Among all the factors in digital marketing, keywords can be considered as the most essential.
What are keywords?
The words or group of words that we type in the search engine to find any information are called keywords.
Why are keywords important?
These are important because of its usefulness in various contexts.
If we do not type in the correct word, we will not be able to find what we are looking in the search engine.
when we do not use the right words in regard to our product or services while making website, then we would not be able to reach our right customers.
If search engine does not give proper results in relation to the words, then it will be of no use to user.
We can divide keywords into different types on the basis of use and impact.
Different types of keywords-
- Monetary keywords :
There are some words that are very popular and high in demand because of the commercial value they generate. These are the most expensive to buy at ads auction.
Example : Sale, discounts, coupons, buy, insurance, loan etc.
2. Branded keywords :
These relate to some specific brands that user may be looking in internet. It shows the brand strength among the public.
Example : Nike, Zara, levis etc.
3. Short tail keywords :
These are most commonly used for searching for the whole industry. These are also very competitive.
Example : Dog, school, hospital, medicine etc.
4. Long tail keywords :
Words that give information of specific nature can be called long tail keywords. And these are generally a group of words or phrases. These are least searched in the internet.
Example : Puppy of particular breed, a house with three bed rooms on the side of a river etc.
5. Location specific keywords :
These are only related to a particular location. These are used to find particular product or service in the neighborhood.
Example : Dental doctor in the Manhattan of New York.
6. Transactional keywords :
The words in this are in the form of group of words. These are used only when the intention is to make some financial transactions.
Example : Cheap hotels in Frankfurt during October book festival.
7. Informational keywords :
These are used when we want to know some facts or general information about something.
Example : How to make tea without milk.
8. Negative keywords :
Words which are not related to our business in any form come under this. These vary from person to person and business to business. We use it mostly when we have to place advertisements on internet.
Example : Cement will be a negative one for a person in computer business.
9. Navigational keywords :
We use these when we want to go to particular website and don’t know the way to go there.
Example : Zurich municipality, Cairo bank etc.
Steps to use keywords:-
We can use words in many ways like website development, online marketing etc.
Step-wise usage:
1. Do keywords research.
First of all, we need to find the words that are important and relevant with regards to our product or services, irrespective of whether we use in initial stage or while marketing.
And for that we need to do keyword research on internet. We can use keyword research tools provided on the websites like SEMrush, Word stream, long tail pro, google keywords planner etc.
Long tail keywords tend to be of more beneficial for a small firm in standing out and making their own mark in the market.
We can use words that are industry specific, segment specific and location specific.
We can search for relevant words which have low competition and high search volume.
2. Website development.
We need to use the keywords multiple times. It is essential to give sufficient clues to search engines what the website or page is about.
It is not necessary that we use these words in every sentence. We can spread it throughout the content.
We can use it in the title, first paragraph, heading or sub headings. Besides we can also use in the image file path, Meta description or in the URL if possible.
We need to continuously update our words and the content from time to time.
It is very important that we use words that are relevant to our product or service. Otherwise it will have negative effect on our website rank.
3. Online marketing.
If we don’t market our website, no one knows about its existence as there are millions of websites on similar type of content.
A small firm has a limited budget and it needs to have strategy that takes care of the budget and reach to the potential customers.
To understand it fully, let us break down the whole process.
Auction process:
- All ads go through auction process before they are placed for customers.
- The auction starts as soon as you enter your targeted key words.
- So before we enter into auction process, we need to be clear on following points. (a) On which keywords we want to bid. (b) How much we plan to spend on ads.
- Search engine decides if the chosen keywords are relevant to your product or services, then you are allowed to participate in the auction.
- If you win auction, you ads start appearing.
- In the auction process, stress is given on the maximum bid and the quality score of your ad.
- What is maximum bid?
- Maximum bid means how much money you are going to spend on per click of advertisement.
- what is quality score of ad?
- Quality score is based on the quality of ad. And that implies how much relevant it is to the product or services.
- And then ad rank is given.
Analysis:
So we can see that in this process expenditure of budget will be decided by the choice of keywords.
Keyword that is most competitive and has high search volume will be in more demand among advertisers.
That means more price and hence increase in ads cost.
Now we need to choose whether we go with those keywords or opt of less competitive long tail keywords.
Short tail keywords tend to be broad, vague and general. Lots of people search for those words. So traffic will definitely increase to our website.
Question we need to ask, do we need huge volume of traffic of window shoppers or opt for low volume of real buyers.
At the end of day, we need to strike a balance between the two for optimum results.
Conclusion
Keywords are essential for digital marketing and one should spend time to choose keywords wisely to have maximum impact in digital space.