SEO Keywords

Keywords are a vital part of Search Engine Optimization. Understanding how to properly incorporate keywords into your content, articles, or blog posts is essential for them to be correctly optimized. Individuals who utilize search engines find your site by using keywords. Those keywords act as a bridge between users and your website. Keywords are necessary if you’d like to increase the amount of organic traffic of users interacting with your content.

There are, however, different types of keywords out there. Each category of keywords has its function and can be beneficial to your content if used correctly. Let’s further look into each keyword type and how to operate them.

Short-Tail Keywords

Short-Tail Keywords are keywords that consist of 3 words or less. Typically, the competition is high with short-tail keywords because there is such a large search volume. If you can get your site to rank high in search results for specific short-tail words, you have the potential to gain lots of organic traffic.

To take advantage of the potential for a large amount of organic traffic, you must utilize short-tail keywords in your content. There is a potential for gaining much traffic because short-tail keywords have such high competition. For example, if you google the word “makeup,” you will get a mass amount of search results. Understanding how to rank through using short-tail keywords is necessary if you want your site to gain a potentially large amount of traffic.

Strategically placing these keywords in your content is essential to ranking your website. You’ll also want to carefully choose short-tail keywords and ensure that they relate to your content to draw in the right crowd and rank in search results.

Long-Tail Keywords

Long-Tail Keywords are keywords that consist of more than three words. When compared to short-tail keywords, the competition for ranking with long-tail keywords is much lower. That is because long-tail keywords are much more specific than short-tail keywords, narrowing the search results for users.

An example of a long-tail keyword would be “red velvet cupcakes with filling.” A short-tail version of that would be “cupcakes.” Do you see how more specific long-tail keywords are? Your site has a better chance of being found higher in the search results for users searching for particular phrases. This level of competition, or lack thereof, is more appealing than the amount of competition for a short-tail keyword such as “cupcake.”

The only downside is that long-tail keywords are specific. Thus, it is unlikely that you will gain large amounts of organic traffic as with short-tail keywords. However, because individuals are searching for precise phrases when they find your site, they are typically searching for a reason. Your website will draw in organic traffic with a high chance of interacting with the content you have to offer.

Short-Term Fresh Keywords

These keywords are beneficial for gaining massive amounts of organic traffic for a short amount of time. Short-Term keywords relate to something that has recently gained popularity and will go through a short period with high search volumes. You could use short-term keywords if there were a new album coming out, a makeup line dropping, or a new car model making an appearance.

Short-Term Fresh keywords do not remain relevant for a long time. There will be a significant decrease in organic traffic after the initial hype of the topic. To combat this, you can continuously keep up with the latest trends and keep posting, following the curve!

Long-Term Evergreen Keywords

Long-Term Evergreen keywords are pretty much the opposite of Short-Term Fresh keywords. These keywords remain relevant all the time.

Unlike Short-Term, Long-term keywords do not go through a significant spike in organic traffic. The user views remain consistent. Occasionally, there is some fluctuation in the traffic, but nothing significant.

The type of content you’ll want to publish with Long-Term Evergreen keywords tends to be informative and educational. Continuously posting informative content will contribute to your overall credibility and will help you gain a following. You’ll attract new visitors, as well as having a loyal audience.

Product Defining Keywords

These keywords are what they sound like; words that explain and describe your product. It’s crucial that you be as specific as possible when labeling your product because the users searching for these particular keywords are looking to purchase the product.

You can utilize your product description to form a product name. By selecting a couple of words from the product description, and putting them together to make sense, you can have a product-defining title. If you were a customer searching for your product, what would YOU type in?

As an example, let's take apples and break down the product description to make a product-defining title. Instead of, "These red apples have a crispy and delicious source of nutrients," you could take "crispy" and "nutritious" to form a title, resulting with "Crispy and Nutritious Apples."

Customer Defining Keywords

Customer Defining Keywords are beneficial if you want to target a particular audience. For example, a customer defining phrase would be "Chef's Hats." These keywords are useful if you would like to address your target audience intentionally.

To draw in more visitors using Customer Defining keywords, it's critical that you share your testimony or experience with the product. That will also help build your credibility with your customer base.

Geo-Targeting Keywords

Geo-Targeting is a simple keyword method that targets a specific geographic location. Said location could be a city, state, neighborhood, or even a country. By putting the targeted area in the title, with additional keywords, such as "Italian Food in Miami," you will gain more traffic from those who search for Italian food in that specific location.

Using this method, you can filter out unnecessary visitors that won't interact with your business. It's not helpful that individuals from New York find your sub shop in California. Explicitly mentioning the location that you intend to promote will deter this from happening.

Examples of putting Geo-Targeting keywords to use would be for a possible tourist spot or attraction. These keywords can help attract customers to local businesses within the targeted location. If you are a business owner, this is beneficial if you are looking to expand your business and gain customers.

LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) Keywords

These types of keywords pertain to the overall keywords of your site. They relate to your target topic. For example, if your title was "Baking Cupcakes," you'll want to add keywords throughout your website like "oven, cupcake, batter, cook, mix," which relates to the topic. But why is this important?

Search engines no longer just look for repetitive keywords on your site to understand the meaning. More specifically, search engines search for words that relate to the overall topic. These words help search engines dissect what exactly your content is about, so they can adequately rank it within the search results.

Intent Targeting Keywords

There are three categories within Intent Targeting keywords. Each of these categories has its function, playing an essential role for the audience they attract. They are listed below.

Informational keywords pertain to informational content that aims to be educational to the reader. Examples of these keywords would be words similar to "what is, how, where to," or "information on." Anything that informs the reader on a given topic would fall under the informational umbrella.

Commercial keywords are targeted keywords for users that have the intent to make a purchase. They are keywords that users look for to gain more information on the product or products they are interested in. Specific keywords in the commercial sense would be, “description, pricing,” or “reviews.” Using these keywords can lead to higher traffic and more sales.

Transactional keywords target users who are in the final step of deciding to make a purchase. Your keywords, ideally, should help users decide that your product is the one they should purchase. Words that tend to draw in customers and buyers are “free shipping, satisfaction guaranteed, full refund” or “name brand.” These keywords have the intent of seeing a buyer complete the transaction of a product.

The three types of Intent Targeting Keywords can operate together to drive traffic to a site. Using Intent Keywords allows you to better meet users' needs by providing a more accessible and organized website.

Putting SEO Keywords to Use

There are as many components of Search Engine Optimization, as there are of Keywords. Keywords are essential to Search Engine Optimization. Understanding and utilizing keywords properly will help drive your site's organic traffic.

There are nine types of keywords that each have their function. Each of these keyword types can increase the organic traffic to your site if used correctly. For users to find your website, you want to ensure the kind of keywords you use is relevant to your content. It's also vital that search engines can properly crawl your site to understand what the site is about to rank it in the search results.

Using keywords is not only for your benefit, but they are essential for your visitors as well. It's how they find you and the content they're seeking. Put yourself in the shoes of your users. What would your search query be?