If you are reading this post then it means you know how important keywords are for any SEO strategy or strategist.

If you can nail the keyword research and find the best keywords to work on you will see the results really fast. These 13 Keyword types in SEO is very very important to know to create the best SEO strategy to rank on the first page of Google. 

It doesn’t matter if you are doing keyword research for your own blog or for your SEO client. If you can do it in the best way and can create a list of keywords that are easy to rank and best for you. You are an SEO Hero then.

I think you now know the importance of the keywords in SEO even if you didn’t before. So, let’s start exploring these 13 types of keywords in SEO to take your first step toward your SEO success.

General Keyword Types:

general keyword types are very common and well known in SEO circle. You must have heard about these before even if you don’t know much about them in details. So, let me throw some light on these general keyword types we use in SEO.

Short-tail keyword

Short tail keywords are those keywords that are short. Yes, that’s it. It’s as simple as that. 

Let skip the technical definitions and all sh**t. What you need to know is if you see a keyword of 1-2 word then it’s a short keyword. 

Well, what you can’t skip is you must know that short-tail keywords are very broad terms. The competition for short-tail keywords is very high. So, to rank for these keywords is also very hard.

e.g. marketing, digital marketing, SEO 

Mid-tail keyword

Mid-Tail keywords are those who have a medium-length tail. 🙂

I mean keywords which are not too short and also not too long. Usually, 2-3 words long and provide more description of what the user wants.

If we look at the competition and search volume then it varies it may be high volume high competition or low volume low competition.

e.g. learn marketing, digital marketing course, SEO expert

Long-tail keyword

Now, this is the hero of SEOs over the world. Almost all experts suggest focusing more on long-tail keywords. Why? cause most often these keywords lead to conversions. 

Long-tail keywords are…long obviously. But, these keywords are also more descriptive and very specific. It’s easy to rank for these keywords too. 

Know why? Cause these keywords are usually with very low competition and low search volume. If you are more focused on conversions then these are the keywords you should work for.

Intent-Based keywords 

Intent-based keywords are those which are driven by the intent of the user looking for something. Whether it is Information, Navigate somewhere or do a purchase or transaction.

These keyword types are most important in SEO. Cause, this defines the journey of the user from searching for a solution to buying that solution to solve the problem. 

It short selling your product. Getting new customers. Converting your visitors into your customers. 

These are divided into three keyword types:

Informational: 

The keywords that lead to some type of information that users are searching for are informational keywords.

e.g. What is Digital Marketing?, Keyword Types in SEO

Navigational:

The keywords that lead to your website, any page on your website. or your business location are navigational keywords. Where users want to visit a particular thing or wants to reach somewhere on the internet.

e.g. Gmail login, Dell Laptops

Transactional:

When users want to buy something they use these keywords. These are also very important for us. Cause, if someone wants to buy your product and is searching for it “buy ABC running shoes” you must be the first there. You can’t lose them in the conversion phase to your competitors. Right?

e.g. Buy sports shoes, buy medicine online, book a cab

Target Audience based:

As the name suggests these keywords are those which are related to your target audience or user persona of your target audience, business location, product, service and brand name.

The keywords used by your competitors also fall into this group. 

Location keyword

These keywords are those which included any particular location name in it such as any local area, town, village, city, state or even a country. 

If you are more focused on local SEO these are the keywords you should focus on.

These keywords have very low search volume as compared to others. But, these are very good if we want more conversions rather than just traffic. 

e.g. Digital Marketer in Ahmedabad, Digital Marketing Company in India

Customer keyword

Customer keywords are those which specify your target audience subsets. Such as gender, age and interests.

If you have your target audience persona then you can easily identify these type of keywords. If you don’t have your user persona then you should create one as soon as possible.

e.g. traditional clothes for women, shoes for kids 

Product keyword

Very easy…those which includes particular product name or service name comes in this type.

A very common type of keywords found in the E-commerce sector. Where they include their product names with brand names.

e.g. ABC traditional clothes

Competitor Keywords

If creating an SEO strategy does not include competitor research then it’s not the best strategy at all. 

Similarly, if your competitor research does not include the keywords they are using then it’s not properly done.

Sometimes you can benefit from knowing what your competitors doing. Afterall ranking higher then your competitor is a matter of working harder than them in what they doing currently. 

e.g. If you are an ABC company then, XYZ’s “XYZ traditional clothes” is your competitor keyword.

Branded Keywords

Those keywords that include a brand name in it with any other query such as product/service or any other page on the website. 

It can be just a brand name too. These searches come from your loyal customers most of the time. Or sometimes from the people in the consideration stage.

e.g. Darshan Patel SEO blog, WordPress download, Facebook login

Website Keywords:

Website keywords which are used to create content on the website. Better on-page SEO demands proper use of keywords in your website and if you don’t do it properly then you can just dream about ranking.

Primary Keyword

Primary keywords are those which your website is all about. But, on a broad level. 

You must have a primary keyword you can use on your every page of your website. Unless the page is for a totally different topic. Say, you are Digital Marketing Agency then Digital Marketing should be on all your page. 

Yes, it’s hard to rank for some short-tail high competition keywords but that does not mean you completely ignore them. 

Suppose your page is all about traditional clothing. You might not be ranking for it now. But, that should not be your concern to use it or not.

LSI Keywords

LSI(Latent Semantic Indexing) Keywords are somewhat related to your primary keyword or the keywords you want to rank for. here, related does not mean synonym. 

It is also known as related keywords. Which means those LSIs are related to your primary keyword.

Gone are the days when people were stuffing a single keyword in their website, page or blog post.

Search engines are smarter now. They have access to a huge number of data to determine what people usually search for and what other similar words they use in their search query.

The best place to get these LSI is to use Google’s Autocomplete. 

If your primary keyword is traditional clothing then you might want to use the specific country for which these clothes are. 

e.g. Primary: traditional clothing India

• Traditional Indian Clothing
• Best traditional clothing India
• traditional clothing for Diwali
• traditional clothing women
• traditional clothing pricing
• traditional clothing shop
• traditional dress of India
• When to wear traditional clothes?
• What is traditional Indian clothing called?

Conclusion

Creating a really good SEO strategy consist of many things. But, if you want to really see some results fast then finding the right keywords is the key. 

I know it might be a bit overwhelming task to find good keywords but if you know about these keyword types then it will make your task smooth and organized.

If you are having some difficulties you always ask me about anything related to this topic. I would be happy to help you.