Keywords vs Buzzwords: How to Use Both in Your Marketing

Your choice of words matters in marketing. Certain words could help your marketing to stand out and possibly increase conversions. These types of words can be divided into two categories: keywords and buzzwords. What exactly are these types of words? This post goes into more detail.

What are keywords?

Keywords are words that can help to make your content easier to search for. They don’t really have any use in adverts (aside from search ads), however they can be essential when it comes to creating successful inbound marketing content such as website copy. Many companies – especially service-based industries – attract most of their new customers through search engines like Google and Bing. By adding the right keywords to the right pages on your website, you can increase the chance of customers finding your website on search engines. 

There are other places where you can use keywords too. This includes Amazon product descriptions for helping people to find your products on Amazon, Youtube video descriptions for helping to find your videos on YouTube and app descriptions for helping people to find your app in the app store. On social media sites like Twitter and Instagram, hashtags can meanwhile be a useful keyword tool for helping people to find your posts. 

What are some good ways to use keywords?

Keywords need to be carefully researched and carefully placed in order to be effective. When it comes to website content, there are a few tips that can be worth following to help use them correctly.

• Try to use the most important keyword in the heading. Other keywords may be possible to use in subheadings.
• Make sure to use keywords in the meta description. This is the small snippet of text that sits underneath your webpage search listing on Google and Bing.
• Keywords should be used through the content of a page, however the most important places to use them are in the first 200 words and last 200 words of an article.
• An overlooked place to use keywords is within image file names. Before uploading an image, consider renaming the file to incorporate the right keyword.

What are some bad ways to use keywords?

It’s important to use keywords naturally. Using keywords in an unnatural way is known as ‘keyword stuffing’ and can have very negative consequences. If you overuse certain words or try to awkwardly use certain phrases, it can distract readers and potentially put them off from using your company. Worse still, keyword stuffing may have the opposite effect of harming your rankings – modern algorithms are trained to spot unnatural use of keywords and will penalise web pages that don’t use them correctly.

How to get help with keywords

Tools like SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Keyword Generator and Mangools KWFinder can be worth using to help you find the right keywords. Such tools can tell you which keywords your competitors are using, as well as identifying potential overlooked keywords that could be worth targeting. 

Not all companies have the time for DIY SEO and you may decide that it’s better to outsource a company to handle your search engine optimization. Not only can these companies help you with keywords, but they can also help you employ other SEO tactics such as boosting webpage speed and building external links. As for marketing strategies like app search optimization and search ads, there are specialist companies that can help you with these.

What are buzzwords?

Buzzwords are words that can help to grab customers. Unlike keywords that are essential to inbound marketing, buzzwords have a much greater impact in outbound marketing. They are essential in adverts, email subject lines, social media posts and blog titles for pulling people in. However, they can also be used within content for keeping people engaged.

Such words can create an emotional response that can increase the chance of someone clicking. As with keywords, the way in which you place these buzzwords matters. It’s worth noting that sometimes a keyword can also be a buzzword. 

What are some good ways to use buzzwords?

There are a few tips worth following when using buzzwords successfully in your marketing: 

• Think about the emotions you want to provoke and the actions you want customers to take when choosing buzzwords. Words like ‘enjoy’, ‘tempting’ and ‘inspire’ are good examples.
• Place buzzwords at the beginning of subject lines, social media posts and adverts to hook people in straight away. Starting off strong is particularly important with email subject lines where only the first few words may be shown (particularly when viewing emails on a phone).
• In adverts, you can help buzzwords to stand out by highlighting them in bold, using a different font or using all caps.
• Buzzwords can also be used in voiceovers in audio and video ads. By placing emphasis on certain words you can make them stand out.

What are some bad ways to use buzzwords?

Much like keywords, you need to make sure that buzzwords don’t feel forced. Some companies make the mistake of trying to appear down with the kids by using youth slang – this can often end up coming across as cringeworthy. Overused buzzwords that have become cliched like ‘cutting-edge’ and ‘one-stop-shop’ are also best avoided as they can make your company appear unimaginative and dull. Finally, you should make a point of avoiding anything that could be deemed clickbaity. This includes hyperbolic words like ‘unbelievable’ and ‘groundbreaking’, which will have people rolling their eyes.

How to get help with buzzwords

There are many online guides that you can read to help identify the best lingo. For example, this buzzword guide features some fantastic words to try and use within your marketing (as well as a few buzzwords to avoid). 

You can always hire copywriters to help you naturally integrate buzzwords into your marketing copy. There are specialist copywriters who deal with certain types of writing tasks like emails or social media – they are likely to know the best buzzwords to get people interacting in these individual cases.