Hawaii SEO – The Common Keyword Types (Part 1)

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What Are SEO Keywords? and Why SEO Keywords Are Important? have already been discussed. Also, the topic on Where to Put SEO Keywords? is already done. Now, I want to discuss with you the different types of keywords and some examples. This is to help you in effectively conducting your website’s keyword search.

Choose your words tiles

Branded and Non-branded

  • Branded search contains a specific brand. Meanwhile, the non-branded terms contains the generic terms related to the keyword.
  • Moreover, branded keywords include brand names, parent companies, business acronyms, and anything to do with the brand. On the other hand, the non-branded keywords often relate to a businness campaign or a customer issue.
  • Generally, the branded keywords give a website its highest converting traffic since the search has already made up his/her mind. There is an intent to specifically search for the product.

Here are some examples:

  • Costco, Target, or Walmart (Branded) vs discount retailers (Unbranded)
  • Miami Heat, Los Angeles Lakers, or Boston Celtics (Branded) vs famous basketball teams (Unbranded)
  • Asus, Dell, or HP (Branded) vs best laptops for students (Unbranded)

Seed and Page-Specific

  • Seed words are your set of initial keywords, and these are the words that you start with. Like a flowering plant, it initially starts as a seed. Meanwhile, the page-specific keywords are the fruits of your growing plants. These are the keywords that you discovered later in the process. As the name suggests, page-specific keywords are only good or suitable for specific pages and not the entire site.

Examples for Macy’s:

  • Seed: Shop Fashion Clothing and Accessories
  • Page-specific: Women’s Clothing, Jewelry, Watches

Head and Long-Tail

  • The head are the terms with the highest number of searches, and the long-tail only has a low number of searches. This is because the long-tail keywords are very specific. The terms in the middle are referred to as the chunky middle or the torso.
  • New searches on Google are mostly considered  long-tail queries. So, how to differentiate the two?

The Main Difference

  •  Head Keywords
    • High search volume, but low in terms of conversion
    • Few words needed, but the competition is high
    • Applicable for top-tier web pages because of the user’s multiple search intents
  • Long-tail Keywords
    • Low search volume, but the competition is NOT stiff. Thus, it is easy to rank for these keywords.
    • High converting traffic because the user search for specific words.
    • Since it has a specific search intent, it meant for singular web pages.

Here are some examples:

  • Head: Taylor Swift
  • Long-tail: What is name of Taylor Swift’s pet cat?

Primary and Secondary

  • Primary keywords, also referred as the targeted or  focus keywords, are the integral keywords in a page.
  • On the other hand, the secondary, known as the tertiary or supporting keywords, are the other keywords related to what you are targeting for. Secondary keywords do not have a high priority compared to the primary words.
  • Additionally, the secondary keywords serve as the long-tail base in order to give the primary keyword a much needed boost.

Here are some examples for a men’s clothing product page:

  • Primary: Hoodies and Sweatshirts
  • Secondary: free shipping, exclusive design, customized hoodie

More will be discussed on The Common Keyword Types (Part 2)