User intent
To better understand which keywords to use on the site, you should first understand their classifications. Depending on the user’s intentions, they are divided into the following types of key queries:
- transactional;
- informational;
- navigation;
- multimedia;
- general.
Transactional – a type of request related to commercial activities. Users enter them in order to make any purchase or order. The promotion of this type of keywords is most useful, as potential buyers or customers go to the site from search results.
Information queries are entered to search for information. Most often they are built in the form of a question, they contain the words: “how”, “where”, “what is”, etc. The purpose of the user is to get an answer on the site. Information requests include queries of the form: “(any term) this.” They are not built as a question, but imply it.
Note: do not make hasty conclusions about the value of information keywords for business. There is also a commercial intention. This is the likelihood that the Internet user who enters the request will complete the target action. For example, “how to choose a fishing rod” is an information request, but he has a high commercial intention, because he is most likely to be introduced to make a purchase later.
Navigation-related to the search for an object. These include keywords where the name of the company, Internet resource, brand, etc. is present. If the user mentions your brand, he already Multimedia searches are keywords related to various formats of content: photos, music, or videos.
General queries do not contain information about the user’s intent. For example: “stretch ceilings”, “Samsung smartphone”, “chandeliers”, etc. It is not known exactly what the purpose of the search is to buy or find out more. Because the traffic attracted by them, as a rule, is poorly converted into customers.
Geo Dependence of Search Phrases
The relevance of the search for some phrases depends heavily on the location of the user who enters it. For example, if a person is looking for “order sushi” or “pizza delivery”, the search engine will take into account its location and provide a list of sites of establishments located in his city. Such queries are called geo-dependent.
Frequency and Competition
It is also important to pay attention to the frequency of use. Users often search for some queries, others less often. Depending on the frequency, they are:
high frequency (HF);
midrange (MF);
low frequency (LF).
Such a gradation is conditional, since it strongly depends on the popularity of the site itself. Therefore, the high-frequency keyword is considered not one that is entered by users more than a certain number of times a month (1000, 10,000, etc.), but one that is used more often than other requests in the field in which the site operates.
Most often, the frequency depends on the specifics and length of the request. So the general query “laptop” is often searched. The phrase “asus laptop” is more specific, it is used less often. The request “buy an asus laptop” indicates the intention of the user, he has a lower frequency. And the phrase “buy an asus laptop in Moscow” is used much less often than all of the above.
The higher the frequency of using the phrase, the higher the competitiveness in the results. But not always. The level of competition also depends on the value of the key for the business – the user’s commercial intentions. If this is a general request, then it leads to low-conversion traffic, so there is no point in optimizing individual pages specifically for it.
Low-frequency queries result in the least amount of traffic, but this is not a reason to underestimate them. The more specific the request, the higher the likelihood that the user will make a purchase, order, or other targeted action. Therefore, expanding the NL, you should not ignore the keys that are rarely searched for. Often, they can lead the most conversion traffic.