Keyword research is one of the most important skills that you need to master when it comes to blogging and content marketing.

Because without targeting the right keywords you won’t get the right traffic on your blog who’d likely convert to buyers.

There are two types of keywords:

  1. Informational keywords
  2. Buyer or transactional keywords

If you are selling any products or services online, you need to know how to research buyer keywords to target in your blog posts.

What are buyer keywords? Buyer keywords are those that are typed into search engines by the users prior to purchasing a product or a service.
Ex: best lens for macro photography, walmart eye exam coupon, etc.

Researching these type of keywords and ranking for them is of greatest importance for affiliate marketers, eCommerce owners, product owners, etc.

The sad fact is that finding buyer keywords with good search volume and low competition is a tedious job. But I will dumb down the entire process of finding low competition buyer keywords and will unveil some of the techniques I personally use to uncover the hidden gems.

Types of buyer keywords

#1. Buy now keywords

These are the keywords that people make, minutes or even seconds before their purchase.

The traffic that is driven by these keywords often converts well, as the users who are at the final stage of their buyer journey search for these kinds of keywords.

  • Coupon
  • Discount
  • Promo
  • Buy
  • Offer
  • Voucher
  • How to buy
  • Sale
  • Refurbished
  • Cheap
  • Bargain
  • Clearance
  • Expensive
  • Pre-owned
  • Premium
  • Great buy
  • On sale
  • Order
  • Cashback
  • Luxury
  • Best place to buy
  • Where can I buy
  • Affordable
  • Price
  • Deals
  • Purchase

#2. Product research keywords

These people definitely make their purchase but are still researching that perfect product to buy.

They are often searching for reviews of the product, and maybe some information related to the product that is crucial for making their purchase decision.

There are many search modifiers, among them the main ones are:

XXX Product Review
XXX Product Alternatives
Top 10 Best XXX Product (under $$$)
Cheap XXX Product
Product vs. Product – Comparison

These are the most common kind of keywords, people will be searching for when they are researching about any product online prior to buying.

You can see that the majority of the affiliate marketing blogs cover these kind of keywords.

#3. Informational keywords

These type of keywords often start with  “how to”. They are typically searched by people having a specific problem.

Here the conversion depends upon the urgency of the keyword.

If the searcher is searching for an immediate solution for a problem, the conversions will be more if you rank for the keyword.

  • How to cure
  • How to treat
  • How to build
  • Get rid of
  • How to build a
  • Alleviate
  • Quickly
  • Get rid of

The long tail keywords that start from “how to” can also be buyer intent keywords (how to accomplish a certain task).

When choosing this type of keywords, ​go narrow. For example, look at the below keyword examples.

  • Home studio
  • How to setup a home studio
  • How to setup a  home studio
  • How to setup a home studio on a low budget

As you can see in the above examples, the length of the keywords is increasing. The intent of the keyword is becoming more specific compared to the first example, which is vague.

When the search intent becomes more specific, you can easily determine what content to include so as to maximize the conversions.

Let me give you some more how-to keyword examples:

  • How to start a WordPress blog quickly? {promote hosting products}
  • How to lose weight fast with Paleo diet? {promote Paleo products}
  • How to boost social shares on WordPress sites? {promote social sharing plugins}
  • How to setup a home studio? {promote DSLR, Mic, Lights, etc.}

How to find buyer keywords?

If you are reliant on affiliate marketing for your online revenue, knowing about some of the effective ways to find buyer intent keywords is important.

For this, you need to make use of keyword research tools like:

  1. Keywordtool.io
  2. Keyword Planner
  3. SEMrush
  4. KeywordKeg
  5. UberSuggest

Here are some of the tweaks.​

For any good keyword research tool, there are filters for you to play with. These filters are great when it comes to filtering the keyword based on the intent.

1. Include buyer words: Include buyer words “include” section. You can look at the below screenshot to get an idea.

Include buyer keywords

Here are some of the words you can include (for more modifiers refer the list in the above section):

  • Best
  • Review
  • Coupon
  • Promo
  • Offer
  • Budget
  • Premium
  • Alternative
  • Cheap
  • Affordable
  • Buy
  • Compare
  • vs
  • Offer
  • Discount
  • Purchase
  • Voucher
  • Refurbished

2. Exclude free and informational keywords: Presence of some of the words in the keyword clearly shows that the keyword is of informational type and not buyer intent.

Here’s the little trick to filter out the majority of the informational keywords.

Negative words

You can also put “free” as a negative word, which kicks out all the keywords for free stuff.

Some more informational / negative words you need to exclude.​

  • What is
  • Why
  • When
  • Which
  • ​Who
  • Free
  • Types of
  • Symptoms
  • Causes
  • Effects
  • Directions

3. Keep an eye on high CPC keywords: Keywords that have high CPC often have more advertisers bidding for the keyword. The tip here is to target high CPC keywords as they are buyer keywords.

High cpc keywords

Wrap up

Buyer keywords convert well for advertisers, hence they bid higher for those keywords and CPC will be higher. The informational keyword typically won’t have any high value CPC.

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