Target keywords — what and how

A target keyword is a search phrase you want your posts to rank for on Google. This page explains how Structura chooses them for a campaign, how to review them, and when you should override them.

What “target keyword” means

When someone types “best noise-cancelling headphones under $200” into Google, that phrase — typed as-is — is a keyword. If your campaign is about audio gear, that phrase would be a natural target: you want a post on your site to rank when someone searches it.

Keywords matter because they are how Structura decides:

What topics to pick for each post.
How in-depth each post needs to be to compete with what already ranks.
Which variants and related phrases to weave into the draft.

A typical campaign targets 10–30 keywords. Some are broad (“running shoes”), some are specific (“running shoes for overpronation during marathon training”). A mix is usually healthiest.

How Structura chooses them

During campaign creation, after the Strategy step, Structura runs its Keywords research. It proposes a list based on:

Your campaign’s objective and mode (see Writing approach).
The authority sources you configure.
What’s actually being searched in your niche.
How much competition a keyword already has from sites that would outrank you at your current authority.

The proposed list appears on the Keywords step of the form as a ranked list — the order is the publish order. Structura walks it top to bottom, one post per keyword, starting with open questions: questions people ask in their own words that a newer site can realistically rank for. A big search volume doesn’t move a phrase up on its own: on a young blog, the highest-volume phrases usually belong to big publishers already. Each row shows the monthly search volume, a difficulty meter, and whether the phrase is a how-to (DIY) or a comparison (Research) search.

Searches for a tool rather than an article, such as ”… generator”, ”… template”, ”… add-on” or “AI for …”, are left out of the list. Their results are product pages, so they belong on your product pages, not in your blog. Phrases that ask the same question as a post your site has already published are left out too, even when they are worded differently.

The difficulty ceiling is set from your site’s current strength (the caption above the list reads, for example, Balanced · KD ≤ 65). Phrases above that ceiling are grouped as Pillars at the bottom: long-term targets that are published after the winnable ones. Use Move to top on any row to publish it next.

When live search data isn’t available for your topic, the list carries an AI-estimated badge and shows an estimated volume bucket instead of exact numbers.

Reviewing and overriding

Look through the list and ask yourself:

Does this match what my site actually covers? If not, remove it.
Is this a phrase my customers actually search? You know your audience better than any keyword tool.
Are there keywords I expected to see that aren’t here? Add them.

You have four controls on this step:

Delete (trash icon on each row) — removes the keyword.
Edit (pencil icon) — change the phrase.
Add keyword — append your own. Separate several with commas to add them in one go.
Re-discover — scrap the whole list and run Structura’s research again with a different seed.

When you’re happy, click Looks good — continue.

You can also edit the keyword list later from Campaigns → [your campaign] → Edit. Changes apply to the next scheduled post; already queued or in-progress posts keep whatever was active when they started.

Campaigns without keywords

Keywords are optional. A campaign with no keywords still publishes on its schedule: each post picks a new topic from your Campaign Objective, never from the campaign’s name. Structura avoids topics your site already covers and topics another post is being written about right now, so the campaign doesn’t keep writing the same post. Adding keywords gives you control: you decide exactly which search phrase each post targets.

On the Free plan, keyword research isn’t available, so Free campaigns always write from the objective.

Choosing it. In WordPress admin, on the Keywords step of a new campaign, click Skip, write from the objective. On the Free plan it sits next to the upgrade button; on a paid plan it replaces Looks good — continue when the keyword list is empty. In the customer portal, the same button appears in the Keyword bank section of the Discovery step whenever the list is empty. The Summary step then shows From the objective where the keyword count would be.

Switching back. In the customer portal, click Add keywords instead in the Keyword bank section. In WordPress admin, open Campaigns → [your campaign] → Edit and add keywords there. The next scheduled post uses them.

When the objective runs dry. If Structura can’t find a topic in the objective that your site hasn’t covered yet, the run stops and nothing is published. The run’s message asks you to add keywords or broaden the objective. The duplicate check described below still applies to scheduled posts: a post that would go live at an address you already publish under is stopped the same way.

How long your keywords last

Each keyword in the list is a topic Structura covers once on your site. Structura keeps that record per site, not per campaign: once any campaign has published a post on a keyword, no campaign on that site writes it again, even if the same keyword is in its list. A campaign publishing three posts a week through a list of 24 new keywords has roughly eight weeks of material before it needs more — that stretch is your campaign’s runway. Keywords another campaign has already published don’t count toward it.

Structura will never publish a second post on a keyword it has already covered just to keep the schedule full. Two posts on the same phrase compete with each other in Google, and the newer one usually loses while still dragging the older one down. So when a keyword is used up, it stays used up.

There is one exception, and it’s deliberate: if the keyword research turned up a genuinely different long-tail phrase under the same keyword — “project management software” and “project management software for architects” are different searches — Structura can write a second post using that exact phrase. It only does this when it has a real, search-validated phrase in hand, never by asking the writer to “find a different angle”.

Phrases that ask for a document rather than an article are left out of both the list and these long-tail variants: a law text on a legal database, ”… pdf”, a crossword answer, an abbreviation, or a single numbered section of a statute. Nobody typing those wants a blog post, and the phrase would read as a lowercase fragment in the title.

When the list runs low

Before your campaign runs out, Structura researches again, starting from your Campaign Objective and, when Search Console is connected, from searches your site already appears for but doesn’t rank well for yet. It adds the new keywords to the list on its own. You’ll get a notification telling you how many it added, and you can review them from Campaigns → [your campaign] → Edit like any others. This happens at most once a week per campaign, and it’s available on paid plans — the same plans that get keyword research in the first place.

When the list runs out

If the automatic top-up can’t find anything new, the campaign stops publishing rather than repeating itself, and you get a notification saying so. The first time this happens to a campaign, you also get an email with a link to its keywords. Nothing is deleted or paused permanently — the campaign starts running again the moment it has keywords to work with.

To restart it, open Campaigns → [your campaign] → Edit and either:

Add keyword — type in the phrases you want covered next, or
Re-discover — run the research again from a fresh seed.

Running the campaign manually while it’s out of keywords shows the same message instead of generating a post.

The best fix is prevention: a longer list at creation time buys a longer runway. If your list is under about 10 keywords, expect to top it up within a month or two.

Duplicate posts are blocked, not published

Even after all of the above, a post can occasionally arrive on a topic the site already covers — usually because the writer landed on the same angle from a different starting point. Structura catches that at the last moment: if the finished post would go live at a web address you already publish under, the scheduled run stops instead of publishing it, and you get a notification naming the campaign.

It’s the same fix as running out of keywords: add or re-discover keywords, and the next scheduled post covers new ground. See My post wasn’t published if you want to see where this shows up in a run’s timeline.

Posts you ask for yourself with Generate Now are exempt — if you deliberately want a second post on a topic, Structura won’t argue.

When to trust the automation

Trust it when:

You’re in a niche the automated research knows well (most common consumer, B2B, or lifestyle verticals).
You don’t have strong opinions about the exact phrasing.
You’re willing to let the first few posts teach you what the system picks.

When to override

Override when:

You know specific phrases your competitors consistently rank for that Structura missed.
You’re targeting a regional or technical niche where the broad research gets the tone wrong.
You have analytics showing particular phrases drive your current traffic.

The Re-discover button is the fastest way to see whether a different seed produces something closer to what you had in mind. If you just want to nudge the list, edit directly instead.

Last updated November 6, 2026