Types of Keywords and How to Find Them: Complete Guide 2024

Short-tail keywords

•  (↑ volume ↑ potential traffic ↑ KD ( keyword difficulty ) ↓ chance of conversion)
• Many people tend to google short-tail keywords.
• Increased competition to rank.
• Once you manage to rank for these keywords it will bring a lot more traffic to other long-tail keywords.
• To rank for these keywords, it is helpful to apply strategies of: link building, internal linking, refining your site content (coherence and authority in an area).

Mid-tail keywords

To be more practical, we will classify middle or mid-tail keywords as long-tail since the main variable for classification is the volume of the keyword and not the length of the keywords in number of words.

However, the more specific the keyword is, you can be sure that it will be a long-tail, otherwise, if it is a medium between a short-tail and a long-tail, it could be a mid-tail, taking into account that it will have the variables of a long-tail.

Long-tail keywords

• (↓ volume ↓ potential traffic ↓ KD ↑ chance to convert)
• Fewer people google this type of keyword.
• It is easier to rank for this type of keyword.
• These are more specific searches.
• There is more variety of keywords.
• You will need to rank for more long-tail keywords to get a lot of traffic.
• There are 2 types of long-tail keywords:

1. Supporting long-tail keywords
2. Topical long-tail keywords : it is preferable to go for topical long-tail keywords. These are the “ parent keywords” of sub-topics, and are the most famous ones that top-ranking pages rank for.

Summary table:

1. Informational:

When the user googles with the intention of finding out more information about something or learning about it for the first time.

In SEO we can find that many websites aim for this strategy using their blog, focusing at the beginning mostly on popular content to start bringing organic traffic to their website and then redirecting that traffic to less popular landing pages (LP) but with a greater chance of conversion.

Keyword Type: Short-tail & Mid-tail keywords.

• Short-tail example: “ headphones bothering ”. Although the type of content is not so specific, some articles talk about the reason for the discomfort and others about tips or advice, it is clear that the user's intention is to read information.
• Mid-tail example: “ why do I feel heavy headed ”. The search intent is more specific.

2. Navigational

The user already knows what he wants and is looking for. These are searches and keywords that include brand names, products or services.

As a business, it is useful to rank in a navigational search only if you are the person the user is searching for. For example, if your brand is Adidas, it will not make much sense to focus your website on keywords like “Nike” or “Converse,” as this will only cause confusion for the user and Google, and may affect the authority of your domain.

Keyword Type: Short-tail & Long-tail

• Short-tail example: “ apple wireless headphones ” .
• Long-tail example: “ airpods wireless headphones generation 3 ”.

3. Commercial / Comparison

The user is looking for more information about a product/service they want to buy. Articles or landing pages such as: product reviews, product comparison, list of best products.

It is common to find local searches such as: “best restaurants in Mexico City.”

Keyword Type: Mid-tail & Long-tail

• Mid-tail example: “ best wireless headphones ” (higher volume and potential traffic than the next search👇).
• Long-tail example: “ best headphones under $100 ”.

4. Transactional

The user is ready to complete a transaction, whether it is purchasing a product or service, subscribing to a particular service, or engaging in some other type of action. This is the best opportunity to generate conversions.

Keyword Type: Long-tail

• Example: “ buy airpods 2nd generation ”

5. Mixed (or split search intent )

Searches that contain both informative articles and product or purchase pages.

It is not advisable to aim to rank for a mixed or split search intent in the first place. If you consider it an opportunity, it is a good strategy to mix product pages with content sections such as frequently asked questions (FAQ). This can help increase the chances of ranking for that search or keyword.

Keyword Type: Short-tail & Mid-tail

The more short-tail or general the keyword is, the more common it is to find mixed search intent.

• Mid-tail example: “ ciso as a service ”. In this search we find product pages offering the CISO service, as well as articles explaining what CISO as a service is. A good strategy would be to create an optimized article targeting “what is CISO” + a landing page with content texts about what CISO is, for example, in a FAQ section.

Summary table:

*Although mixed search intent may contain short-tail keywords, the volume and potential traffic may be low since it is not common for the user to interact with fractured search intent searches, since they probably do not find specifically what they want.

1. Awareness: Problem aware – Lead generation content

Users become aware of the problem they face (which your brand can solve) and decide to look for more information about it.

Contact with the brand: This is the first time they encounter your brand. They don't know much about your product or service yet.

Content and Call to Action (CTA): This stage focuses on content and lead capture, as well as making it known that you offer a solution to their problem .

• Search intent: Informational
• Keyword Type: Short-tail & Mid-tail

2. Consideration: Solution aware – Nurturing content

The user already knows what their problem is and is considering different ways to solve it, looking for more information about a product or service.

Contact with the brand: If the user has already encountered your brand in informational searches for the same problem, they are likely to consider solving their problem with your services or products. Or, the user had become a lead in the previous stage.

Content and CTA: At this stage you should highlight the values ​​and benefits of your solution compared to your competitors and make the solution, purchase, demo or subscription available in a simple way.

• Search intent: Commercial / Comparison
• Keyword Type: Mid-tail & Long-tail

3. Purchase: Product/Brand aware – Sales Content

The user chooses a solution and becomes a customer.

Brand Contact: The user found you by searching for your brand name directly or found you in search results where they Googled the exact product or service they want to purchase.

Content and CTA: At this stage, you should have product pages that are optimized for content, clear and easy to interact with to make the purchase without too many obstacles.

• Search intent: Transactional & Navigational
• Keyword Type: Short-tail (search by brand) & Long-tail (search for specific product/service)

Summary table:

Competitors and own website | “ Site explorer - Top pages”

With this method you can see the landing pages that bring the most organic traffic to a website, along with the top keyword that ranks for them. You can analyze your competitors' keywords, as well as the ones your site is ranking for.

• If you only want to find ideas for article topics, instead of leaving the domain URL, you could leave the blog URL, if it is in a single folder such as “/blog”.

Competitors and own website | “ Site explorer - Organic keywords”

Here you can directly see the keywords of a website that bring the most organic traffic.

Unlike the previous method, you can see the keyword difficulty (KD) of each one and you will also find several keywords that drive traffic to the same landing page.

• Since it is sorted by highest traffic, you will naturally find short or mid-tail keywords first. This does not mean that you cannot find long-tail keywords.

Competitors | “Site explorer - Organic competitors - Competitor's keywords”

This method works both to find competitors of one of your competitors or your own competitors at the keyword level.

• By clicking on “Competitor's keywords” you can see the words that your competitor is ranking for and you are not.

“Keywords explorer”

This is similar to Semrush’s keyword exploration option (“keyword overview”), described below. Here you can analyze the ranking opportunity of a keyword you have in mind or have found on a landing page.

• Please be sure to specify the country of interest.
• Here we are mainly interested in checking the KD, potential traffic and volume by country.
• You might also get keyword ideas, which could be mid- and long-tail variations of an analyzed short-tail.

⚠️ Pro-tip: We recommend that you mostly use the keyword analysis from the Keywords report that you can get from a search with the Ahrefs Chrome extension , since the keywords explorer feature has a limited number of analyses available, while when viewing the full keywords report for a site, you don't have a limit on the number of reports.

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Search or Landing page | Keywords of a landing page (“ KW ”)

• You can access from the SERP:

• Or, from the landing page using the Ahrefs Chrome extension :

Search | “ Related searches”

Similar to Google's Similar Searches feature, described below.

Summary table:

Most of Ahrefs' tools work by analyzing a URL, or search, so the type of keywords you find with them will depend on your initial search or URL analyzed.

Knowing the theoretical basis of how to recognize search intent and the sales funnel stage of a search or landing page content will help you identify which keywords you are most likely to find.

“Keyword gap”

• Compare your competitors' keywords with your own and find keyword ranking or optimization opportunities.
• Unlike Ahrefs' tool, in this case you need to know which competitors you want to compare.

• It differs from Ahrefs’ “Organic competitors” feature in that:

1. Instead of having only the unique keywords for each player and the ones common to your website, Semrush also offers the keywords that you have weak or strong.

2. You can also filter keywords by search intent, which will help you recognize and choose long-tail keywords more easily.

“Keywords Overview”

• Similar to Ahrefs’ Keyword Research, it differs in that it also provides the type of search intent.

“Keyword manager”

• This new feature helps you build topic clusters around a seed keyword.
• It tells you the type of search intent to which the keyword is related, as well as the KD and search volume.

*For now it only works with the United States database, but it will soon be available for other databases as well.

Summary table:

Just like Ahrefs, the type of keywords you find with the different Semrush tools will depend on your search or URL initially analyzed.

Autosuggest

This option gives you ideas for search variations based on a base keyword, usually short-tail.

⚠️ You should keep in mind that this Google feature is designed to show you popular searches. So this way of searching for keywords is mostly for finding short-tail keywords.

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People Also Asked (PAA)

This search feature can give you, in addition to mid-tail or even long-tail topic ideas, ideas for headings 2 or 3 within a specific topic. As well as suggested questions for FAQ sections.

Question suggestions will depend on the search you performed and function primarily as a next search you might want to perform. Their nature will be mostly informational search intent.

⚠️ If your first search was with short-tail keywords, the questions returned are probably more towards short and mid-tail. 

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Related searches or Similar searches

Located at the bottom of the SERP. Like the PAA feature, suggested searches will depend on the initial search performed. The suggestion will probably be for popular topics, as it works in the same way as the Autosuggest feature. Learn more about related searches .

It could work for any type of search intent and stage of the sales funnel, as it depends on the search performed.

Competitors

You can simply Google short-tail or mid-tail keywords in your area and find out which websites are ranking for these searches. From this list of competitors, you can evaluate them in other tools, such as Ahrefs, to extract the keywords that bring the most organic traffic to your website.

• Search example:

• Example of players to evaluate:

Googling 'site:www.sitioweb.com/ “keyword”'

This method is ideal for finding potential mid- and long-tail keywords from your competitors around a short-tail search. This method will show you all the landing pages that contain the term you are searching for.

• Example: site:www.tinyrockets.app/ "habits"

Summary table:

With these different ways of googling you can find the following types of keywords:

Questions on Quora

Quora is a good place to find not-so-popular questions that contain long-tail keywords.

Discussions on Reddit

Google any term from your industry + reddit and see what is being talked about or search directly within the Reddit platform . It helps to find especially popular topics, probably short-tail and mid-tail keywords but you might find good long-tail keywords if you dig deep into the questions-

Summary table:

Other tools you can explore to find keywords:

• Google Trends ,
• Exploding Topics ,
• Ubersuggest ,
• YouTube Trends ,
• TikTok Trends and
• Pinterest Trends .