money keyword
Also called: money keywords, commercial keyword, buyer keyword, high-intent keyword
A money keyword is a high-intent search term whose searchers are close to buying, so ranking for it tends to generate sales or leads rather than just traffic. These map to Google's transactional "Do" queries (buy, order, hire) and commercial-investigation terms (best, review, compare, price).
Marketers split keywords by how close the searcher is to a purchase. A money keyword sits at the commercial or transactional end: the person has largely decided to spend and is now picking where. That is why a lower-volume term like emergency plumber near me or best CRM for agencies can out-earn a high-volume informational query like how does CRM software work, even at a fraction of the traffic.
How to spot one
Look for intent signals in the query. Backlinko groups the strongest ones as “buy now” words (buy, coupon, discount, deal, shipping) and “product” words (best, review, top, cheap, plus specific brand or model names). Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines put the same searches in the “Do” bucket, where the user’s goal is to buy, download, or obtain something online. A quick test: if the ideal landing page is a product, pricing, or service page rather than a blog post, you are probably looking at a money keyword.
One caveat. Money keywords are usually the most competitive and most expensive to rank for, because every competitor wants them too. Search volume is a weak signal here. A term with 200 searches a month and clear buying intent can be worth more than one with 20,000 casual browsers. The real work is matching each keyword to the page type that satisfies it, then earning enough authority to hold the position.
How it affects your traffic
Money keywords are where SEO turns into revenue, and also where most sites go wrong, either chasing terms they cannot realistically rank for or pointing them at the wrong page type. Picking the handful of commercial queries you can actually win, and mapping each to a service or product page, is the core prioritization work in an SEO Consulting engagement. Target them blindly and you burn budget on keywords that are too competitive to move or too broad to convert. Get the shortlist right and a small ranking gain lands directly on the pages that book leads.
Get SEO Consulting that moves the needle
We turn terms like this into ranked pages and qualified pipeline. Start with a free Initial SEO Strategy.