What are keywords? 9 types of keywords and Google recommendations

Implementing an SEO campaign without a detailed analysis and a well-developed process to locate words relevant to your business (and searched for in Google) is similar to launching a new product on the market without conducting prior market research.

In other words, working blind. Don’t ignore the importance of keywords to the SEO process.

They are the backbone of an SEO campaign. Keywords give you highly relevant insights into your niche’s situation, data such as:

• interest in your product or service
• volume of searches on your niche
• search intent of potential customers
• difficulty of ranking on the first page (level of competition in the SERP)
• your chances of success against competitors and many other indicators.

But what are these keywords? How do you locate them? What do you need to do to get the maximum benefit from them? What tools can you use to make the process of locating keywords effective?

You will get the answer to all these questions. Next we will address the most important issues. The key elements are:

• What are keywords?
• What is Keyword Research?
• What are the steps to follow to carry out Keyword Research?
• How do you analyse keywords?
• What SEO tools can you use in this process?
• Google’s recommendations for building a keyword list?

At the end of the article, you will have all the necessary elements to locate the most relevant keywords for your niche, but also clues about what types of potential customers are behind searches on these SEO words and how to position yourself according to their intentions.

Do you need professional SEO services for your business website?

We have chosen to write this article because the right choice of words in SEO has a decisive impact on search engine optimization.

In an SEO campaign, words play a vital role, so let’s show you all about keywords and how to determine which ones to choose for targeting with the content present on your website.

What are keywords?

According to the official definition:

“Keywords are those words and phrases inserted into the content of a website, which give potential customers the opportunity to discover that website through organic results provided by a search engine.”

A search engine optimised site is a site that “speaks the same language” as potential customers. Therefore, it is important to carry out a keyword analysis relevant to the field of activity of the optimised site.

For keyword analysis to be effective and comprehensive, and to provide you with all the insights you need to implement an SEO strategy, it is necessary to understand that there are several types of keywords.

There are 9 types of keywords.

Each of these types offers consistent benefits when correctly locating search intent and integrated into a compatible strategy.

The 9 types of Keywords:

short-tail (short words, consisting of maximum 3 words)

long-tail (long words, consisting of more than 3 words)

short-term fresh (short-term words, viral spikes)

long-term evergreen (long-term relevant words)

product defining (words that explain and describe the product or service)

customer defining (directly and clearly addressing the target audience)

geo-targeting (local words for targeting a specific area – county, sector, city or country)

LSI (latent semantic indexing – words close to the main keyword)

Intent Targeting (informational, commercial, transactional words, etc.)

Let’s detail each type a little:

1. Short tail – they are short, consisting of maximum 3 words.

This type of keywords have in most cases a significantly high search volume, which means that the level of competitiveness on these short and common informational structures is high.

Examples of short keywords: women’s clothing or women’s footwear

2. Long tail – are long keywords, consisting of more than 3 words.

Focusing your SEO strategy on this type of words can lead to an improved return on your SEO investment.

Examples of long tail keywords: how much does it cost to promote on Instagram or what is Social Media.

3. Short-term Fresh – are short or long that show a significant spike in a well-defined period of the year.

These are evident when major events or viral news about certain topics or people occur.

In the case of these words, the spike in search volume and traffic sent only happens during certain periods, then everything returns to normal.

Example of a short-term fresh keyword: Halloween

4. Long-term Evergreen – these are words on the basis of which complex evergreen articles and guides (which do not lose their relevance over time) can be created.

These types of keywords remain relevant and consistent for the target audience in the long term.

Examples of evergreen keywords: how to lose weight, how to fry an egg, how to do SEO.

5. Product defining – these are keywords that clearly describe the product or service being marketed.

In this case, we are referring to the words used in the searches that a person makes for a specific product, service or data, whether they want to purchase it or just get information.

6. Customer defining – these are keywords that help you to get into the mind of potential customers, to understand their typology and the information they want in relation to a specific niche.

For example, if your business is related to scuba diving, one such word might be: underwater photographer.

7. Geo-targeting – these are keywords that try to target potential customers in a specific geographical area.

For example, such a keyword for our agency is: online marketing agency Bucharest.

8. LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing are those keywords, or those terms that are conceptually related to the main keyword and that search engines use to better understand the content of a web page.

For example, if you publish an article about milkshakes, search engines will also search for words such as filter, temperature, cold water, ice, etc.

9. Intent Targeting – These words fall into 3 categories of keywords of interest:

• navigational
• informational
• transactional/commercial.

For example, a navigational keyword for our blog might be – re7consulting blog:

More information about these 3 types of keywords targeting the intent of potential customers you will be able to read in an article we will publish separately on the blog.

With this in mind, you can now learn more about how you will perform analysis to choose the most relevant keywords and LSIs for your business and website.

So let’s go ahead and talk about:

What is keyword research?

Keyword research, or keyword analysis, is an essential process from an SEO perspective.

It involves identifying the words and phrases that people enter into search engines in their attempt to find a solution to the needs they have.

Firstly, performing this keyword analysis will help you understand how high or low the demand is for certain keywords.

Second, you’ll get clues about how hard it would be to compete for those terms in organic results, which gives you a clear direction for your optimization efforts.

However, keyword analysis (keyword research) is not just about the volume of searches for a particular keyword.

We’re also talking about exploring all the variations people use to search for an idea or topic.

As such, keyword analysis is not only an important element of the SEO process, but also a major element of content marketing. Why?

Because you
can help you find ideas for articles that you will publish on your blog, help you
help you find out more about your audience’s needs and keep up to date with
the ever-changing language used by your website’s audience.

At the same time, keyword analysis contributes significantly to defining and aligning micro keywords with the search intent of potential customers when they turn to Google search.

So the
the most important benefit of keyword research is a better understanding of
of the target market and the ways in which they search for your content, services or
products on your website.

Analysis
of keywords
(keyword research) gives you access to specific search data that can
help you answer questions such as:

• What do people search for?
• How many people are searching?
• In what format do they want the information they search for in Google?

What should you do before any Keyword Research in SEO?

Ask questions.

Before you can help your website and therefore your business grow, you need to understand who your customers are and what their goals are.

This is where many people prefer to take the easy way out and skip this crucial planning step, as conducting keyword research is very time consuming.

After all, why spend a lot of time when you already know the words for which you want to be displayed on the first page of Google organic results, right?

But that’s not quite the case.

The words you want to be visible for and what your audience is looking for are often two completely different things.

That’s why it’s important, first and foremost, to focus on your target audience.

Then, using the data you gather will help you to refine the content and information you provide, to make your campaigns more successful.

I said above that you need to ask questions.

And not just any questions.

You want to get relevant, useful, insightful answers that will help you run a successful SEO strategy and get the expected results.

So the questions must be relevant too.

Here’s a list of questions to ask yourself before starting a Keyword Research process:

• What are people looking for?
• Who is searching for those keywords?
• When do they search for those keywords? Are there seasonal trends over the course of a year?
• How do people search and from where? (mobile, desktop, local, national, etc.)
• What do people search for? (images, files, videos, podcasts, etc.)
• What words do they use?
• What questions do they ask?
• Why do they search for those keywords?
• How can you provide the best content to develop a community and meet the needs of people who are relevant to your site?

These questions will guide you more easily in performing your keyword analysis, but also in creating the content marketing plan that you will implement on your blog site.

Keyword analysis – what terms do people search for in the search engine?

Most likely you already have a way of describing what you do and what you offer through your website.

But you need to keep in mind that it is more important how your product, service or information is searched for by your target audience via search engines.

More than likely you already have a few keywords in mind that you want to be visible in the SERP and these usually represent the products, services or other topics that your site is targeting, so you can start with those.

How do you start keyword analysis?

First of all, you should know that keyword analysis is impossible without the help of a specialized keyword analysis tool.

Therefore, the first step is to enter the targeted terms into a keyword analysis tool to see what the average monthly search volume is.

Such a tool is offered free of charge by Google and is called Google Ads Keyword Planner (also known as Google Adwords Keyword Tool, Google Adwords Keyword Planner or Google Keyword Planner).

Besides Google Keyword Planner, the list also includes tools such as:

• Ahrefs
• SEMrush
• Moz
• SEOmonitor
• Ubersuggest etc.

These are, however, against cost.

We will talk more about these tools a little later.

Step 2, once you have located the search volume on your chosen keywords, is to locate other similar keywords, common queries and useful topics for your blog content.

In this case too, most of the available tools offer you the function to locate keywords tangential to the ones you initially searched for.

Within
the process of analysing relevant keywords for the content of the site,
you will most likely notice that the search volume for these keywords
varies greatly.

Although you will definitely want to target the most searched terms, in some cases, it may be more advantageous to target terms with a lower search volume, as the level of difficulty (competitiveness) is much lower.

However, both keywords with a high level of competitiveness and those with a lower level of competitiveness can be advantageous for your website.

Therefore, it is important to learn more about your search volume, to know which words to prioritise and which terms will give you the greatest strategic advantage.

SEO tools used to determine the value of a keyword

Do you know how much value a particular keyword would add to your website if it reached the top of the organic results?

You can probably imagine, but you don’t have a clear answer.

Well, you’re lucky there are specific tools you can use for keyword analysis. Each of the tools we’ll talk about next can help you get a concrete answer to this question and effectively choose the keywords on which to focus your SEO efforts.

1. Moz Keyword Explorer

Enter a keyword in Keyword Explorer and you’ll get information such as monthly search volume and other SERP features, such as local packs or featured snippets, that are displayed for that keyword.

This tool also provides a keyword difficulty score for each keyword you enter, which will help you understand how difficult it will be to reach the top of the organic results for your chosen keywords.

2. Google Keyword Planner

It is a tool that is part of the Google Ads platform and historically is the starting point for every keyword analysis.

3. Google Trends

It is a useful tool for discovering keyword seasonality fluctuations.

4. AnswerThePublic

An extremely useful tool to find out all the queries searched around a specific keyword.

5. Ahrefs and SEMrush

Tools similar in functionality to Moz Keyword Explorer, but each comes with its advantages and disadvantages.

6. SEO Monitor

Tool similar to Ahrefs and Moz, but this one has fewer features, compared to the other two, and is more cost-effective for sites operating on the Romanian market, without international SEO goals.

Google recommendations for building a keyword list:

Google has every interest that publishers working in the search engine achieve their SEO goals.

Google’s main goal is to provide users with the most relevant results.

That is why it constantly updates and publishes educational materials giving hints on the right mindset to achieve search engine success, in line with its main goal.

Here are 3 tips offered by Google, for publishers who want to achieve the goals set in their SEO strategy:

• Think like a customer when making your keyword list
• Select precise keywords to target precise customers
• Select general keywords to target more people

As you can see, the tips aim to align publishers with Google’s direction: quickly solving the needs that platform users have.

Are keywords still important in 2022?

The answer is definitely yes. Specialists are of the opinion that they remain an essential ingredient for any SEO strategy in 2022. If you find out what keywords are, you will have a great starting point in your search engine optimization approach.

Here are some of the ways keywords can be used to increase traffic, visibility and conversions:

• Target using keywords to generate traffic to your website

As soon as you have users present on your website, you have the chance to capture their attention and turn them into customers. But first you need to get them there. All marketers know the importance of appearing on the first page of a search engine results page (SERP).

And with an average click-through rate of 28.5%, the #1 position on the SERP remains a coveted spot.

Despite Google’s advanced language processing capabilities, keywords still play a crucial role in indexing web pages.

• Use keywords to identify user intent

Keywords are used to get the most direct indications of what users are searching for on the web. However, the audience on web pages will not know the best term to use to display the exact content they want. Google’s search engine and the AI platforms of other search engines are increasingly able to interpret nuance and intent. This allows them to predict the true meaning behind a keyword search, rather than directly the words used.

For example, if a user were to search for “horse box”, Google would serve paid ads and images for horse trailers, rather than a literal interpretation of the words “horses” and “box”.

In 2022, new tech doesn’t make targeted keywords any less relevant. Search engines will still use keywords in your titles and meta descriptions to interpret and index your pages, so they can be displayed for the most relevant queries.

• Conduct keyword research to identify new opportunities

There are various tools available, such as Moz Keyword Explorer, that allow you to research and identify opportunities to improve your SERP rankings.

Starting with keywords you find applicable to your business and your customers, these tools let you expand your search to identify similar terms that might be worth ranking for.

In particular, you can identify pages that are within striking distance. These are pages that are already ranking for keywords – perhaps at the bottom of the first page or on the second page – but are not yet in the top position. Since your page is already ranking for that keyword, it’s possible that just a few changes will improve the ranking, without having to start from scratch.

Use keywords to locate your target audience

You may already have a very clear idea of the keywords you want your business to rank for. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what your customers are looking for or that the type of content you’re focusing on is most likely to convert.

Doing keyword research can help you understand exactly what your target audience is looking for. Once you know this, you will be able to plan and shape the content of your website to meet these audience needs.

Such an approach will save you time and resources to produce valuable content and you don’t need to work for content that no one will access.

Adopt an increasingly nuanced approach to keywords

Google’s algorithms are long past the days of keyword stuffing. A more holistic approach to delivering quality and meaningful content is needed as algorithms become increasingly sophisticated.

In addition, there is little value in attracting visitors to your site just by using keywords for Google, if the content they find there doesn’t encourage them to stay on the page, let alone convert into customers.

Think carefully about the content your target audience wants to find. Digital marketing specialists know how to properly use the most useful keywords for SEO.

So, keywords remain important in 2022.

Keyword research is invaluable to better understand who your potential customers are and what they are looking for. Knowing how to use keywords correctly can help you further develop your content strategy for 2022.

Don’t approach keywords too narrowly. If you know what keywords mean, you have every chance of building a valuable starting point for getting the results you want.

RECAP

What is the definition of keywords?

Keywords are those words and phrases inserted in the content of a website, which give potential customers the opportunity to discover that website through organic results provided by a search engine.

What is keyword research?

Keyword research, or keyword analysis, is one of the essential elements of an SEO campaign. It involves identifying the words and phrases that people enter into search engines in an attempt to find a solution to their needs.

How do you do keyword analysis?

First of all, you should know that keyword analysis is impossible without the help of a specialized tool. Therefore, the first step is to enter the targeted terms into a keyword analysis tool to see what the average monthly search volume is.

What SEO tools are used for keyword analysis?

Among the most widely used keyword analysis tools are SEO analysis tools such as Moz Keyword Explorer, Google Trends, Ubersuggest, Ahrefs and many others.

The next step, in this case, is to create pages that are useful and relevant to people, but also optimized for search engines.

So stay tuned to the re7consulting blog, because we will provide you with all the information you need to create a website with correctly optimized On-Page and Off-Page pages.