But before you can start optimising for search engines, you must target the right keywords.
That’s why in this article, we’re going to take a look at what keywords you should target.
What Type Of Keywords Are There?
While there are endless types of keywords that you can target, we’re going to break them down into 4 main categories. However, something to note though is that they can cross over, so one keyword might fit into several categories.
- Buy Intent keywords
- Short & long-tail keywords
- Branded & product keywords
- GEO-targeted keywords
Below, we’ve explained how you should use these keywords in your SEO strategy.
Non Buyer Intent Keywords & Buyer Intent Keywords
The first type of keyword is buyer intent and non-buyer intent keywords.
As you might be able to tell by the name, these keywords allow you to target visitors based on whether they want to purchase or not.
An example of a buyer-intent keyword would be “buy wallet”. Here, the searcher is intending to purchase which makes the keyword a buyer-intent keyword.
However, if the visitor is searching for “When were wallets invented”, it would be a keyword with no buyer intent. Although at first glance, you may think that this type of keyword is useless, this isn’t the case, but we’ll talk more about that in a moment.
Why You Should Target Them:
Buyer-intent – The main reason why you should target buyer-intent keywords is obviously that they help you generate sales, clients, or leads. Often, these will be targeted using your product or service pages. However, sometimes you can also use blog posts and other pages to target these keywords. Usually, buyer-intent keywords will have a higher cost-per-click (CPC).
Non-buyer intent – Keywords without buyer-intent are still important. Often, they can help you build authority around a topic which makes your pages targeting buyer-intent keywords more likely to rank. Not only this, but they can also often increase your brand awareness and trust by connecting it to keywords related to your business. Plus, they can also often help you generate leads and subscribers as you can put out valuable content and then ask the visitor to subscribe if they want more.
The best SEO strategies target both buyer-intent and non-buyer intent keywords. This allows them to grow authority on a topic, and rank for those high-value keywords that generate a lot of revenue.
Short-Tail & Long-Tail
The next type of keywords is short & long-tail keywords.
Short-tail keywords are words that have one or two words in them. Usually, these are a little broader and are often considered seed keywords.
Long-tail keywords are words that have three or more words in them. Usually, these are more specific which can also often lead to higher conversions.
Why You Should Target Them:
Short-tail – Although often not as high-converting because they aren’t as specific, short-tail keywords can often increase brand awareness. That being said, they are often a little harder to rank for, because more pages are competing for them.
Long-tail – Long-tail keywords usually convert higher as we know more about the searcher’s intent. For example, if a searcher types in “red t-shirt” we don’t know a lot. The searcher could be looking for a men’s t-shirt, a women’s t-shirt, or for a child. However, if the user searches for “red t-shirt for men” that is now a long-tail keyword, and we know what exactly he’s looking for. Now, we can optimise for that intent which will increase our conversions.
Branded & Product Keywords
There are also branded and product keywords.
Branded keywords as the name suggest refer to keywords that contain a brand name.
Product keywords refer to keywords where the user is searching for a certain product. Sometimes, these cross over for example, “Nike Tshirt”.
For eCommerce stores, the product pages would usually target these types of keywords.
Why You Should Target Them:
Both of these types of keywords convert incredibly well as we know exactly what the user wants. This allows us to create a page that gives the user exactly that.
Additionally, ranking for your brand keywords allows you to control your brand reputation.
Geo-Targeted Keywords
Last but not least, we also have geo-targeted keywords.
These keywords are targeted towards a certain location, for example, Melbourne or Australia.
One example of this would be “Accountant Melbourne”.
Keywords like these are targeted by local businesses that the user is searching for. They allow Google to differentiate the results based on the location of the searcher to show what’s most relevant to them.
Final Thoughts
We hope you have enjoyed this article on the keywords you should be targeting.
This combined with our keyword research guide should allow you to find keywords that you want to target.
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You can also check out some of our recent guides below.