Keywords by Industry: The Top Traffic-Driving Terms for Every Industry

Did you know ‘AirBnB’ is the most searched keyword in the hotel industry and in the entire travel & tourism industry? That’s quite remarkable because, after all, the site offers accommodation without any additional travel-related services.

And did you also know in the fashion industry, brands receive between 20%-40% of traffic via paid search for targeted keywords? But the keyword ‘Zara’ bucks that trend with 98% organic traffic.

These are the kinds of noteworthy insights you get when you zero in on your industry when you do keyword research.

We’ve used Similarweb keywords by industry feature to extract the 20 most-searched keywords in top industries. The key takeaway: brand names are dominating the web. In every industry, the top brand names are also the top traffic-driving keywords.

Let’s look at some prominent industry sectors and their top keywords.

Keywords by industry

If there’s one thing you’ll take away from this article, it’s that brands dominate the industries and search. No matter which sector we checked, the top keywords are almost always the top brands. Luckily, with the Similarweb keywords by industry tool, you can filter out the branded keywords and see what else is trending.

Top hotel industry keywords

When looking at the entire tourism industry, you learn something about search behavior. We see searchers mostly check accommodation and flights separately rather than exploring combined vacation packages.

Therefore, rather than covering the entire travel and tourism industry, we made the same separation: Accommodation and Hotels in one list and Air Travel in a separate one. You’ll see which keywords are most searched in these categories in the US in 2022.

At first glance, it looks like travelers in the US are keen on private, alternative accommodation and less interested in traditional hotels. But when you consider competition, the picture changes. There are a lot more hotel chains than sites offering private accommodation.

Nevertheless, Airbnb grabs an overwhelming amount of search traffic.

Note that about a third of the traffic in this industry comes from paid search, which is relatively high, and the rest is organic.

Check out lines one and four: With Similarweb, you receive data for exact keywords. We do not combine similar terms, such as ‘airbnb’ and ‘air bnb’, which makes for exceptionally high granularity and research accuracy.

Did we mention that brands dominate the search space? Well, we can’t stress that enough. In this industry, it’s the online brands that seize the biggest traffic chunk. The only non-branded keyword in position 5 is ‘hotels’, and even that’s the name of a website. The next is ‘hotels near me’ in position 35 and ‘hotel tonight’ in position 44. They are noteworthy, especially for local SEO.

Top air travel industry keywords

The first thing to notice is the ratio between organic and paid searches. The share of paid search is significantly lower than in the hotel industry. Strikingly, the traffic generated by the most searched keyword, ‘American airlines,’ is 99.99% organic.

You may wonder where popular flight tracking sites come in on this list. ‘FlightAware’ appears in position 26, followed by ‘Flight tracker’ in place 28.

And what about non-branded terms? Besides ‘flights’, ‘cheap flights’, ‘cheap tickets’, and ‘airline tickets, the keywords lack significant search volume.

Ecommerce and retail industry keywords

In the COVID-year 2020, ecommerce turned into a fierce competitor for retailers and grabbed substantial portions of the markets. The retail industry had to adapt quickly, and many stores established an impressive online presence. Some of the big names have made it into the top list for top ecommerce keywords.

As for the top ranks, there are no surprises in this category. Amazon dominates the ecommerce and shopping space. The search volume for ‘amazon’ as a keyword is almost four times that of eBay, which is next in line.

Here’s an intriguing finding specific to this industry: Branded keywords don’t necessarily drive the highest traffic to the brand itself. Compare the keyword with the traffic leader for the keywords. The traffic leader is the URL that receives the highest traffic share for this keyword in the industry.

We wanted to see how this list would look if we removed all the brand keywords. What keywords drive traffic in the ecommerce industry, other than the big, popular brand names, and who gets the most traffic from those?

The outcome was interesting, but not in the way you might expect. When people aren’t searching brand websites they are searching branded products. We learn that most of the traffic to Amazon comes from people looking for Amazon’s branded products or other brand products.

You could narrow down the search to an area in ecommerce. For example, you might want to identify the top keywords that generate traffic to price comparison sites or coupon sites.

We decided to go in a different direction for this industry. Ecommerce is heavily impacted by trends, so we wanted to see which keywords are new in this sector. With Similarweb, you can discover new keywords that people didn’t search in the previous period.

Again, Amazon is the big winner and secures most of the traffic. But take a closer look at the types of keywords. The top organic keywords are names of movies, shows, or books. Few searchers use a product description to find what they are looking for. When shopping, people look for brands or known sites.

Top Fashion and Apparel Keywords

Fashion and shopping go hand in hand. If your business involves selling clothing, shoes, or accessories online, you should definitely check SEO keywords for the fashion industry.

Despite the boost online shopping has received in the past two years, only the Chinese fast-fashion site SheIn manages to grab more traffic than its retailer competitors. Less than 60% of that is organic, whereas its American competitor Asos (in position 12) receives almost 99% of its traffic through organic search.

It’s once again apparent how powerful brands have become. As a smaller, less-known site, your SEO research for high-potential keywords needs to go deeper.

Removing the branded industry-specific keywords gives you a glimpse at what type of fashion items people look for online. Sports shoes capture the first ranks, only interrupted by ‘lingerie’ in position 5. Different types of dresses also appear repeatedly on the list of top 20 keywords.

You can take your industry keyword research a step further. Similarweb lets you filter out all keywords with decreasing search volume. In other words, you’ll get a list of keywords with rising search volume.

For this category, it may also be valuable to look at ‘shopping searches’ only. You can also tick ‘Trending terms’ or ‘Question keywords’ and select the search type. Make the most out of the industry keywords

Top banking and lending keywords

Let’s hop over to a completely different industry. Online banking is another area that has become increasingly popular in recent years. The sector received a boost during the COVID19 pandemic. Traditional banks are trying to catch up with digital services, and it seems they are doing a good job.

Paypal was a pioneer in offering selected financial products long before all this turned into a popular topic for discussion. It’s still the most searched keyword in this industry.

Top insurance industry keywords

With digitalization advancing, insurance companies recognize the opportunity to offer more efficient services to their customers. Many companies also provide a wider variety of products.

Notice the high volume of organic vs. paid traffic share. This may be taken as a sign of a genuine need for online insurance services. Companies don’t need to invest a lot of money to attract visitors.

Looking at non-branded keywords in the insurance industry, you get an idea of the most searched types of insurance people are interested in. And the results are quite stunning. ‘Renters insurance’ and ‘dental insurance’ seem to be the audience’s biggest pain points. Considering the ratio between organic and paid search traffic, we see that ‘dental insurance’ has the highest rate of organic right after ‘health insurance’.

You can also see that insurance companies compete for a lot of keywords because they generate a lot more traffic through PPC.

Top consumer electronics keywords

It sounds like a vast industry sector: consumer electronics. But once again, brands dominate the industry – one in particular: Apple. The brand grabs the highest volume of website traffic generated by branded searches or people searching for the brand’s products.

However, the big winner of the keyword competition is BestBuy. The brand name as a core keyword generates nearly twice as much traffic as its trendy competitor.

Samsung managed to put its logo on the top-20 keywords list for this industry as well. However, Apple reaps most traffic. No matter how you look at the list, Apple products dominate the consumer electronics industry on the internet.

Top health industry keywords

COVID-19 is still top of mind in the health industry. Even though the most searched keywords aren’t directly related to COVID, a look at traffic-receiving websites reveals that the content often is. Even in the health industry, popular brands take the top places. Most of the traffic-receiving websites display COVID-related content, like this article on AARP.

A look at the non-branded keywords for the pharmaceutical industry confirms that the pandemic is still part of everyday life. 13 of the 20 most searched keywords in the industry are directly COVID-related.

Top nutrition, diet, and fitness keywords

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is a growing concern for many consumers. It involves the critical monitoring of food intake and physical activity. It’s interesting to notice that fitness-related keywords outweigh nutrition and diet topics. In fact, the first keyword aiming at dieting appears in position 12, and almost 40% of the traffic comes from paid searches.

Top logistics industry keywords

This industry probably has the most boring list of top keywords. 12 of the top 20 keywords are either brand-only or the word ‘tracking’ in combination with one of the four biggest logistics companies in the US: USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL.

When we look at the numbers, though, it’s apparent that the United States Postal Service is the big winner.

So, let’s scroll beyond position 20 and see what else people search for. People are interested mainly in post-office-related services. Some other traffic drivers are related to storage facilities and truck rental.

In position 22, there’s an unusual search term: ‘USPS careers’. It seems the company has a reputation for being a pleasant place to work.

To get a list of keywords for a specific niche of logistics, you could apply keyword filters or create a custom industry that includes up to 300 websites of your choice.

Top humor and entertainment sector keywords

Memes, Gifs, and Shorties – the internet has its own humor genre. It’s actually almost an industry of its own.

What might be interesting for SEOs and marketers is that these funny little items generate 100% organic traffic.

Why do you need to find industry-specific keywords?

1. Keyword relevance

We all know researching keywords is critical to find popular search terms that will drive traffic to your website. But what if most of the traffic volume for your favorite keyword goes to companies in a different sector?

That’s not an off-the-wall thought. If you run a health food store and have a special offer for organic apples, the keyword ‘apple’ seems obvious, but most searchers using it aren’t interested in nutrition.

The traffic volume for a targeted keyword may be impressive, but you can’t be sure that the traffic is related to what you offer or even the industry sector you’re in. It could be someone else’s brand name (and that’s just one possibility).

2. Keyword specificity

You may miss valuable keywords that are specific to your industry but the search volume isn’t large enough to show up in your research when your tool measures the entire web traffic.’Airplanes for sale’ is insignificant as a keyword unless you are in the aviation industry, and ‘fishboatgear’ only has potential when you are in the boating industry (you can check for yourself.).

But we aren’t only talking about professional jargon. You could pass over terms that audiences in your industry use more than in other industries. Each audience has its preferences and by analyzing keywords by industry you can discover what they are.

3. Keyword Potential

I know, to get more specific in your keyword evaluation you select your five top competitors or the industry leaders to identify additional high-potential keywords. But that’s a tiny slice of a big cake – more like picking the cherry off the icing. Keywords by industry overcomes this and throws up websites you wouldn’t regularly look at. It lets you catch on to new and special terms and trends.

4. Competition

To get the right traffic, you need to know what’s happening in your competitive environment. You want to hone in on your market to make sure you know which search terms people use to get to sites in your industry. This allows more focused targeting. You get to identify industry-specific keyword trends and search terms that are unique to your industry.

Pro-Tip: Use competitors’ branded keywords to your advantage. Analyzing them provides insights into your competitors’ focus areas. For example ‘Walmart clothes’ – if it has lots of searches and gets visits, it’s likely among their priorities.

How to find keywords by industry with Similarweb

Similarweb Digital Marketing Intelligence Platform lets you choose from over 200 industries and sub-industries. Each category includes hundreds of websites operating in that industry.

You receive the actual search traffic and keyword data that provide you a realistic view of search behavior and keyword performance in your market. Rather than spreading your keyword research thin and start making guesses about your sector, you can reach informed, data-based decisions to refine your SEO. 

Also, use the additional keyword research tools and SEO features to dig deeper into the performance of each keyword. Similarweb’s keyword analysis includes stats on search volume and visits, organic and paid search competitors, SERP features, related keywords, and other valuable insights.

If you operate in a highly specific industry sector or want to hone in on a smaller niche, you can create custom industries. Just think, you can monitor, track, and benchmark traffic to a selected group of websites. Instead of a small selection of five URLs, you can add up to 300 and stay on top of their action.

Get keywords for your industry sector

Finding industry-related keywords helps you get more focused in your keyword research more quickly. Engaging in extended research for a keyword only to discover at the end of the process that this keyword is prevalent in an industry sector unrelated to what you offer is frustrating and a waste of time.

With the Similarweb keywords by industry function, you can avoid doing unnecessary work. At the same time, you discover details about your competitors, search trends, and how audiences search.

FAQs

How do I find popular keywords in my industry?

The easiest way is to use a keyword research tool that offers a ‘keywords by industry’ function, like Similarweb. Simply select your industry and get the most-searched keywords in that market.

What are industry keywords?

Industry keywords are search terms and phrases that belong to a specific industry or are characteristic of an industry. This could be products, professional language, or otherwise related terms.

Why are industry-specific keywords valuable for SEO?

Industry keywords help you hone in on your target audience. When optimizing for keywords that are unique or particularly popular in your industry, you increase your chances of reaching your potential customers.