Your website visitor’s search intent is extremely important when developing a keyword strategy. What do they want to achieve and why? Answering those questions helps you define the different categories of keywords you target, with potential intent ranging from merely searching for information to being ready to make a purchase.
It’s the latter search intent we’ll focus on here as we explore transactional keywords and how to conduct the necessary keyword research to ensure you implement these important sales-focused keywords into your strategy.
What Are Transactional Keywords?
Also called “buyer keywords,” transactional keywords are any keywords a searcher might use that indicate their intent to take some form of action on a website. This action isn’t limited to buying your product or service. It could be any form of conversion, including signing up for a newsletter or a webinar. Basically, if it involves the visitor wanting something from you, the keyword linked to that action is transactional.
Transactional keywords are extremely high-value. By targeting them, you will reach more people who are ready to take some form of action with your business. There are plenty of examples, though any keyword that includes key phrases like “buy” or “order” generally showcases transactional search intent. Contrast these with informational keywords – typically using phrases like “what” and “where” – and you see a clear difference. The informational keyword examples all show user-targeting phrases that help them learn more while the transactional keywords focus on action.
How to Find Transactional Keywords
You don’t want to unintentionally target informational keywords when you’re trying to reach people who are ready to buy. You need to know how to find transactional keywords that are relevant to your business.
Know your niche
Before you break out the keyword research tools, ask yourself a simple question – to whom am I trying to appeal with my conversion-focused keywords?
In other words, what you do and to whom you sell (collectively your niche) impact the type of search queries for which you rank.
Let’s say you have company specializing in compostable bioplastics. Your audience are businesses who care about the environment and need a sustainable alternative to plastics, which leads you toward the transactional keywords you should optimize for. A keyword like “alternative to plastic disposable plates” or “biodegradable food containers” could be good examples of keywords you’d use for this type of company.
Perhaps these are keywords with low search volume compared to other more general keywords, such as “eco friendly packaging,” but they also hone in on the specific audience and show you offer the products they want.
Understand what the user is purchasing
With your niche established, you move on to another question – just what is the user looking to purchase from your business? We’ve briefly covered this in the first step, but it’s here where you start with a list of services or products your company offers. From there, you distill. What would you enter into a search engine to find those services or products?
Answer that and you have the basis of a keyword strategy. You’ll want keywords that cover informational queries and navigational keywords that help the user get to information they need. Incorporate transactional keywords into those – remember phrases like “buy” and “sign up” and you have the foundation of your transactional queries.
Narrow down keywords with purchase intent
Having a foundation for transactional keywords doesn’t mean you have those keywords locked, loaded, and ready to go. Your next step is to narrow down the different types of keywords you’ve gathered to identify those capable of satisfying search intent for people who are ready to buy.
Keyword research tools – such as Moz’s keyword explorer or Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool – do a good job here. You can enter general search terms for your products or industry to pull up a list of related keywords in that tool. Use the filtering options to only show those with transactional intent and you should get a good list. This is also a great way to find keywords for link-building purposes outside of the transactional sphere.
You’ll likely find tools like Moz deliver many long-tail keywords in these types of searches. That’s okay. Long-tail doesn’t mean ineffective. More nuance within your keywords related to what your customer is buying may lead to less volume, but it also delivers higher click-through rates and more purchases – a good long-tail keyword with transactional intent delivers an average conversion rate of 36%.
Analyze competitor keywords
We recommend competitor analysis for every part of your SEO strategy – it helps with everything from designing landing pages to helping you create content – and it’s just as viable for finding transactional keywords.
Using keyword tools, you can find the keywords for which your competitors rank and, assuming you have the right tool, just how many people are landing on their site due to that keyword.
Use that information. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel and come up with brand-new keywords when your competitors offer transactional keyword examples you can use to inform your own strategy.
How to Use Transactional Keywords
With your list of transactional keywords ready, your next step is simple: figure out how to use them.
Create new pages targeting those keywords
Targeting buyer intent is made easy when you create new pages to target your keywords. Take our “biodegradable food containers” keyword as an example. That’s a perfect transactional keyword for a new page, or even a set of product pages breaking down each specific product, to which you can send the visitors who use your transactional keywords. Make sure those pages have a route to purchase so you can satisfy keyword intent and you have a more comprehensive website that leads to more conversions.
Optimize existing pages
Don’t ignore your existing pages when you’re creating new pages and optimizing for your target keywords. Optimize everything within an existing page that you believe could be used to target for transactional intent. Incorporate your new keywords naturally into the meta descriptions of relevant pages and title tags.
Target them in paid ads
The average conversion rate for all industries for Google paid ads across the search network is 3.75%, dropping down to 0.77% across Google’s display network. Those may not seem like high numbers until you realize that combining ads with the converting power of the right transactional keywords can easily take you above these averages.
Use paid ads as a supporting online marketing tool alongside organic search and you double your chances of getting a click from a user who’s ready to buy.
Identify your competitors
Transactional keywords are just as useful as competitor research tools as they are for driving people with purchasing intent to your website. Plug your transactional keyword ideas into Moz’s “Competitive Research” tool, for instance, and you can get a list of companies targeting the same keywords, including information about their domain authority and how much their services overlap with your own. Build on this by checking out the competitors’ sites to see what they’re doing (and not doing) to rank and you get the building blocks for an SEO strategy for your pages.
Transactional vs Commercial Keywords
People often confuse transactional keywords with those that have commercial search intent. It’s an easy mistake to make. Commercial intent roughly aligns with buying intent. But there’s a key difference – commercial keywords target a specific brand or product while transactional keywords are all about buying intent.
On the commercial front, somebody might search for “Starbucks Sunny Day Blend.” There’s clearly a brand mentioned here and it’s clear the searcher wants information – reviews and what the blend tastes like – ahead of making a purchase. A transactional keyword, as we mentioned earlier, targets searchers who are already preparing to buy. They’ve done their research and (hopefully) know about your brand already.
You need both types of keywords, but it’s the transactional ones that achieve conversions.
Examples of Transactional Keywords
Let’s look at a handful of transactional keyword examples. An “intent filter” of sorts so you can see what kind of phrases to add to your keywords to help customers along the buying process.
“summer dress sale under $50”
“car insurance sale”
“online therapy sale”
The use of the word “sale” tells you that not only is the searcher looking for a discount, but they’re ready to buy if they find one. Use keywords like this whenever you have an attractive offer.
“order gifts for her”
“order sustainable wooden toys”
“order craft supplies online”
“Order” is similar to “buy” in its purchasing intent. However, you may find better results using this phrase for something like a meal delivery business or any other product where the customer places an order as part of their purchase.
“Sign up for a [service name] newsletter”
We see a merging of informational and transactional keywords with “sign up.” You’re still getting a conversion – having somebody sign up for a newsletter means you can target them with email campaigns and the like – but the searcher is likely still in an information-gathering stage and wants to learn more about you.
Get Transactional with Your Keyword Categories Today
Transactional intent keywords aren’t usually keywords you use to increase your search volume significantly. You have informational, commercial, and navigational queries for that. Rather, these keyword types are all about getting you in front of a searcher at the point where they’re ready to make a purchase.
Do you need help to find keywords that lead to more conversions? Linkflow is here – schedule an intro call with our SaaS SEO specialists today.
