Boost Your Digital Marketing Strategy: The 15 Keyword Types You Should Know

In the world of SEO, keywords are everything. Here are 15 types of keywords in digital marketing that determine how you rank on search engines and what kind of traffic you get on your site. So what kind of marketing keywords should you be using?

There are many different keywords for digital marketing out there, and now’s the time for a deep dive into all of them. We’re going to start with the most basic and progress along to the more complicated. It is important to know about all the different types of keywords in digital marketing. 

If you’re looking to make your website more searchable, you’ve got to start thinking like a keyword. This can seem daunting at first, but it’s really just common sense: what do people type into search engines? 

When it comes to search engine optimisation (SEO), important keywords in marketing are the first and last step in a process that, when done right, can bring you a flood of people who are looking for exactly what you’re providing. If you’re not working with digital marketing keywords yet, you might want to start.

There are different types of keywords that you can use as part of your SEO strategy, and these all play a role in helping to bring your business more viewers and more customers. Understanding what each of them is, how they work, and how to use them is important if you want your SEO strategy to be effective.

Did you think there are 3 types of keywords? No, there are many different types of keywords you can use in SEO. Now, let’s explain types of keywords!

Branded Keywords

Branded Keywords in digital marketing are those that contain your brand name (or brand-related terms). If someone searches for “the best fruit-shaped lip gloss,” and your company is Lip Gloss Co., your branded keyword would be “Lip Gloss Co.” They’re important because they help people find your brand while they’re looking for you specifically. Branded searches are also useful in helping to determine the value of your brand and its popularity compared to other brands or products in that industry. 

Non-branded Keywords

Non-branded keywords are any words or phrases that don’t contain a company’s name or product name. In the previous example, “best fruit-shaped lip gloss” would be the non-branded keyword. These can be incredibly useful because they help people discover new brands and products they might never have known about before.

Seasonal Keywords

These are words that people only search for around certain holidays or events (for example, people searching for a particular type of gift around Christmas). Seasonal keywords can be tricky because they’re only useful for a short period of time.

Misspelled Keywords

These words contain spelling errors that people make when typing—for example, “lip gluss” instead of “lip gloss.” As with any SEO strategy, you need to even choose misspelled keywords to make your content rank. 

Related vertical keywords

These are words that are related to the product or service you’re selling, but aren’t directly related. For example, if you’re a lawyer in Bangalore, you’d want to use keywords like “Bangalore” and “lawyer,” but you might also want to use keywords like “court” and “case.”

Exact match keywords

These are words or phrases that exactly match the ones a user searches for. For instance, if your exact match keyword is “pizza delivery Hyderabad,” you’ll only rank when someone searches those three words. If they search “delivery pizza Hyderabad,” though, you won’t rank.

Broad match keywords

These are similar to exact match keywords, but they have a broader scope. With broad match keywords, your content will rank if it contains any of the words or synonyms in the phrase. So if your broad match keyword is “sports equipment,” your content would rank for searches like “football helmets” or “tennis racquets.”

Modified broad match keywords

Modified broad match keywords work just like broad match keywords, except there may be one or more terms, such as ‘colourful wallets’ or ‘men’s wallets’. 

Short tail keywords

Short tail keywords are exactly what they sound like: short phrases. Short tail keywords usually consist of one or two words and have a high level of search volume. However, in most cases, the traffic isn’t very targeted, so it’s hard to rank for short tail keywords. Additionally, there are likely already many companies who have already established their presence on these keywords.

For example, try searching for “SEO” in Google and see how many results you get back (hint: it’s over 1 billion). This is a prime example of a short tail keyword. While you may be able to rank for this term with massive amounts of time and effort put into your SEO campaign, chances are you won’t see any results unless you’re an SEO expert who has access to tools like Ahrefs, Semrush or Google Search Console.

Long tail keywords

Long tail keywords are great for your website because so many of them have good conversion rates. You’ll also find that long tail keywords are much easier to rank for than short tail keywords.

Long tail keywords are specific and easy to understand. They’re conversational in nature and make people feel at ease. They’re easy to rank for, they’ve got high conversion rates, they’re profitable! Use long tail keywords as much as possible.

Long-term evergreen keywords

Long-term evergreen keywords are keyword phrases that remain relevant for a long time. An example of a long-tail evergreen keyword is “how to make money from home.” Since these keywords are tailored specifically to your audience, the competition for these phrases can be high, but the payoff can also be big.

Include these types of keywords in every page on your website. To use our previous example, you might write a blog post called “3 Ways to Make Money From Home” and use “make money from home” as the SEO title for that post. In addition to using that phrase in your title, you should also include it at least once or twice in your content. If you mention it more than this, though, Google will flag your content as keyword stuffing. This will hurt your SEO ranking rather than help it!

Mid-term evergreen keywords

Mid-term evergreen keywords are going to be more competitive than short-term or long-term keywords. They’re also a little more specific than long-term keywords, but not as specific as short-term ones.

For example, if you’re selling hiking backpacks, some mid-term evergreen keywords might include:

• Hiking backpack reviews
• Best hiking backpacks for men
• Best lightweight hiking backpacks

Each of these keywords is highly competitive in SERPs (search engine results pages). One way to be sure you’re targeting the right mid-term evergreen keyword is to research your competitors by looking at what they target, and what’s working for them.

Short-term fresh keywords

You may be wondering what fresh keywords are and how they’re different from short-term keywords. Fresh keywords are ones that have recently trended upwards on a search engine like Google and often overlap with short-term, news-based keywords. This is why fresh keywords tend to be short, as most breaking news stories are usually reported within the same day.

Take the keyword “hurricane” for example – it’s a trending keyword that often appears on Google’s top 100 list. When you enter this keyword into Google Trends (the tool we use to find key SEO terms) you’ll notice that “hurricane” tends to spike in popularity throughout the summer months, particularly around early October when hurricane season is at its strongest.

Customer defining keywords

We’ve already learned that keywords are the words your audience types into search engines. We also established that, to be effective, they must be relevant to your website and content. But how do you know what is relevant?

In the initial customer journey, the keywords used by prospects in this research phase tend to be focused solely on the problem itself instead of a solution. Not only do these “customer defining keywords” have high monthly search volumes (MSV), but there is little or no competition from other marketers targeting them. Some examples include physiotherapist, video editor, and so on. 

Product defining keywords

Ever been at a loss for words? Your customers will be too if you rely solely on your definitions of products and services. Simply put, you can’t assume that people know what you mean when you talk about the products and services you provide. If they don’t understand, they won’t search for them—and they may well go to a competitor who better defines their offerings.

That’s why product defining keywords are important. Your competitors will have their own ways of describing the items you sell, which means there is room in the market for your own spin on things. For example, if someone searches for “iPhone 6 cases,” they might get results from companies like Case-Mate or OtterBox that target protective cases as an essential item for iPhone users. As opposed to “protective case,” these businesses have chosen to take a more specific approach: “iPhone 6 cases.” You can do the same for your brand!

Conclusion

Every website is different, and every topic has a specific audience. For example, let’s say you’re writing about an article on how to throw a baseball curveball efficiently. In this case, the content topic is specific; many articles on the same topic would have little relevance to your readers. An effective way of using keywords in professional-level articles like these is to use phrases that answer frequently asked questions (FAQs). These are questions that people often ask over and over again, but they don’t have their own FAQ page on the internet. Using phrases like “what kind of curveball should I throw,” “how do I throw a perfect ball,” or “how can I perfect my ball curve” will make your article unique and useful for those who already know about throwing curves. The comprehensive list given above kind of helps you arrive at your own list of keywords that you should target in your content marketing strategy. If you are not up to it, you can always get on a free strategy call with us, and let us do all this work for you. So you can focus on your core competency of growing your business.