[Insert Correct Keywords Here]
Beware what you type into a search box.
Ranking for the right keywords is the main factor that brings more users to your site. But how can you know which keywords are actually right for your website? The answer is simple — Keyword Research (KR).
The main goal of KR is to expand your knowledge about the keywords you can rank for and target your pages with, but it’s not everything.
By performing keyword research you can also learn more about your customers overall. You are able to understand your niche better and follow its most popular queries, so you can create quality content that will meet your potential customer’s expectations.
But before we dive in, let’s start with some dry theory.
The Value of Keywords
Keyword value is one of the things you need to consider when doing keyword research, and you can do this from two perspectives — objective and subjective.
The objective value of a keyword refers to the general parameters provided by various tools. There are many parameters that describe the objective value of a keyword, but the two most important are:
- Search Volume — this is the keyword’s popularity; how often users search for it.
- Keyword Difficulty — this is how hard it will be to achieve high positions for this particular keyword.
The subjective value of a keyword tells you how much it might be worth to your site and your business profile. To figure this out, you need to answer some questions first.
Does this keyword fit your site?
Will users be satisfied when they get to your site looking for this phrase?
Will the traffic created by this keyword be financially beneficial?
If you answered YES to all those questions, then using this keyword might turn out to be profitable and you can try to optimize your site around it.
Types of Keywords
As not all keywords are created equally, they can be divided into two main groups, depending on how often users search for them: head keywords and long tail keywords.
Head Keywords
The most common search terms are called head keywords. While these keywords may be popular, most of these queries are very general; thus making it much harder to achieve high positions in the search results for them.
Long Tail Keywords
The second group of search terms is long tail keywords. These are more specific and usually longer than head keywords, and should be the main part of a keyword research strategy. They are not as popular as head keywords, but if we put them all together they take up 70% of all internet searches and most of the overall search volume.
And unlike head keywords, marketers have noticed that long tail phrases convert to profit because of the focus on a specific product or a phrase.
For example, users searching for “chair” are probably just browsing. However, someone searching for “white dining room chair” is probably also browsing, but with their wallet already open.
Keywords Categorized by Purpose
Another way to divide keywords is based on their purpose. We can divide them into four groups:
- Commercial keywords
- Transactional keywords
- Informational keywords
- Navigational keywords
1. COMMERCIAL
This group of keywords is the widest of the four and is directly connected to your niche.
You want to use as many of the most popular and commercial-worthy keywords as you can, but it is more important to remember that you want to stick to keywords that are directly connected to your niche.
For example, if you own a website that only sells chairs, you don’t want to rank for tables because they have four legs too — they’re not chairs so screw’em!
The goal of these keywords is to bring more users to your site. But you need to realize that the user status is not enough — you want customers. This is why we have the next group of keywords.
2. TRANSACTIONAL
Such keywords are perfect for pages like product listings because they use terms like “buy”, “for sale”, “purchase” and so on.
In this group, you can also find more specific phrases like “black leather chair.” When users search for these phrases you can say that they already have all the information they need — they know what they want and are determined to make a purchase.
But what if they are still looking for some information before buying your product?
3. INFORMATIONAL
You can find a lot of keywords with great search volume, but they might not bring your site many conversions. This is because when users are searching for these phrases they are often searching for information, e.g. to make sure that they want to buy this particular product — read reviews or compare it with other products.
These phrases are often in the form of a question. As I said, informational keywords might not bring you the most conversions but why not use the most popular ones for blog articles, which will help the overall visibility of your site and brand?
4. NAVIGATIONAL
The name might sound confusing, but this one is the simplest of them all. This type of keyword refers directly to your brand. That’s it.
When users type the name of your brand into the search bar, this means they are familiar with it and they’re performing a navigational search to get to the right address.
If you have a strong brand it’s fundamental to rank your homepage for phrases connected to it. But if you just started building your presence on the market, don’t try to rank for your competitor’s brand — you won’t beat them that way.
Wrapping Up to Get Started
Now that you know the different kinds of keywords, jump over to my article “Make Keyword Research Great Again” where you can find a practical, no-nonsense guide to keyword research using one of my favorite tools: Ahrefs.
