Keywords in SEO their types and basic tools for phrase analysis

Adequate selection of keywords is one of the most important elements of building a website positioning strategy. It depends primarily on the goal we want to achieve by conducting SEO activities. 

Objectives of SEO actions

• Increase website traffic – the most obvious goal of activities, using keywords we want to generate as much organic traffic as possible on the site. 
• Acquisition of leads – within this objective we want to acquire very specific traffic – the kind that will result in a potential customer leaving a lead. Keep in mind that there are many types of leads, they can be shallow such as just an email address, but also deep, where we want the customer to leave us much more data. We will choose slightly different keywords for each of these variants. 
• Building brand image/awareness – under this objective, we want to build brand positions in the minds of potential customers. Thus, we will position phrases directly related to the industry to which the site relates.
• Sales – both products in the online store and services that may already be carried out offline. Here we will position phrases related precisely to these products and services. 

If we already know what specifically is the goal (or multiple goals) of the SEO efforts for the site, it is time to think about the selection of keywords. We can choose from several types, where each of them will be more or less suitable for our chosen goal. 

Keyword types

• GENERIC / NON-BRAND – general keywords characterized by high search volume. Usually short, one- or two-word keywords. If the site ranks high for these particular keywords, they generate a great deal of organic traffic. However, it is relatively difficult to get high positions for them, due to high competition. This type of keywords will work well if our goal is to generate traffic, sales and attract leads.
• HOW TO –  Keywords that constitute questions. They usually start with the phrases “How…?”, “What…?”, “What…?”. Usually long, in the form of a sentence. Such keywords in the search engine are typed by people interested in a specific, valuable answer to the question being asked. Such keywords are worth positioning if our goal is, of course, to attract traffic to the site, but also to build brand awareness. If our site appears in response to many questions on a particular topic, we will obviously be perceived as specialists in that very field.
• LONG TAIL – Long refined queries, consisting of many words, describing the product in detail. They are characterized by low search potential, but high conversion rates. When it comes to positioning long tail phrases, it’s all about their quantity, as individually they won’t provide us with much traffic, but on a large scale they can be a significant source of organic visits. Their undoubted advantages are the ease of positioning, due to little competition, and the low cost of obtaining high positions. Long tail phrases are usually typed into a search engine by people who specifically know what they are looking for, and instead of searching, for example, for “red bike”, they will search for “red mountain bike kross mtb woman”. For such searches, the purchase intention is always quite high. So these types of phrases will work best for the goal of acquiring leads and sales, and if positioned in high volume also for traffic generation.
• BRAND – Keywords containing the brand name in them. Usually there is no particular need to position them, because if a site is indexed, Google will naturally show it in high positions for keywords related to its brand. Sometimes, however, the service may show up in positions outside the Top3 for phrases like “brand + service name”, in which case it is worth positioning them to appear in the first positions and support our branding goal in positioning. 

We have already defined the goal of SEO efforts and selected the right types of keywords to achieve it. So we move on to the stage of selecting specific phrases based on their search potentials, difficulty and competitiveness. How to do this sensibly? This is where SEO tools come to our aid.

With what tools is it worthwhile to select keywords for positioning?

• Google AdWords – within the GA platform, a Keyword Planner is provided, which is a free tool. Within it, we can check the historical search volumes of our chosen keywords, but also receive suggestions for additional phrases that will allow us to reach search engine users who may be interested in our products and services. In Google AdWords we receive lists of phrases, which we analyze according to our own assumptions and needs, here we have no pre-selection on the part of the tool. 
• Senuto – we wrote more about this tool in a separate article. This is a paid tool within which we get a Keyword Database section. After entering 5 phrases related to our products and services, we get suggestions for many keywords, which we can filter according to predefined, but also our own parameters. We also have an analysis of words pre-divided into categories such as questions, dependent words and word groups. Within this tool, unlike Google Ads, partial keyword analysis is done automatically for us. 
• SEMrush – an American paid tool that provides support in many aspects of online marketing efforts. Within SEMrush you will find an entire “keyword research” section, where you will find such tools as Keyword Overview, which is one of the largest keyword databases on the market, Keyword Magic Tool, which is a tool that suggests keywords related to a particular industry or site on its own, Keyword Manager a tool that allows us to gather in one place keywords of interest related to a particular domain. Also appearing in the section related to content marketing is the Topic Research tool, which by design is intended to support us in building a content plan, but can also be a valuable source of keywords on which our competitors are visible. 

Commercial tools are, of course, many more, but the ones indicated above are able to assist us in building an SEO strategy and keyword selection comprehensively. 

Keyword selection, is an issue that should be analyzed in depth before starting SEO efforts. This is especially important because in the case of SEO, only by selecting phrases are we able to target our site to specific audiences. If we choose the wrong keywords, we may end up with our content to people completely uninterested in the services we provide or the products we sell.