Knowing how to plan SEO, or search engine optimization, strategies are an important part of being a digital marketer. SEO is what helps you be discovered by your audiences during Google and other search engine searches, and without it, your business will falter.
While you are more than likely aware of how important keywords are in an SEO strategy, you might not know how to tell which keywords are the most valuable to determining how close your audience is to buying.
Buyer keywords will help you determine the stage your buyers are in and how you can leverage that information. In this article, we’ll explain what buyer keywords are, what kinds there are, and how you can identify them.
What is Buyer Keywords?
Keywords are the terms and phrases that are put into a search engine like Google during a search query. However, these terms can range from single words to long questions, and they don’t indicate much about buyer intent on the surface. Buyer keywords signal to brands that the user is actively looking to make a purchase.
To tell whether or not a keyword is a buyer keyword, you need to understand the mentality of your audiences and the journey they take towards purchasing with your business. This process is called the buyer’s journey.
What is the Buyer’s Journey?
Every customer goes through a similar journey to purchase when they are looking for products, services, and solutions to solve a problem they are facing. The process starts with the customer realizing they have an issue or pain point that needs to be solved, moves towards researching different options and ends with a final decision being made.
The buyer’s journey breaks down into three distinct sections:
- Awareness: The customer is aware that they have a problem that needs to be solved and starts to look at high-level solutions
- Consideration: The customer is considering different options that could be the solution to their problem
- Decision: The customer is ready to make a final decision regarding their options and makes a purchase.
The Buyer’s Journey and Keywords
At each stage of the buyer’s journey, a customer will be using different types of keywords to help them narrow down their options and accomplish their goals. As a marketer, you must understand these buyer keywords.
Once you know which buyer keywords are relevant to your brand, you can create target content and advertising for those specific search queries, helping you bring in the right people who are on the path to making a purchase decision.
These keywords are also called high intent keywords, as they are the indicators that someone has high interest and therefore an increased likelihood of buying from your brand.
Types of Buyer Keywords
There are several different categories of buyer keywords that search terms can fall under. You must know these categories as they will help you determine what kind of content will work best with audiences and give you more insight into the process and stages of your buyer journeys.
- Informational Keywords
An information keyword is used by buyers to search for information on specific subjects and typically is indicative of the early stages of the buyer’s journey. These people usually aren’t looking to buy right away, but are instead looking for more detailed information about potential solutions.
Informational keywords often use language like:
- How
- What
- Guide
- Tips
- Where
- Why
- Quickly
- Navigational Keywords
Navigational keywords indicate that a user is looking for a specific website or page rather than just doing broad research.
These types of keywords can most frequently be tied to the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey, as the user is familiar with different brands or specific products that they want to learn more about.
Navigational keywords tend to use exact terminology like product names, brand names, and service names rather than the more general “who” and “what” search terms that appear in informational searches.
- Commercial Keywords
Commercial keywords are often used by customers in the decision stage and are looking for the exact information that could help them make a final purchase decision.
Rather than shopping between brands, they are instead looking for the special features or add-ons that will complete their purchase with the brand they have already selected.
Words often used in commercial keyword searches include:
- Reviews
- Best
- Color
- Size
- Compare
- Transactional Keywords
Transactional keywords are another type of keyword used in the final stages of the buyer’s journey, where a user is searching for how they can make their final transaction with a brand. These keywords are the strongest indicators that a potential customer is ready to buy and are therefore incredibly valuable to brands.
The language often used in transactional keywords includes:
- Where to Buy
- Order Online
- Affordable
- Near Me
- How Much Is
- Buy Now Keywords
Buy now keywords are a subcategory of transactional keywords. These keywords are the most urgent of all the categories, and strongly indicate that a purchase is about to be made as the searcher is looking for how they can make their purchase at that exact moment.
To capitalize on these keywords, marketers need to know their conversions on these keywords and have them on key pages.
Buy now keywords can include terms like:
- Coupon
- Discount
- How to Buy Now
- Sale
- Best Place to Buy
- On Sale
- Purchase
- Promo
- Order
- Product Search Keywords
Users will use product search keywords when they are trying to narrow down specific products or versions of a product to make a final purchase decision.
These terms are often looking for crucial details about a product or service and are some of the most common search terms. These buyer keywords indicate a high intent of purchase, but still haven’t specifically called out your brand.
The words used in these types of keywords include:
- Alternatives
- Reviews
- Best
- Price Comparison
- Vs.
- Options
- Low Purchase Intent Keywords
While it’s important to identify which keywords are indicating a high intent to purchase, you also should know which keywords are the opposite and indicate a low intent to purchase.
When you know which keywords aren’t being used by those who want to make a purchase decision, you can make sure you don’t use them in your copy to avoid getting traffic on those searches.
The most common low intent keyword is “free” and any other iteration of that, but it’s also important to remember that this could be useful if you do offer a free version of your solution.
Just be sure to think about the value of low purchase intent keywords before adding them to your pages.
How to Identify Buyer Keywords
Now that you know the different types of buyer keywords that a search term could fall under, let’s learn more about how you can identify which keywords you pull in your keyword research are buyer keywords and which are not.
This will help you understand your keyword data better and quickly pull out the keywords which are buyer keywords.
Find Core Keywords
To know when a keyword is a buyer keyword, you first need to know your core keywords. These are the keywords you pull out in your research that are related to your services, products, industry, and brand.
Then, this will take some time to build, so be sure to complete keyword research frequently to get your core keyword list.
Use Keyword Research Tools
Keyword research tools are incredibly valuable and can help you get your research done faster while gaining more valuable insights than if you tried to research keywords manually.
These tools can help you determine user intent and find the specific keywords for different buyer keyword categories.
Run Testing
As with all aspects of digital marketing, you need to test your theories and monitor your results. Try using different versions of buyer keywords in your paid ad copy and see which brings in more results and which aren’t getting the feedback and clicks that you expected.
Audit and Update Your List
Keywords and keyword rankings are constantly evolving. To be successful in SEO marketing and keywords, you need to be constantly auditing and updating your lists and figuring out where changes are occurring.
Wrap Up
Buyer keywords help brands learn more about their audiences, determine what stage a buyer is in during their journey, and signal when a buyer is actively looking to purchase a product.
When you understand the buyer keywords that are relevant to your brand, you can optimize your SEO strategies and target the high intent keywords that will be most beneficial to growing your business.
There are many factors of a successful SEO strategy, and keywords are just part of that. It’s also important that you are ranking for local searches in your area.
To learn more, read our blog on local SEO ranking factors you should be aware of. There you’ll discover the importance of local SEO and how to optimize it in your strategies by focusing on key ranking factors. Click on the link to get started now!
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