How to Use Keywords in SEO And Prompts in AEO

In this article, you’ll learn how to use keywords in SEO across the two channels that now share your audience. Traditional search engines like Google. AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. You’ll get a step-by-step process for picking the right terms, the eight specific places they need to live on a page, the mistakes that quietly drag your rankings down, and a way to keep the whole system running on its own.

What Are SEO Keywords?

SEO keywords are the words and phrases your audience types into a search bar or feeds into an AI assistant. They tell Google what your page is about. They tell ChatGPT which sources to cite. They are how your content gets found.

Most pages target three layers of keywords at once.

• Primary keyword. The main term you want the page to rank for. “How to use keywords in SEO” is the primary keyword for this article.

• Secondary keywords. Variations and long-tail forms of the primary. “Where to put keywords on a page” and “keyword placement best practices” qualify here.

• Semantic keywords. Topically related terms that prove you know the subject. For “keyword research,” semantic terms include search volume, keyword difficulty, search intent, and SERP analysis. They signal depth, not just relevance. We cover them in detail in our LSI keywords guide.

A page that wins on a competitive term usually carries one primary keyword, three to five secondary keywords, and a broad spread of semantic terms. That combination is what separates pages that rank from pages that get buried.

Why Keywords Still Matter (in Both Channels)

You’ve probably read that SEO is dead and that AI search makes keyword work obsolete. That is wrong, and it is wrong in a specific way.

People are searching differently. Instead of clicking through a list of blue links, they ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini. The way buyers find you is changing. The reason they choose you is not. Quality content still wins. The brands that show up in AI answers are the ones with clear, original, useful pages. The only difference is that your content now has to work for AI models too, not just Google.

That is exactly why keywords still matter. Search engines crawl your page and look for the terms users searched. AI engines parse your page, or a third-party page that mentions you, and pick whichever source most clearly answers the prompt. Both processes start with the same signal. The words on the page. If those words do not match the query, neither channel can find you.

So when we talk about how to use keywords in SEO, we are really talking about a discipline that serves two organic channels at once. Treat it that way and one well-built page does double duty.

Tip 1: Start With Real Keyword Research

Most teams skip this. They open a doc, write whatever feels relevant, then bolt keywords on at the end. That is how you end up with pages nobody searches for. Run this process every time, in this order.

Step 1: Build a list of seed topics

Start with the categories your business serves. A project management tool might pick project management, team collaboration, task tracking, sprint planning, and remote work. A CRM might pick customer relationships, sales pipeline, lead management, and email automation. Five to ten seeds is enough. More than that and you are guessing.

Step 2: Expand each seed with a keyword research tool

Plug each seed into a keyword research tool. Free options include Google Keyword Planner, Google Autocomplete, and the Analyze AI keyword generator.

For each suggestion, capture four data points. Search volume. Keyword difficulty. The search intent type. The kind of page that currently ranks for it. Drop the ones with no business relevance, no matter how high the volume looks.

Step 3: Read the SERP before you write

Search every shortlisted term in Google. Note the format of the top three results. If they are blog posts, your page should be a blog post. If they are product pages, write a product page. If they are listicles, do not show up with a how-to. Matching the search intent of the SERP is non-negotiable. The right keyword in the wrong format will not rank.

Confirm your read with the free SERP checker, then pressure-test the difficulty score with the keyword difficulty checker.

Step 4: Add prompt research for AI search

This is the step Ahrefs and Semrush do not cover well, and it is the one that separates pages that compound from pages that go stale.

When someone asks ChatGPT “What’s the best CRM for a 12-person sales team that uses Outlook?”, that is a prompt, not a keyword. It is longer, more conversational, and full of context. Traditional keyword research will not surface it.

Open prompt tracking inside Analyze AI. Add the topics you care about. Analyze AI generates the actual prompts buyers ask AI engines about your category, then shows how often your brand appears in the answers, where you rank against competitors, and the sentiment of the mentions.

For prompts where you do not show up, drop them into the AI Search Explorer to see who is being cited and what they wrote. That gives you a content gap and a target in one move.

Map every primary keyword to the conversational prompts it shows up as. Your page should answer both.

This pairing is what makes one page rank on Google and get cited by ChatGPT. You stop optimizing twice and start optimizing once for both.

Tip 2: Put Your Primary Keyword in the Title Tag and H1

The title tag is the most weighted on-page signal you have. It shows up in the SERP, in browser tabs, in social shares, and in the metadata AI engines parse to understand the page. The H1 tag is what readers actually see at the top of the page. Both should match closely and both should carry your primary keyword as close to the front as possible.

Three rules.

• Front-load the primary keyword. “How to Use Keywords in SEO” beats “8 Tips for Better SEO Through Keywords.”

• Keep the title tag under 60 characters so Google does not truncate it.

• Use one H1 per page. Multiple H1s confuse crawlers.

Tip 3: Distribute Secondary Keywords Across H2-H6

Subheadings break content into scannable sections. They also tell crawlers and AI parsers what each section covers. Use them deliberately.

A clean structure looks like this.

• One H1 with your primary keyword.

• Three to seven H2s, each covering a major subtopic. Include secondary keywords where they fit naturally.

• H3s and H4s for nested points under each H2.

Compare two articles. The one with no headings is a wall of text. Readers bounce in 10 seconds and Google ranks it accordingly. The one with descriptive H2s lets readers skim, jump to what matters, and read deeper if interested. Crawlers do the same thing. Headings are how they map your content.

Write headings that describe what the section actually delivers. “Step 1: Build a List of Seed Topics” is better than “Getting Started.” Specific beats clever every time.

Tip 4: Use Keywords Naturally in the Body (and Lead With Them)

Search crawlers and AI engines weight your opening more than the rest of the page. Get your primary keyword into the first 100 words, ideally without sounding like a robot wrote the intro.

A few rules for the body.

• Mention your primary keyword once per 150 to 200 words. There is no magic number, but that range stays natural.

• Vary the wording. Use synonyms, plurals, and conjugations. “Keyword research,” “researching keywords,” and “find the right keywords” all signal the same topic.

• Write for a person first. If a sentence sounds forced, cut the keyword.

• Use semantic keywords to signal depth. A page on email marketing that mentions deliverability, open rates, segmentation, and double opt-in proves you actually know the topic.

The goal is not to hit a density target. The goal is to write the most useful page on the topic, with the right vocabulary appearing where it makes sense.

Tip 5: Write Keyword-Aware Internal Anchor Text

Internal links pass authority between pages and tell search engines what each page is about. The anchor text is the signal that does the work.

Three rules.

• Use descriptive, keyword-aware anchors. Link to your keyword research guide with “keyword research guide” or “how to research keywords,” not “click here.”

• Vary the exact wording across links. Identical anchor text on every link looks manipulative to Google.

• Keep anchors short. Five words or fewer is the sweet spot.

This also matters for AI engines. A page on ecommerce SEO that gets linked from 30 internal pages with descriptive anchors becomes the authority on the topic across your site. AI crawlers pick that up.

Tip 6: Add Keywords to Image Alt Text

Alt text describes images for screen readers, gets read aloud for accessibility, and is one of the few keyword signals attached to non-text elements. Use it.

For every meaningful image:

• Write a literal description of what the image shows.

• Include your primary or a secondary keyword if it fits the description.

• Keep alt text under 125 characters.

• Skip alt text on purely decorative images. Stuffing them is worse than leaving them blank.

Bad alt text. “keyword research seo tool keywords.”

Good alt text. “Screenshot of keyword research tool showing search volume and keyword difficulty for the term ‘project management software.’”

The good version helps users, helps Google rank the image, and helps AI engines understand what the image proves.

Tip 7: Use a Short, Keyword-Led URL Slug

Your URL slug is small but persistent. Google has confirmed it is a lightweight ranking factor, and it shapes how users perceive the link before they click.

Three rules.

• Include your primary keyword.

• Keep it under five words.

• Use hyphens, lowercase, and no stop words (“the,” “and,” “for”).

/blog/how-to-use-keywords-seo beats /blog/post-id-12345 and beats /blog/the-ultimate-guide-on-using-keywords-for-better-seo-results.

Don’t change a URL once it has earned backlinks. The lift is rarely worth the redirect chain. Get it right at publish.

Tip 8: Front-Load the Meta Description With Your Keyword

A meta description is not a direct ranking factor. It is a click-through factor, which is a ranking factor in disguise. Google bolds query terms inside meta descriptions in the SERP, so a description with your primary keyword draws the eye and earns the click.

Three rules.

• Include your primary keyword in the first 100 characters.

• Keep total length to 150 to 160 characters so Google does not truncate it.

• Write it like ad copy. Promise something specific. Then deliver.

Example for this article.

“Learn how to use keywords in SEO with 8 practical tips. Find the right terms, place them where they earn rankings, and keep the system running.”

How AI Engines Read Keywords Differently

Google looks for keyword matches in specific locations. AI engines look for content that answers a question cleanly. Both rely on your words. They weight them differently.

Three behaviors worth designing for.

AI engines reward direct answers. A section that opens with the answer in one sentence is more citable than one that meanders. ChatGPT does not stitch five paragraphs together to find a takeaway. Lead with the conclusion, then explain.

AI engines pull from third-party sources more often than from your own site. Most brand mentions in AI responses come from review sites, comparison pages, and industry publications. Your earned coverage matters as much as your owned content. The citation analytics view in Analyze AI shows exactly which third-party domains AI engines pull from when describing your category.

AI engines pick up structure. Tables, ordered lists, and clear comparisons are easier to parse than prose. If a question has a structured answer, structure it.

Stack these behaviors against the eight placement tips above and you have a single page that satisfies both crawlers and AI parsers.

Common Keyword Mistakes to Avoid

Even teams that do everything else right get pulled down by these.

Keyword stuffing

Stuffing means cramming the same keyword into every sentence to game the algorithm. It worked in 2008. It triggers penalties now. Google’s spam policies flag it explicitly. Modern algorithms know what unnatural language looks like. AI engines actively skip stuffed pages because the content reads as untrustworthy.

If you find yourself writing “keyword research, including keyword research tools and keyword research methods, makes keyword research easier,” cut it. Use synonyms.

Ignoring search intent

The most common mistake is targeting a keyword without checking the SERP. You decide “best CRM software” is your target, write a product page, and discover the SERP is dominated by listicle blog posts. Your page never ranks, no matter how well it converts.

Always pull the search intent signals before you write. Match the format the SERP rewards.

Keyword cannibalization

When two pages on your site target the same keyword, Google does not know which to rank, so neither does well. This is keyword cannibalization, and it is the silent killer of midsize content libraries.

Run a quarterly audit. For every primary keyword, identify exactly one page that should rank for it. Consolidate, redirect, or differentiate the rest.

No system

Keyword research is not a one-time setup. Search behavior shifts. Competitors publish new content. AI engines change which sources they cite. A keyword strategy without a maintenance loop ages quickly.

This is where automation pays back hardest, and it is what the next section is about.

Stop Doing This Manually: Run the Loop With Analyze AI Agents

The eight tips above are not hard. They are tedious. Doing them once is fine. Doing them every week, across hundreds of pages, for every new prompt your buyers start asking, is what kills momentum on most teams.

This is what the Analyze AI agent builder is for. It is a programmable substrate with 180+ nodes, 34 pre-built data recipes, and three trigger modes (manual, scheduled, webhook), all pre-wired to your AI visibility data, GSC, GA4, brand vault, and CMS.

A few examples of what teams actually run on it.

• Keyword opportunity finder. Schedule (every Monday 7am) pulls competitor keywords you don’t rank for, cross-references with prompts where competitors get cited and you don’t, and produces a ranked list in Notion. Replaces a half-day analyst pull.

• Brief-to-publish pipeline. Webhook (when an editor approves a brief in Notion) runs research, outline, and a draft with brand-voice injection. An AEO content score gates the final step. Above 80 publishes to WordPress. Below 80 pings the writer with the gaps. No piece publishes without passing the AEO gate.

• Content refresh fleet. Scheduled weekly. Identifies pages losing rankings or AI citations. Rewrites them for freshness and AEO. Updates WordPress. The “quietly losing rankings” problem solves itself.

• Cannibalization patrol. Scheduled monthly. Maps every primary keyword to its target page, flags conflicts, and drafts a consolidation plan. The audit you keep meaning to run, automated.

Stack the three triggers and the substrate runs the operations layer of your marketing org continuously. Humans stay focused on judgment. The grunt work runs itself.

This is the part of keyword strategy most teams never get to. Not because they don’t know how. Because they don’t have time. Agents close that gap.