Seed Keywords
In one line
Seed keywords are the short, descriptive starting terms you use to kick off keyword research — usually the words that name your category, product or problem.
Going deeper
Seed keywords are the launch point for any research project — usually 5 to 20 short terms that name your category, your product or the problem you solve. Picking the right seeds changes everything downstream because the related-term suggestions you get out of any tool are anchored to what you put in.
A practical thing to watch: the words your company uses internally are often not the words customers type. Internal docs may say 'EMR platform' while actual searches come in as 'hospital chart software'. Sales call transcripts, support tickets and reviews are unfairly good sources for grounded seeds.
The concept survives the move to AI search almost unchanged. The only real shift is that question-shaped and sentence-shaped seeds now sit alongside the classic short head terms.
Related terms
Primary Keyword
The primary keyword is the single search term a page is built around — the one that the title, H1 and meta description should all consistently point to.
SEOKeyword Density
Keyword density is the ratio of target-keyword occurrences to total words on a page — once a headline SEO signal, today only a minor secondary one.
SEOPillar Page
A pillar page is the hub at the centre of a topic cluster — a broad page on a large theme that interlinks with the narrower cluster pages around it.
SEOCornerstone Content
Cornerstone content is the small set of pages your site relies on most for traffic, conversions and citations — the load-bearing columns of the content house.
GEO·AEOGEO
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the practice of optimizing content and data so that a brand gets cited and recommended inside generative AI search answers like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.
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