Types of search queries: getting acquainted with the classifications

SEO promotion of any resource or the launch of contextual advertising always begins with preliminary work, namely with the collection of the semantic core. This is a set of key queries on the basis of which internal optimization of site pages will be subsequently performed. That is, this issue must be approached as comprehensively and professionally as possible, because these are the phrases that your potential clients will use to find your website in search results.

Now we will go into more detail about what types of search queries exist and how to work correctly with a particular group. Thanks to the information received site optimization will take place as quickly and professionally as possible, temporary and material costs for performing these works, and their efficiency will also significantly increase. We will also show you how to automate the process of collecting the semantic core without the risk of getting banned or running into other search engine sanctions.

Classification of search queries

Today there are 6 main parameters by which search queries are classified:

1. By frequency.
2. By competition.
3. By combination of frequency and competition.
4. By level of importance for business.
5. According to user information requests.
6. By user location.

Let's look at each of these categories in more detail.

Types of search queries by frequency

A parameter such as frequency refers to the number of the same phrase that users entered into a search over a certain period of time. The selection is often carried out for the last month, but if necessary, you can set it to any other time interval.

Depending on frequency, the following categories of requests are distinguished:

1. High frequency. They consist of one, maximum two words that directly reflect the product or service. Alternatively, it could be “glassware”, “doll”, “electric scooter”, “ski clothing”, etc. etc. Such queries can be entered by users at a rate of several thousand per month, which makes promotion on them quite problematic. This is especially true for large cities, that is, for an audience of millions. In such conditions, in order to bring your resource to the TOP, you will need to put in a lot of time, effort and money. At this stage, it is necessary to improve the technical parameters of the site and usability, and create unique, truly outstanding content. That is, in order to advance according to these words, you need to be better than your competitors in everything. That is why high-frequency keywords are usually used to a limited extent in search contextual advertising. From 1-2 words it is impossible to understand what exactly interests a potential client. Alternatively, the word “doll”. From it you can only tell what type of toy a person is looking for, but it is not at all clear whether he would like to buy it or whether he simply needs information about what age it is intended for, whether it is a regular baby doll or a themed doll. That is, purely high-frequency queries are used exclusively by large brands in their advertising. Those who are committed to full market expansion. The only thing where high-frequency queries have a lot of weight — this is a context in the Yandex advertising network, because they allow you to improve the reach of potential buyers.
2. Mid-frequency queries. Unlike high-frequency queries, such queries already consist of 2-3 words, for example “buy a Barbie doll”, “glassware for the oven” "Xiaomi electric scooter", "children's ski clothing" etc. That is, there are already specifics here, which makes it quite easy to understand what exactly a person is looking for and redirect him to the appropriate landing page. In terms of frequency, they will already be in the range of 500-3000 impressions per month. As you advance in search, mid-frequency queries will become simpler and more convenient. The only thing is that they need to be beautifully presented both in the metadata and in the text content of your resource itself. That is, it is on them that the main pool of keys will be formed both for search engine promotion of the site and for launching contextual advertising. But when advertising in affiliate networks, in the same Yandex Advertising Network, they are much less common.
3. Low-frequency queries. Similar queries are also called long tale, that is, queries with a long tail. Micro-low-frequency keywords also fall into this category. An example of such a decision is “buy a Barbie chef doll”, “order Reima children’s ski clothes for a girl in Ryazan” etc. Not so long ago, SEO optimization of website pages performed for low-frequency queries guaranteed 100% getting into the TOP. The only BUT – it was necessary to guess very accurately with user requests. Today, search algorithms have undergone significant changes due to improvement and development. As a result, this led to the fact that the same large-scale sites are ranked for queries presented in this category as for high-frequency ones. But for low-frequency and micro-low-frequency queries, it is very convenient to launch contextual advertising through a search engine. If the target audience sees an advertisement with the product or service that they are looking for at a given time, they will definitely click on it. This means that with a minimum cost per click you get the maximum number of conversions. But on the contrary, it is not recommended to use such a solution for advertising in affiliate networks.
4. Zero requests. This is another type of keywords, the frequency of which is not just low, but simply zero. But this does not mean that they should be completely excluded from consideration. Initially, you need to pay attention to their seasonality. Perhaps the demand for this product category is relevant only during a certain period of time. Such products include New Year's toys, garlands, swimming rings, armbands for children, valentines, etc. That is, if you throw them out of your consideration, then with the next increase in demand in the market, you will simply miss out on potential customers. Null queries can also be used as a source of potential semantics. You can use them to inform your audience about the products you have in stock. Here you can use display advertising campaigns, content marketing, and contextual advertising. If you approach this work correctly, you can easily move zero queries to low-frequency, or even mid-frequency ones.

Types of search queries by level of competition

As in the previous version, here you can already judge from the name the parameter by which key queries are classified in this case: by the frequency of use of certain phrases on competitors’ websites. The fact is that the more pages optimized for the same requests are on the network, the higher the level of competition will be, which means that getting traffic from them will be much more difficult and expensive.

So, depending on the level of competition, the following groups of key queries are distinguished:

1. Highly competitive. According to them, the search results are replete with authoritative sites containing valuable content. To get traffic for such queries, specialists spend a lot of money. This means that for young companies that are just opening their online presence, it is almost impossible to break into the TOP using such keywords.
2. Medium competitive. This category represents the majority of all those beaks that are used in practice today. These are exactly what SEO specialists focus on when optimizing the internal pages of a resource. A selection is made from them to launch a contextual advertising campaign. That is, this is a solution that will be universal for large companies and those who are just starting their work.
3. Low competitive. These are the queries that will help you move up to the TOP with minimal financial outlay. It's all about low competition. That is, this is an opportunity to quickly and well advance to the TOP with minimal material investments. But there is also a downside. The fact that you currently have few competitors primarily indicates an unstable and unformed demand for a product or service. This means that the traffic here will not be particularly significant. That is, your site will quickly and easily appear at the top of the search results, but it will not bring you many target audiences. The only exception is if you have reliable information that your product or service will experience explosive growth in demand in the near future.

To understand which competitive category your queries fall into, simply enter the keyword into the search and look at the results. If it is high-frequency, then all the pages that appear in the search results will be completely relevant to the request itself. If it is averagely competitive, then there will still be a couple of omissions and the relevance of the page will no longer be so high. But for low-competitive queries, there may be no relevant pages on the first search results page at all. That is, no matter what store you go to from the search results page for a highly competitive request, you will definitely end up in a store or website that provides the product or service you need. If you enter a low-competitive query, the system will not find an exact answer to it and may consider your keyword to be inaccurately worded and offer its own answer.

Types of search queries by combination of frequency and competition

Some SEO specialists combine frequency and competition into one block when collecting semantics. Thanks to this, you can identify those key phrases that can provide good traffic to the site with minimal waste of time, effort, and material costs. Here are some of the most popular combinations:

• High frequency + highly competitive. Promotion through them will be expensive and quite lengthy, because in this case you need to advance in a very competitive and busy niche.
• High frequency + low competition. This is an option that is relevant for fairly new topics that may become popular in the foreseeable future. That is, such solutions should be used by those who are sure that the demand for a certain category of products or services will soon increase sharply. With this combination of frequency and competition, you can easily find yourself in the TOP and gain a foothold there. Examples from this category include electric scooters or hoverboards, which burst into use literally out of nowhere and became very popular. Yes, initially they were low-competitive, but in just a few weeks they moved into the highly competitive category.
• High-frequency + medium-competitive. Such a combination is not always found in practice. But even if it exists, then most likely it will be an intermediate stage. There is a high probability that soon a moderately competitive request will become highly competitive.
• Mid-frequency + medium-competitive. These are the requests that can be called quite convenient from a promotion point of view. They require a small investment of time and money, but at the same time they can provide quite good traffic to the target site.
• Mid-frequency + highly competitive. These are queries in topics that are currently in fairly stable demand among the target audience. It is quite difficult to move through them, as well as to launch contextual advertising. It will cost you a pretty penny.
• Mid-frequency + low-competition. A similar solution can now be seen in local businesses. But in order to achieve such a combination, you need to work out the semantics very carefully. If you do everything correctly, you will get excellent results in the short term with little expenditure of material resources.
• Low-frequency + mid-competitive. These are key phrases that are directly related to goods that are in high demand on the market: smartphones and other electronics, cosmetics, perfumes, elite alcohol, etc. Yes, moving through them will be quite problematic, but if everything is organized correctly, you can get a very good traffic to the site.
• Low frequency + highly competitive. In this case, we are talking about keywords related to popular and expensive topics. These are cryptographic currency exchanges, cloud technologies, trading, etc. Promotion through them will be quite long and will require significant material investments. This means that the cost of traffic here will be high.
• Low frequency + low competition. For the most part, these are low-frequency requests tied to a product that is not yet in demand on the market. It’s very easy to get to the TOP and get almost free traffic. But the main problem is to interest users in your product or service so much that the targeted action is completed.

Types of search queries by level of importance for business

Depending on this criterion, there are 2 main groups:

1. Commercial. In this case, we are talking about requests that are initially focused on ensuring conversion. They are followed by users who select a specific product or service. A commercial note to the key phrase is given by words such as “buy”, “order”, “cost”, “inexpensive”. etc. Similar keys — this is the base of the semantic core in contextual search advertising. It is for them that the so-called “hot leads” are attracted, that is, people who already clearly understand what kind of product they need. They are simply looking for where to purchase it on the most favorable terms. That is, the demand for such a product is quite high. How much it will cost you to promote commercial requests and when you will get the desired result, it is impossible to say for sure. It all depends on your topic, frequency and competition of keys, region. But still, promotion based on commercial requests guarantees a stable level of sales, and with them profit for the business.
2. Informational. These are already non-commercial requests, that is, they are not directly related to the purchase of goods or services. That is, they are more informational in nature. They fill pages that contain information about the features of certain products. They are not used in contextual advertising, but based on such semantics you can create content that will be truly useful for your target audience. You can place it when preparing external publications, when filling out a block of the site. Information keywords are widely used in content marketing. With their help, you attract a target audience who may subsequently be interested in the goods or services offered by your brand.

That is, you must understand exactly what keywords you plan to use to promote your business. It is not recommended to fill one landing page with both commercial and informational queries at the same time, because it will be difficult for search bots to index such pages and assess their relevance.

Types of search queries based on user information phrases

In this case, we are talking about what intention the user has in mind, what this or that query is asking in the search bar. So, there are several categories:

• General. These are key queries that do not have a clear intent. These are the high-frequency queries that you mentioned above: “doll”, “electric scooter”, “glassware”, “ski clothes” etc. That is, there are no additional words here that could clarify the wishes of a potential client. The results for such requests will be mostly mixed. That is, along with commercial pages, there will also be informational ones. The conversion here will be low, despite the high frequency of requests. There is no point in running contextual advertising or optimizing website pages for such keywords.
• Informational. In this case, we are talking about the fact that the user would like to find an answer to a question that interests him, not related to the direct purchase of a product or service. That is, while he is looking for information to familiarize himself with. To ensure excellent landing page rankings, you need to create high-quality content that fully covers the topic. The article should be structured, written in clear language, supplemented with video guides and step-by-step instructions, if relevant for the given topic.
• Navigation. In this case, we are talking about queries asked by a user who wants to get to a specific site. So, for example, if you are interested in Reima children's ski clothing, then you will write the request “Reima store”. As an exception, viral queries are classified as navigation keywords. This is a phrase that contains solely the brand name without any explanatory words. In our case it is “Reima”. That is, by introducing this word, users want to get to the official website of this brand. To advance using such keys, you need to fill out the main page of your site and the contact page as correctly as possible. It is also important to think over the “About the company” block. That is, do everything that will allow you to present your resource in the most favorable light. It would also be a good idea to add your site to Google My Business or Yandex.Business, making sure to indicate that this is the official website of your brand.
• Multimedia. These are queries that will contain words such as “photo”, “video”, “gallery”, “clip” in their title. etc. That is, they will be entered by people who are looking for videos, documents, photographs, audio recordings and other multimedia content. To promote such requests through contextual advertising, specialists use so-called “lists of negative keywords,” eliminating unnecessary items. That is, something that will not be relevant for your site. Thanks to this, it is possible to generate exclusively targeted traffic to the site.
• Transactional. In this case, we are talking about queries that contain the words “order”, “price”, “buy”, “cost” and others that can improve conversion traffic to the site. That is, they are entered by users who want to purchase the goods they need, or order a service, download a program, etc. And this means that they are ready to make a purchase.
• LSI requests. This is a separate category of phrases and words that complement the semantic core, in particular basic queries. Using the example of the phrase “buy a Barbie chef doll” as additional words you can use the words “delivery”, “inexpensive”, “pink dress” etc. After the search algorithms have been updated, it is recommended to add such queries to the content so that crawlers can better understand your queries in natural language and generate results based on the meaning of the phrase you wrote, and not just based on an exact match of words.

Now that you know what classifications of key queries exist today, what problems facing your business you plan to find with their help, you can optimize your resource and launch contextual advertising as correctly as possible. As a result, you will receive high-quality work performed in a fairly short period of time. Finally, a few recommendations that will allow you to improve your work with different types of key queries.

Types of search queries by user location

For a number of businesses, the real location of the user plays a very important role. This is especially true for services that provide services, including repair of household appliances, delivery of food, medicines, cafes and restaurants, beauty salons, etc.

So, depending on the user’s location, there are 2 main categories of keywords:

1. Geo-independent. Such phrases have no connection to the region, city or even country. That is, the results for them will be the same everywhere. Often these are information-type requests. And even if you add the name of a specific city here, this point will still not be taken into account in the search results. The effectiveness of promotion for geo-independent queries largely depends on the quality of your website and the content presented on it.
2. Geo-dependent. From the name it is clear that the results for such phrases will be generated based on where the user is located geographically at a given time. That is, if you enter the request “order sushi”, then in the TOP you will receive a list of restaurants that provide this service in your city. This is quite reasonable and justified, because no one will deliver sushi 50 or even 100 km away. That is, in this case, time is saved on searching for the necessary service for a potential client, and business representatives get rid of processing orders that are irrelevant to them. It is also impossible to say exactly how much it will cost to promote geo-dependent queries. In a metropolis, moving along them will be much more difficult and costly than in a small settlement where several thousand people live.

That is, if you plan to promote your site in a certain area, then you should still use GEO in queries.

Additional recommendations

Follow these tips when working with different types of key queries, you can significantly increase the efficiency of your work:

1. When planning the costs of SEO promotion of your website, be sure to take into account the competitiveness and frequency of the selected queries.
2. Do not combine informational and commercial requests in one landing page content.
3. If you want to attract additional traffic, bet on informational keys.
4. Do not neglect the geo-dependence of key phrases by assigning a suitable region. For each new location, make a separate landing page. You can use toponyms in metadata.
5. Try to avoid general queries with unclear intent.
6. Connect navigation queries to your work, which will allow potential buyers to find your brand online. It is also recommended to fill out such website pages as “About the company”, “Contacts”. All sites where your company’s data is presented should also contain a link to the official page.
7. Do not neglect additional key queries (LSI) so that the search engine can focus not only on words, but also on the meaning of the phrase entered by the user.
8. Connect mobile proxies to provide yourself with the widest possible functionality when working on the network, the ability to use automated software for data parsing, including collecting semantics. With them, you can easily and simply automate your work and expand your capabilities; you can avoid blocking and other restrictions, including regional ones. You will be able to quickly promote your resource in a particular region, check the effectiveness of work with reference to GEO.

The only nuance you need to know about — You can appreciate all the advantages of mobile proxies only if you choose a reliable and responsible service provider. To avoid searching for the best solution on the market today, contact the MobileProxy.Space service. You can find out more about the functionality and current tariffs here. Also at your service is a 24-hour technical support service, which instantly responds to customer requests, eliminating difficulties and problems with the proxy that arise in the work.

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