A keyword is a search phrase for which every website owner is trying to rank in search engines like Google. For example, Best Turkish restaurants in Qatar, Where to buy I Phone 11, Resume examples.
As per Google statistics by
Backlinko, 75% of the users click the first three results for any search query and only 0.78% users click anything on the second page. That means you will get more website visitors and thus business if you are in the first three results. Google ranks pages against keywords checking various factors like the density of the keyword and the relevancy of the website with the keyword and many other factors. To achieve this, we have to optimize our website contents with our target keyword.
Types of keyword
A one or two-word keyword is called a broad keyword and a three or more word keyword is called a long-tail keyword. Even though broad keywords are searched more and bring in high traffic, it also comes with high competition. So for a new website or even existing one, it will be very difficult to rank number one and is less likely to enter the first page of search results. Whereas, long-tail keywords bring a medium to low traffic with medium to low competition. And it is much easy to get into the first page within a few weeks with the right content.
Broad keywords can be again divided into two main types,
Navigational
Most of the broad keywords are navigational. For example, people just google the terms “Facebook” or “C# Corner” to get into their website, instead of typing their URL.
General
Example - Best Laptops, Top monitors
And long-tail keywords are mainly of 3 types.
- Informational
Example - How to learn Microsoft Azure.
If you have a content-based website or blog then you should target informational
- Transactional
Example - Buy charger for I Phone
If you have an e-commerce website or an online store, that is selling products, then you should target transactional long-tail keywords
- General
Example - E-commerce WordPress website
Why Long-tail keyword?
From the examples above you can easily understand that comparing to broad keywords, long-tail keywords bring in better conversations and lower bounce rates. To be more specific, when someone searches for the term “Digital Marketing”, he may get different types of results. Such as, what is Digital Marketing, how to learn Digital marketing, where to Learn Digital Marketing, Digital Marketing service providers. The shorter the keyword, the broader will be the range.
When the same person searches “Learn Digital Marketing, he is very specific and narrow. Here it tells the search engine what he needs is to “learn digital marketing” not any digital marketing service providers. Here he may get many online training providers and some offline training providers based on his location. When the user search “Learn Digital Marketing in Qatar”, here it is too specific or narrow in terms of targeting the audience.
And if I run a training center which provides “Digital Marketing Training” in Qatar, targeting this long-tail keyword will bring in better conversations and lower bounce rate. Otherwise, if you targeted the keyword “Digital Marketing” considering its high search volume and managed to appear on the top, when a user enters our website with the same keyword that may be looking for a service provider and found that we only provide training, he immediately will bounce back. Then he will start to finetune his next search. Increased bounce rate will affect your SEO ranking. So instead of targeting broad keywords, target long-tail keywords that bring business to you and make it a win-win situation for both the search user and you.
Why shouldn’t you target broad keywords for a new website?
As per the Google algorithm, Google will give priority to higher domain authority websites for broad keywords. So being a new website or low domain authority website, it is recommended to target low competitive long-tail keywords first, get initial traffic, get backlinks from higher authority websites. This will eventually increase your domain authority and then you can compete with these higher domain authority websites for broad keywords.