You know keywords are crucial to your success with an online affiliate marketing business, but do you know the different types of keywords….
Different keyword types achieve different results: knowing the different types can help you achieve success in ads, content marketing and planning your site.
With these different types of keywords you can cover the whole of your strategies to make money online. They cover from knowing your audience through to how to get Google to show your ads to the right people.
Let’s get to know them a bit more…
Keyword types
Didn’t realise there were different keyword types….
Well this post will go through 13 different types to show you that there is more to keyword research than just choosing a keyword for your article….
From what your customer is typing into google through to the type of keyword that is easy to rank for, they are all in here…
So let’s get started with customer keywords…
Customer keywords
How your customers search online will affect how you target them.
There are three main categories of keyword that your customer will use to get from knowing they have a problem to purchasing a product or service.
You funnels on your site can interrupt their journey at any stage in their journey.
Once on your site ideally you will lead them down the rest of the funnel.
1. Informational
The ‘i know i have a problem that needs solving’ keyword.
They have come up ith the fact that they need a new coat for winter.
The first query maybe ‘coat’ – just to have a broad look at what is out there.
Google will return from this a number of ecomm sites that will be very hard to beat.
So unless you are a major authority site then it is not worth looking at these keywords…
2. Navigational
They have now found that they like the idea of a wool coat…
So the next search query is ‘coat wool’ or ‘wool coat’
This search still gives them ecomm sites and both ladies and men’s coats ….
Refining it more…
‘ men’s wool coats’ will bring up all the sites that are targeted towards men’s woolen coats.
They may go onto look for information on the types of wool coats or styles that they like.
If you can get your site to rank for questions that maybe asked for products then you can interrupt the buying funnel from the ecomm sites here….
You can also create reviews which are comparing products side by side of the same type or even different types.
But don’t give the customer too much choice or they may jump away from your site.
3. Transactional
Once the style and type…and even manufacturer has been chosen then the next type of keyword is the transactional.
So ‘ discount men’s rewool overcoat’ or ‘sale men’s rewool overcoat’ or ‘best price men’s charcoal everlane overcoat’
These are the customers who have credit card in hand to purchase and are looking for the best price.
If you have a smaller ecomm site then using the right words can allow you to hijack the consumer at the last minute and get the sale….
Keyword length
4. Short tail keywords or head keywords
The shorter the keyword the more traffic it usually gets…
So why don’t people target these types of keyword?
Normal sites would not stand a chance of ranking for these, so it is a waste of time creating articles targeting these….
Typical short tail words are ‘coats’ or ‘golf’
So they are very generic topics to start the gathering of data for the consumer.
They will have very large volumes of traffic, but are not realistic keywords to target, but can start the journey of finding niches or site keywords…
5. Mid tail keywords or body keywords
These are more specific keywords that are segmenting the main topic.
So ‘men’s coats’ or ‘putting golf clubs’
Again they maybe too generic to be targeted by affiliate websites, but can be useful for categories…
6. Tail keywords or long tail keywords
The favorite of the affiliate marketer…
The low hanging fruit…..
The very specific selection keywords.
Such as ‘ wool men’s coat’ or ‘callaway putters’
These keywords may not have high volumes of traffic but are far down the buying funnel – so the traffic they do get is very interested in the product…
These are the main target keywords of smaller affiliate sites to bring in the buyers.
Onpage keywords
But what do you do with these keywords…
How do they magically get google to know what your article is about and why does it put this site above that one….
The overall ranking process is dependant on over 200 items- most out of your control.
So marketers make the most of what they can control.
And one of these things is where and what keywords they use…
7. Primary keywords
Each and every article you write should have one and only one primary focus or keyword.
This way you are putting all of your efforts into ranking for that one keyword.
Yes you will get more selected by google, but you are focusing on only the one.
This makes your article very targeted to a specific audience with a particular problem.
Yes it may not be in the thousands of visitors, but write loads of these and you site will soon be attractive to your audience.
Google will also be able to easily pick out your main topic and keyword without ambiguity.
So picking one question and creating an article to fully answer that question will keep you on target.
For example ‘ is a wool coat waterproof’
8. Related keywords or lsi
But every main topic will have other words associated with them(semantic keywords).
So taking the above ‘is a wool coat waterproof’
There will be other supporting ideas to help make sure google knows what the article is about.
‘how to dry a wool coat’ or ‘will a wool coat stay warm when wet’ are talking about the wool coat after it has been made wet.
But you would also talk about the natural waterproofness of wool and whether this lasts and what you can do about it.
Creating a complete answer that your customer will then click on the call to action of choosing your wool coat.
Google ads keywords
Instead of waiting for organic traffic from the search engines, some marketers need to know whether the idea is 
going to work.
So you can advertise and drive traffic to your site.
But to advertise you need to select an audience to present your advert to.
And this is done with keywords.
9. Broad match keywords
If you are looking for a very large market then this is the type of keyword you may look at.
But google will take each word from the keyword and similar words, plural words and show your advert to anyone having those words in their search query.
So leaving a broad match keyword as ‘men’s wool coats’ will allow google to match anyone who searches for any on the words.
If someone searches for waterproof coat, then it will trigger your ad to appear…
As it will for men’s shoes…
So it maybe worth restricting google a bit more or it will burn through your advertising budget in next to no time…
10. Modified broad match keywords
Allowing a broad match opens the number of people you can have your advert placed in front of, but maybe you want people looking for wool coats and you are not bothered whether it is men, women or children…
You can modify the above keyword by placing + in front of the words that must appear in the search query.
So ‘men’s +wool +coats’
Will limit the advert to showing to people who include wool coats in their search….
‘coats made of wool ‘ will show but ‘men’s shoes’ the ad won’t be shown…
Saving you money and choosing a more targeted audience.
11. Phrase match keywords
To have an even more targeted audience you would start to use a phrase match keyword.
This will show the advert for search queries that add words before and after the phrase.
An exact keyword of ‘wool coat’ would show for a search query of ‘ men’s wool coats’ but not ‘men’s waterproof coat’
It will also be shown for close variations…’woolen coats’
So you maybe losing some audience that would be interested in your product, but at the same time the audience you do pick up will be more targeted.
12. Exact match keywords
Getting even more specific can save you money, but only if you really know your audience..
So ‘wool coats’ as an exact match keyword would be shown for ‘coats of wool’ but not ‘blue wool coat’
With this keyword you must know what your audience will exactly type into the search box.
You can combine all of the types of keyword in an ads campaign so that you get a spread of audience.
Then you hone down the keywords that are working and get rid of the rest…
So it is not fixed in stone once you start an ad campaign going…
13. Negative keywords
But if your keyword can have more than one meaning, what stops the ad showing in the wrong place and costing you….
This is where the other side of the keywords comes into it.
The negative keywords.
They are almost as important as the keywords themselves.
These can be a mix of the above types, the broad, broad modified, phrase and exact.
But stopping the ads being shown for these words.
So say you have a range of coats but not wool coats then one of your negative keywords would be ‘wool’.
As your ad campaign progresses you will start to see a list of keywords it has been shown for and you can build up your list of negative keywords to exclude certain audiences who won’t be interested.
This will help with your ROI and google’s algorithm for choosing your audience.
So are the types of keyword important
Yes they are…and learning how to match the right keyword for the right place is important for your business to grow.
Just placing all the keywords your articles are targeting in
to broad match keywords for google ads would probably not give you much of a return.
Or targeting informational keywords and wondering why no one is converting.
But finding the right strategy for your business and optimizing keywords will help your ad campaigns and funnels on your site.
If you are interested in a course that teaches you all about keywords and the rest of the in’s and outs of affiliate marketing.
Then why not try it for free – you get level one of the course to see if you like it and a website to follow along with the building your online business with.
Come and meet the like minded active community, who will help you out if you need a hand.
Try out your Wealthy Affiliate free account today….