Content is the king of a website as it helps its customers from different parts of the world to learn and understand a business and its services. Keywords are the backbone of any quality content as it is spread across the content and serves as a catalyst for its popularity. Keywords are the first important step towards any successful SEO. Once the content ranks on top of search engines, then it attracts lots of organic views and more potential customers. This, in turn, reflects on conversions and profits for a business.
Choosing prompt keywords for content is mandatory for its success. But there are lots of questions relating to how to choose a keyword, which type of keyword maximizes the SEO effect and how to use the different keywords to target different types of an audience at different levels of the sales funnel.
Finding the Best Keywords for SEO
Keywords are important because they link the people searching for the content and the actual content provided by the business. It substantiates the goal to drive organic traffic to the website of the organizations. Keywords are the deciding factors that determine what type of visitors the website gets.
One common mistake of all entry-level marketers is that they do not bother to update or expand their SEO keyword list or they target which are too popular, getting tangled in the competitive set. SEO keywords, in general, should be ongoing and evaluated periodically. Old keywords should be replaced periodically and competitive and high volume keywords should be replaced with longer and specific phrases. This would help not just in generating a huge volume of traffic for the website, but also the right type of traffic.
The main survival tip to sustain a business in the competitive global platform is to stay ahead of the rivals. Businesses have to find ways of choosing keywords that are the best and well ahead of its competitors. They have to try new keywords through search tools, and also keep track of the results. Experimenting all ways to provide great content for prospective customers should be the ultimate aim of businesses.
Different Keyword Types in SEO:
Before leveraging on the keywords for the marketing efficiency of a business, one important discussion is how many types of keywords actually exist? To many people’s surprise, there are actually 9 different types of keywords that exist for prompt SEO. Businesses have to take advantage of the strengths of all these types of keywords to optimize their web pages to its fullest extent. Let us discuss each one of them here in detail.
1. Short-tailed keyword:
As the name indicates, short-tailed keywords are short keywords that are made up of less than three words. Sometimes they are also denoted by the name head keyword. Short-tailed keywords are extremely competitive and also have a huge amount of sales volume. A lot of online audiences also tends to search for short-tailed keywords when they are browsing for information in search engines.
As short tailed keywords are spread all around the place, it is difficult to identify clear search intent for them. They also don’t convert very well owing to the difficulty is associating them with the intent of the searcher. But they have few distinct characteristics such as excellent search volume, highly competitive rates, good search intent, and low conversion rates. Short-tailed keywords appear in the SEO of the website and help with inbound marketing, which is their biggest merit.
2. Long-tailed keyword:
Long-tailed keywords are those that have more than three words and are generally more specific than short-tailed keywords. They have a lower search volume compared to its short-tailed counterpart but still, are advantageous as they are less competitive. They are also easy to locate in the search intent and users who use these keywords have already made up their minds to make a purchase. They would want to gain all relevant information relevant to their search in order to make a purchase decision.
The long-tailed keywords have a low competitive rate, low search volume, high conversion rate, and specific search intents. Google AdWords helps to discover these low competition long tail keywords easily.
3. Fresh keywords:
Fresh keywords are those that have been hyped and trending in recent times. One great example of fresh keywords can be the latest Hollywood movies for children, but the search volume for these keywords peaks during the movie’s release time and drops sharply later on. But they have excellent search volume that can generate a lot of organic views. It is possible to take advantage of these keywords to attract a lot of new audiences.
These keywords can be used to create a lot of up to date content for websites and attract explosive search volume and high conversion rates.
4. Evergreen keywords:
These keywords are long term and stay relevant at all times, their search volumes might fluctuate and they won’t experience extreme changes though. Content developers can be sure that if they publish content using such keywords; it would be used by people even after a year or two with little upgrades here and there. The views of the content using these keywords may not be explosive but would still stay consistent.
The number of views would also be considered with a stretch of time. Contents developed using long term evergreen keyword tends to stay educative and informative. They also tend to be authoritative with their views, exposure and a number of loyal followers.
5. Keywords that define a product/ service:
These are the keywords that describe the service or the product of the business. People searching for such defining keywords want crisp and specific information and are already at the end of the sales funnel. Content writers using such defining keywords should develop content that is detailed to the core.
Each entity of the product should be specified with a detailed description for each one of them. Characteristic features of such keywords are that they have a low search volume, low competitive and high conversion rates with specific search intent.
6. Customer Defining keywords:
Contents that are been created around real persons are on the trend today and rank the best in search engines. Reliable and clear information regarding real people is included in such contents. The more detailed the information is, the greater is the advantage of such content in drawing prospects. Customer testimonials can also be included in such write-ups on how beneficial was the product for them. This would help readers to build credibility and familiarity with the product and the service of the business.
These keywords have specific search intent and high conversion rates despite their low competitive rates and low search volume. They address the customers directly as the product content is tailor designed for them.
7. Location specific keywords:
These keywords target a particular neighborhood, state, city, and even a country. These keywords are highly beneficial for small local businesses when they want to attract relevant customers and local customers. The area in which the business serves is its geo-targeting keyword, for example, job consultants in New Hampshire.
Though these keywords have a low search volume, they have excellent competitive rates, specific search intent, and excellent conversion rates. They are extremely important for local businesses.
8. LSI Keywords:
LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing and these are thematic keywords that are related closely with the main keyword. For example, if the main keyword is tea, then the LSI keyword would be organic tea, lemon tea, cold tea, etc. To create an LSI keyword, the main keyword should first be decided. They are useful to create topics that fit in a broad theme and target all small words based on one dominant keyword. LSI keyword does wonders with blog posts and contents but may be a little tricky to get the hands-on initially.
It is also a good idea to take recommendations from the suggested search section at the search result page to have an idea of what keywords the search engine would relate to a particular search query. LSI graph is also an excellent tool that offers the list of keywords automatically along with the search volume and competition. LSI keywords have low search volume, specific search intent, high conversion, and low competitive rates. It boosts the ranking of the main keywords and is thus excellent for content creation.
9. Keywords that target the search intent:
Generally, the intents of the web searches fall under the three broad categories, informational, commercial and transactional.
Informational keywords offer general information on a specific item or topic with an aim to educate the end reader.
Commercial intent keywords are serious and work to make a purchased keyword such as shipping, expiry date, specifications, etc., tends to target clearly on product specific information.
Transactional keywords urge the user to make a quick purchase decision. Some examples of such keywords are sale, best price, guaranteed, quality, easy returns, etc.
Match Keyword Keyword Types for SEO:
When choosing the keywords for the campaign, its match types should also be paid special attention to. Keywords are the backbone for all online marketing campaigns and demand special attention by content developers to choose the most optimal one. For SEO keywords, there are three different match types to choose from and let us discuss all three of them here in detail.
a. Broad match keywords:
Broad match keywords help the content to reach a large volume of audience possible. Because they are broad in nature, they are searched by a large number of people. These are the usual type of keywords that people use while performing a search engine search. When people are not specific on what to type when they look for information, they generally end up typing these broad match keywords ending up in a wide range of result pages.
One main advantage of broad match keywords is that search engines also will look for relevant variations of the types of search phrases. Search engines also throw synonyms, plurals, and misspellings in the mix, thus enabling the keyword to target a large volume of searches. Discovering long tail keywords for the campaign becomes easy when broad match keywords are used. It also drives a large volume of traffic to the website.
b. Exact Match keywords:
Exact match keywords are quite the opposite of broad match keywords, these keywords are based on the exact search query terms. The search query of exact match keywords targets the user and directs them directly to the website. The traffic thus generated through these keywords is curated and converts easily. The probability of these exact match keywords is low and thus the volume of the traffic generated will also be less. To enhance the traffic volume more keywords should be added to the campaign. Though the traffic volume is less, they have high conversion rates and this could boost sales to a great extent.
c. Phrase match keywords:
Phrase match keywords lie in between the other two keywords and are more focused than broad match keywords. They are highly flexible in getting visitors for the website, and there is no need to rely on the exact matches too. It also offers the benefit of a wide audience base that can be attracted with broader keywords. Irrespective of the type of keyword matches that are used, the ultimate aim is to generate more traffic for the website.
Final thoughts:
Keywords are very important for content, as it is the deciding factor in generating quality traffic towards the contest’s website. They decide the conversion factor and turns prospects into customers for a business. They need to be scrutinized appropriately and the biggest advice in finding and organizing keywords is to be patient and careful digging of the appropriate keyword.
Greater the searching and investigating, greater is the success rate. After listing the keyword, they need to be organized and the best content plan should be developed around them. With appropriate keywords, it is possible to build a loyal community of customers for business and to rank high in search engines.