Buyers Terms vs Shoppers Terms
Buyers Terms or Shoppers Terms ?
Bob from the land of Hotmail asks:
“What is a Buyers term and what is a shoppers term? I was reading a forum piece about search engine search terms and they were talking about buyers terms and shoppers terms, but I think I was the only person that didn’t know the difference!”
Hello Robert, first of all, it’s good to hear from you again and I hope the twins aren’t still keeping you up all night!
Buyers terms and shoppers terms are both important to a successful website, but many webmasters ignore buyers terms completely, which is a big mistake. Search terms, or key phrases, are split into two main categories: Shoppers terms and Buyers terms.
Shoppers terms are key terms like “Houses for sale”, “Search engine optimisation”, “Car for sale”or “Heating Engineer”. This type of general query tends to be used by people that are window shopping for general information about what is available in the marketplace, costs, availability, etc. Once they have done their window shopping, and they are ready to take their interest to the next stage in the buying process, they will generally search for more specific search term, unless they have stumbled across the ideal product or service when looking at shoppers terms. This is what we in the SEO business would call a buyers term.
An example of a buyers term would be “Edinburgh 2 bedroomed flat for sale” or “Search Engine Optimisation Stirling” , “Astra LX1.6 for sale in Stirling”, or “Corgi Heating Engineer York”. It’s important to optimise for the shopping search terms, but although the buyers search terms do not attract as much traffic, they have a much higher success rate. Someone finding you for a buyers term, is like someone walking into your store with a cheque book and pen in their hand, as opposed to glancing at your shop window on the way to buy a cup of coffee. The good thing is, buyers terms are easier to optimise for than shoppers terms.
I hope that answers your question Robert, but if you want further examples, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
