, see NewYorkWebsiteDesignCenter.com, if you would like to advertise or have us publish an article on a certain subject, please email us at PushYourRank@Gmail.com