The main difference between search terms and keywords is that keywords are used by marketers to match the search terms a user is typing into a search box. Keywords are the overarching umbrella over search terms. Keywords are used by marketers to define business-relevant words or phrases that they want to be associated with.

Search terms are the queries that users type on Google (or other search engines) to find what they are looking for. On the other hand, keywords are the terms targeted by SEO specialists and advertisers with a vision to match users’ search queries and improve their ranking.

Search terms and keywords are often mixed up by non-SEOs (search engine optimizers). However, the difference between the two is actually pretty simple once explained. Keywords are what you use to rank for search terms. Keywords are shorter sets of words that SEOs implant into your site to draw in visitors.

A search term is anything that users type in the search box, while keywords are what search engines have in their index. During the crawling and indexing phase, search engines crawl a page and extract the keywords it is associated with and this is how it is stored in their index.