Use Buyer Keywords in your SEO to Increase Sales
In the post, I share with you how to use buyer keywords in your SEO strategy to increase sales. But first, let me say this. The difference between good SEO and great SEO is how much more sales your search engine optimisation efforts generate. Great SEO is focused on the exact outcomes your business needs whereas good SEO only generates some level of traction.
So, how do you take your SEO from good to great?
There are many aspects and areas in SEO that you need to get right. Here are SOME of the areas you need to get right.
- Meta title and description
- Website pages and posts (Content strategy)
- Internal linking and topic clustering
- Backlinks strategy
- Redirects
- Loading speed
- Technical SEO & UX
The first step is to focus on purchase intent which in the world of SEO, it’s often referred to as buyer keywords.
What is a buyer keyword?
A buyer keyword is a phrase, normally 3 or more keywords that people use in a search engine (Google) when they are looking for a product, service or a physical store. You’re probably thinking ‘but these keywords don’t have enough search volume’. Not true.
A study by Ahrefs shows that 29.13% of keywords with 10,001+ monthly searches are made up of three or more words. The good news is longtail keywords are typically more purchase intent oriented than short keywords.
For example, if you are looking for a barber shop in your area, you might search ‘barber shop near me’ or ‘best barber shop in Sydney’.
Buyer keywords are search keywords that indicate that the searcher is actively in the buying cycle, already aware of what they want and are considering making a purchase. In other words, they are more qualified and ahead in the buyer’s journey.
The Buyer’s Journey: A Quick Overview
To get a better grip at the concept of buyer keywords, you need to understand what a buyer’s journey is. A buyer’s journey is a process that a customer goes through when they buy a product or service. It begins from the point where they might not even be aware of their need for the product. And it ends when they make a purchase and then share with the world their experience with the business and product. There are a lot of mini steps in that process but to keep things simple, we’ll talk about three main stages.
Stage 1: Awareness
They find out about your product or service through search, social media or word of mouth.
Stage 2: Consideration
They do their own research and understand why this product or service is valuable to them.
Stage 3: Decision
They begin looking at alternatives, competitors and eventually make a buying decision.
Types of Buyer Keyword
Like I mentioned earlier, to build a great SEO (and digital marketing) strategy, you need to understand what buyer keywords are and the different types of buyer keywords.
You can’t optimise your website and focus your entire SEO strategy on every keyword and buyer keywords types. And so, you need to focus on the keywords that are most likely to convert into sales – at least as a starting point.
So, what are the main keyword types?
- Informational Keywords
Informational keywords are keywords that indicate that the searcher is looking for more information but not necessarily looking to make a purchase. For example, I just typed on Google “How to l” and google showed me some searches people search for.
Many of the informational keywords will have words like ‘how’, ‘tips’, ‘ideas’ etc. This type is the least type to convert. That’s not to say they are not important, but they indicate that the searcher is quite early in their buying journey.
- Navigational Keywords
Potential buyers use navigational keywords when they’re in the consideration stage are looking for that right product to buy. They decided to buy something but not sure where, who and how. And so, they are doing more research to close that gap. Navigational keywords can contain product name, or words like ‘reviews’, ‘price’, ‘best [product name]’, etc.
An example of a navigational keyword is ‘average price of a house in bondi’ or ‘iMac pro reviews’
- Transactional Keywords
Transactional keywords have the highest purchase intent. They indicate that the searcher is ready to buy. or “buy now” keywords are terms and phrases that have the most buyer intent behind them. The customer is ready and wants to buy, and the only question now is from whom.
An example of transactional keywords is ‘iMac pro best price’ or ‘best real estate agent in coogee’
How to find buyer keywords
Step 1 – Think like a buyer
It’s trivial but thinking like a buyer really helps you find buyer keywords. For example, if you own suits online store, what would you type if you search for your products? You might search using the following keywords
- How much does a nice men’s suit cost?
- What is a good brand of men’s suits?
- How many suits a man should have?
- What is modern fit in men’s suits?
- What suit type to wear for a wedding?
- Is it OK to wear a 3 button suit?
- What’s the difference between 2 and 3 Button Suits?
Step 2 – Use a search engine (Google)
Go on google and just search for your product and look for ‘People also ask’ section and the ‘Searches related’ section.
These two sections will give you a ton of ideas on what people are looking for and what content to create to create a better SEO strategy.
Step 3 – Use a keyword search tool
One of my favourite tools for keywords search is SEMRush and specifically their Keyword Magic tool. You can just type a high-level keyword and they’ll show you an extensive list of related keywords categorised by topics. For example, I typed ‘mens suit’ and look what I found. You get the volume, CPC, competition, difficulty, and few other things.
Create the right content strategy
It’s important to understand that buyers don’t buy right away. Everyone goes through a different purchase journey of different length. Some people are ready to buy now and some people are not. Structuring your SEO and content strategy should factor this.
For example, if you only focus on ‘buy now’ buyers, you’ll miss out on a large portion of your target buyers. And if you only focus on informational and navigational keywords, you’ll miss out on people who are ready to buy now.
Your goal is to be target buyers at every stage of the buyers’ journey.
Final word, your SEO should be a PART of your digital marketing strategy in order to win and compete in this day and age. One marketing channel is not enough for your business to grow.
I recommend that you consider creating a complete marketing strategy and omnichannel approach in order to scale and grow your business through online marketing.
