Types of search queries: long tail, low-frequency, mid-frequency and high-frequency queries. Search frequency, high-frequency and low-frequency queries

Hello, dear friends! In today's article we will talk about search queries. And, as you may have guessed from the title ;-), there are 4 types - long tail, low-frequency, mid-frequency and high-frequency. You will also learn what the advantages and disadvantages of these queries are, and which keywords are best for promotion.

Types of search queries:

A long tail is a search query that is very rarely requested by the user (1-10 times a month). In another way, a long tail is also called a Long tail request. Here's an example of such queries:

buy a laptop in an online store inexpensively on credit;
how to create a website yourself for free step-by-step video instructions;
buy Chinese phones wholesale in Odessa;
buy a Samsung 22-inch TV in Moscow;
how to make money on the Internet without a website.

I checked each of these queries on wordstat.yandex.ru. It turns out that Yandex shows them to visitors no more than 10 times a month.

Despite such a low number of impressions, I believe that it is necessary to use them when selecting keywords.

Firstly, if a visitor comes to the site with a request, for example, “buy Chinese phones wholesale in Odessa,” then he will buy Chinese phones wholesale, and in Odessa:smile:. These keywords bring the most targeted visitors, who in most cases become buyers.

Secondly, there is practically no competition for long tail queries, and it is very easy to reach the TOP. To do this, it is enough to enter such a query into the article once and put several internal links with it.

Well, and thirdly, 60-90% of all visitors come to the site based on such requests. Yes, you may be surprised and disagree with me, these dummies, as many call them, provide more than half of the search traffic.

I'm not saying that you need to create a special page to get to the top. There is no need to do this. But such a tail can be added to the main request. For example, you are promoting on the request of how to make money on the Internet. So why not write once in an article how to make money on the Internet without a website. This is very easy to do, and it will be of great use. I also advise you to read the article: “?” In this article you will learn where to look for such queries and how to correctly enter them into the text.

Low frequency queries (LF)– these are queries that have low competition and are rarely requested by users. For example, here are a few low-frequency queries:

buy a Chinese tablet online store;
plastic windows in Moscow are cheap;
buy oil for the Stihl chainsaw;
do-it-yourself apartment renovation, where to start.

Do not confuse low-frequency queries with long tail. Low frequencies differ from long tail in that they have a higher number of impressions per month. Getting to the top for such queries is in most cases very easy. To do this, you need to create a special page and write a large article tailored to this request. Then you can also add several links from other internal pages, or buy several links on other thematic sites.

But there are also situations when low-frequency queries are highly competitive. This sometimes happens in highly competitive commercial niches. Therefore, you should always analyze each request and look at the sites that are in the top for it.

The advantage of these requests is that visitors go to the targeted site and in most cases become buyers when it comes to commercial niches. The main disadvantage is that very few people come to them and it is very difficult to display a site only for low-frequency queries; it is very difficult to attract large traffic from search engines.

Mid-frequency queries (MF) are queries that are requested by visitors approximately 1,000 to 10,000 times per month. This number will be different for each niche. Here are some examples of mid-frequency queries:

how to make money on the Internet without investment;
kitchen knives;
buy plastic windows;
what is music;

Many people believe that medium-frequency requests are necessarily medium-competitive ones. In most cases this is true, but not always. For example, take two queries: “what is music” and “buy plastic windows.” Although these queries are mid-frequency, it is still much more difficult to move to the top for the second one than for the first one. This is due to the fact that the first request is informational, and the second is commercial. And since commercial requests bring money, there is a lot of competition for them. This once again suggests that competition must be taken into account first, and only then the number of impressions.

Mid-frequency queries are like the golden mean and it is imperative to advance through them. They will bring a lot of visitors, and getting to the top is also quite possible.

High Frequency Queries (HF)- these are the queries that are requested by users the greatest number of times. As usual, here is an example of such queries:

laptop
music
plastic windows
Yandex

The main advantage of these queries is that they are able to bring the largest number of visitors to the site with . But here is their drawback - they are very competitive, and in order to get to the top, you need to spend a lot of time and money.

Also, I don't like to target high-volume keywords because they have very low conversion rates. For example, a visitor enters the word “laptop” into a search engine. I don't understand what he's looking for. He wants to buy a laptop, or look at prices. Or he can read information or look at photos of laptops: smile:. Thus, the page may have one thing, but the visitor is looking for something completely different. Also, which is in the top for a high-frequency query will be larger than, for example, a page that is in the top for a low-frequency query.

What are the best keywords to promote?

In short, the best thing to do is to promote all requests at once, and it doesn’t matter whether the site is one day old or 10 years old. I will now explain why I think so. Look, for example, we have 4 requests.

Long tail - how to create a website yourself for free without registration; (6 shows)
Low-frequency request - how to create a website yourself for free; (370 views)
Medium-frequency request - how to create a website yourself; (2,022 views)
High-frequency request - website. (15,859 views)

There is no point in creating a long tail page because we will receive very few visitors. Our Yandex site will show only 6 times a month, believe me, this is very little: smile:.

It’s also not worth promoting on the request “website”. Firstly, there is a lot of competition there, and secondly, this is not a targeted request and we will get a high failure rate. All that remains is to choose a low-frequency or high-frequency request. Both of these options are good, but the best way is to promote all these requests at once.

To do this, we can simply combine all these requests into one phrase - “how to create a website yourself for free without registration”, and write this phrase in the headings, several times in the article and in the link url. For a complete set, you can also add some subheading to the ALT tag. You can add internal links with the anchor of this key phrase.

After a while, the long tail and low-frequency query will appear in the top if you write a good article. A mid-frequency query can be forgotten in the top with external links. As for the tweeter, you need to look at what position it is in. If you reach at least the top 30, you can also promote it using external links. Only you will need a lot more such links: smile:.

If you use this keyword selection scheme, you will get a lot more visitors to your site from search engines. Many may ask: “What if combining all the requests doesn’t work?” If that doesn’t work, then you can combine at least mid-frequency and high-frequency or low-frequency and Long tail queries, etc. I sometimes manage to combine 6 queries into one phrase that can be easily entered into an article. The main thing is to spend more time on selecting keywords and it is better to select words for a separate article, and not for the whole site at once, because if you select for a site, you can get confused: smile:.

That's all for me. I thought about briefly describing the types of search queries - long tail, low-frequency, mid-frequency and high-frequency, but it turned out, as always, much more ;-).

I want to warn you right away: promoting high-frequency requests is significantly different from promoting “mid-rangers” and low-frequency ones - you will have to spend significant effort and money to get into the TOP. Forget about free promotion altogether, unless, of course, you are Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia.

What queries are considered high-frequency?

As you know, the frequency of a request determines its type: low-frequency, mid-frequency or high-frequency. However, for each topic, the numbers that determine the type of request vary greatly: the more competitive the topic, the lower the bar. For example, it is usually believed that high-frequency requests include requests with a frequency of more than 10 thousand per month. However, for commercial topics (sports, medicine, real estate, tourism), high-frequency requests can be considered those whose frequency is higher than 5-6 thousand per month.

Examples of high frequency queries:

Download movies
How to create a website
Torrent tracker
Yandex

Promoting high-frequency queries, despite the initial erroneous impression, is very often unprofitable: yes, you get a large influx of visitors, but many of them will leave your site very quickly. In other words, with HF request traffic is not targeted. This is explained by the fact that the expectations (needs) of the user entering the HF key into the search engine are extremely unclear: it is difficult to understand what exactly interests the user. This is where difficulties arise: what information to place on the site to please visitors.

The second reason why it is not always good to promote on high-frequency channels is the high cost of promotion. Many sites are trying to promote themselves using high-frequency keywords, so the competition here is simply terrible, it’s simply unrealistic to get through for free. As a result, it turns out that promoting through low-frequency queries is even more profitable: for the same amount you get the same number of visitors, but more targeted ones than those coming from high-frequency queries.

Assessing high-frequency queries

Parser programs that increase the frequency of many queries become the main reasons for the appearance of garbage keys. But they can only affect low- and mid-frequency requests. And the effect on high-frequency speakers is almost imperceptible. This means that the frequency that is shown in Google or Adwords is more or less accurate.

You should only be wary of clearly non-targeted requests, which are logos and slogans of popular sites (most often these are URL keys). These include:

Users typing these queries are interested in specific sites, and they will not visit other resources. Therefore, promotion using such keywords is ineffective.

Features of the promotion of high-frequency speakers

Promoting HF requests is a painstaking task. Immediately prepare yourself for the fact that promotion will take several months - you are unlikely to be able to get to the TOP sooner. And you shouldn’t try to promote young sites based on high-frequency queries - search engines simply won’t let them into the top.

When promoting, it is necessary to create a very competent and varied anchor list. Then this anchor list will need to be used for anchor and non-anchor promotion. At the same time, it is extremely important to choose the right sites on which links will be purchased, paying attention to:

TCI and PR of the main site;
PR of the page from which the link will be purchased;
Age of the site and page with the link;
The number of links originating from the page;
Quantity per page.

The more “body movements” you make, the more effective the promotion will be.

Also pay attention to the page being promoted (density of keys, amount of content, presence of subheadings and lists, etc.) - the more competently it is done, the greater the chance that you will be able to move to the TOP for a high-frequency request.

It has little effect on the promotion of HF requests, but it must be done!

Greetings to the readers of my blog site! I'll start right away with a question. Do you already have a personal website or blog? Are you promoting it, if yes, then how? Have you heard of such concepts as: LF HF HF requests? Some of you may be surprised by these strange combinations of a couple of letters, but experienced bloggers are probably familiar with them and have already brought tangible benefits when promoting their blog. I’ll tell you in more detail what the decoding and meaning of these abbreviations are. Interesting? Read on.

When you start to promote your resource, everything matters. Site navigation, design, semantic load, and so on. But I would say that these points are secondary. What matters most is the content, that is, the articles that will be published. I’m sure many of you already know that using other sources is not only unethical towards other authors, but will also have a negative impact on the development of the blog. Texts must be unique, and for their successful promotion, keywords should be introduced into sentences.

Decoding

Before sharing with you information about the meaning of the terms mentioned and their usefulness in, let's get acquainted with the interpretation of queries:

HF – high-frequency ones, characterizing the industry, which are asked in searches more than 10,000 times, for example, “wooden doors”; such requests are general and do not carry any specifics;
midrange – mid-frequency, more specific than the previous one, usually consists of two or three words with a monthly search frequency of one thousand to ten thousand, for example – “ wooden interior door»;
LF – low-frequency, usually consisting of three or more words with a frequency of up to a thousand requests per month, for example - “ buy larch interior door at a profit».

I assume you all know the definition of the word “request,” but I’ll explain anyway. This is a word or phrase that fits into the search string. It turns out that LF, MF and HF are the query keys in SEO.

So, we understand that each article must be optimized for certain search queries. Keep in mind that website promotion using high-frequency phrases is more expensive, but worth it.

It is very important to implement keywords correctly so that users find answers to their questions when they land on your informative source. Otherwise, search engines will notice that guests of the resource do not stay on the site for long, and this will lead to a decrease in your ranking in the top results.

Do not try to include several many queries in one article, limit yourself to one or three.

The differences between keywords with different frequencies are as follows:

The lower the frequency, the fewer competitors and the greater the likelihood that your article will appear first or one of the first in search results.

I definitely recommend writing articles at the initial stage of site development, for low-frequency queries. Website sections are formed based on mid-frequency queries, and high-frequency ones for the index page of the website, that is, the main one.

We will define keywords for you

If you haven’t yet started analyzing your resource and selecting keywords for it, now is the time to start. After all, the sooner you learn to write articles correctly, the better for you and the promotion of your Internet project. A unique service from Yandex will come to our aid - Wordstat, which is a guide to the world of optimization and allows you to choose words for competent SEO. Once you enter this system, you will see a window like this.

If you do not have or have not yet registered your resource in this system, hurry up to do so, but you can start selecting words without registration. I entered the phrase " wooden doors ", set the region " Russia" and pressed the button " Pick up" Look what happened:

As you can see, this phrase is quite popular and in demand. But please note that the indicated number of queries located opposite the phrase indicates the total number of phrases found where yours appears, in this case "wooden doors" , For example, "wooden entrance doors" , "buy wooden doors" etc.

To view the number of phrases and their inflections only for a written phrase, you need to put it in quotes:

The situation has changed a little. The number 1463 is real, that is, the mentioned request is mid-frequency. If, for example, you sell plush hares in a specific city (Ekaterinburg) and provide for delivery and sale only within that city, then it makes sense for you to indicate a more specific region, up to your city. With the same success, you can look at the statistics of how many people per month are interested in plush hares in Yekaterinburg.

Be sure to use quotation marks, as I showed above, they will help you cut off unnecessary words in queries. There are several other useful techniques when working with this system. For example, you might want to match queries about doors, but not include responses like " wooden" Then in the search bar you need to specify the following combination of words and characters:

That is, before a word that you don't need, indicate a minus sign . When indicate a plus , then you assume that the keywords will be diluted with conjunctions and prepositions:

Exclamation mark helps to find all variants of queries in which your key is displayed (exact occurrence):

If, for example, you make not only doors, but also windows and balconies, then you can group your request in parentheses or separate words with a vertical line:

It is better for beginners to focus their attention on promoting low-frequency and mid-frequency queries, since high-frequency ones have great competition and promotion on them requires large financial investments (to buy links or advertising through Yandex Direct). Large companies that claim to conquer the market can afford such active promotion; it is difficult for one person to cope with this.

But don’t rush to get upset, this doesn’t mean that potential clients and subscribers will bypass you. Experience shows that promotion for low-frequency queries can attract a higher-quality audience. It turns out that it’s all about the ability to write high-quality articles for keywords.

You can fill your resource with low-frequency queries, confidently increase your readership and replenish your client base, and reaching the TOP is just around the corner!

I hope you have become familiar with the terms and made certain conclusions regarding exactly how you will promote your site in the near future. I would like to know about your real successes, share them in the comments to the articles, how you managed to achieve and over what period.

Starting to develop your blog is often difficult, but I guarantee you information support, so be sure to subscribe to the newsletter and invite your friends and colleagues!

See you later!

Best regards, Alexander Sergienko

Many novice optimizers ask questions regarding query frequencies. What are LF, MF and HF?? How do you determine if a query is high-frequency or low-frequency? Does the theme of the site affect the assignment of a request to one of the intervals? And so on. We will try to answer all these questions, as well as reveal in more detail some points regarding frequencies.

Definitions

Please note that you should not confuse the terms “ frequency" And " frequency“! Frequency is a characteristic of a periodic process, measured in the number of units over a certain period of time. Frequency is a characteristic of the occurrence of a given object (word) among a certain set and is measured as a percentage. Roughly speaking, for our case, request frequency is how many times a month a given key phrase was searched in a search engine, and request frequency(let's say on a page) is the percentage of the query content (word) on the page in question. This article will only discuss the concept of search frequency for a specific key phrase.

HF (high frequency) queries – the most requested word (words, phrases) in your topic (most popular queries).
LF (low frequency) queries - words and phrases that are requested with low frequency in search engines and relate to your topic.
midrange (mid-frequency) request - something in between LF and HF (later there will be an exact quantitative definition).

Competitive request– this is a query for which it is difficult to get to the top of the sickle (the first results in a search engine) due to the competition of sites relevant to this query.
Highly competitive request– a query in which there are a lot of competitors for a given key phrase in the sickle.
Low competitive request– a request in which internal optimization factors are sufficient for the site to be on the first page of the sickle for a given key phrase (word).

Significance of the request– the concept is subjective and is determined by the webmaster (optimizer, site owner) independently, depending on the topic and goals of the site (for more details on significance, see here What is the minimum significant request sampling frequency). The frequency below which queries are not included in the significant sample and are not reviewed for analysis is called minimum significant sampling rate.

How to determine RF requests for your site

To determine the frequency of search queries in search engines, there are services that provide this information. For example, to search for frequencies of Russian-language words, you can use the service provided by the Yandex PS - query statistics. To search for statistics on English words, you can use the KeywordDiscovery service.

Let's say that you have a website for the production of air ducts (for those who are not familiar with the concept of air ducts, you can read here: about air ducts). We enter the phrase “air duct” into wordstat and get a list of relevant queries, where “air duct” is in first place with 16,949 impressions per month. But in the right column we can also see the word “fans”, which is searched much more often (75485 per month), however, fans may not relate to your topic and, therefore, considering the word “fan” in your topic as a high-frequency query will be incorrect. That is, from the entire set of queries you need to select the most significant ones (down to words with a minimum significant frequency, which is determined by the webmaster or optimizer). And this sample can be divided into HF and LF. Sampling meaningful queries is the definition semantic core(this is what optimizers mean when they say that “the theme of the site affects whether a request is considered HF, MF or LF”).

Precise determination of the boundaries between HF, MF and LF

So you have a sample. Now we need to remember probability theory and the distribution function. Let us note once again, although this is intuitively clear, that midrange- This average frequency between HF and LF. However, it can be difficult to determine this average. For example, HF “air duct“ – 16949 and LF “sale production of air ducts“ – 6 requests/month. What will be the midrange then?

If we take the arithmetic average, then it turns out that among the sample we have no midrange at all. To do this, consider the sample dependence on the graph (Figure 1.1). It is clear from the graph that the dependence is logarithmic, since if the abscissa axis (request number) and ordinate axis (request frequency) are taken on a logarithmic scale, then with some error we will obtain a linear histogram of request frequencies. This means that the SP will be in the middle of this linear regression.

Figure 1.1 – Graph of the distribution of search queries by frequency (the axes are taken on a logarithmic scale).

Let us introduce the notation
hvc— maximum value of RF request frequency;
Hnch— minimum frequency value (minimum significant frequency) of the request

Then, it can be argued that

Hch = /(Hch – Hnch)

(square root of the difference between the maximum and minimum frequencies)

The above dependence comes from the property of the logarithm log(x)/2 = log(x^0.5) = log(/x).

Often Hnch much less hvc and, therefore, it can be neglected, we get:

Hc = /Hc

Now let’s check these values using the example “ air ducts“:

Khch = 16949, Khch = 6

Hch = /(16949-6) = /16943 ≈ 130

A value of 130 will be mid-frequency meaning. Now it is necessary to determine the interval in which the frequency will be considered average. To do this, divide the linear interval into 3 equal parts, so each part will have its own frequency range. The deviation from the absolute average frequency will be approximately equal to 33% .

Midrange Width:

D = log(Xwh)/3 = 3 /log(Xwh) = 1.41;

This means the interval from 10 log(Hc) – D/2 before 10 log(Hc) + D/2 will be considered the mid-frequency interval. In our case it is

This interval includes such keywords as (information as of March 6, 2008 00:00 Moscow time): air duct cleaning, air ducts price, PVC air ducts, price air ducts, etc. Everything that is above the 646 mark will be high frequency, and below 26 will be low frequency. All queries whose search frequency is in the range from 26 to 646 are entitled to be called mid-frequency queries.

Conclusion

The basic relationships for determining the mid-frequency interval are as follows:

Xsch.min = 10 log(Hc) – D/2, Xcount.max = 10 log(Hc) + D/2
Hc = /Hc, D = log(HWH)/3

Note that when determining the SP interval, you should take into account the individual sample for your site and it may not always have a logarithmic dependence. However, the above formulas are suitable for most keyword cases (tested on several dozen topics). For another characteristic of the behavior of the search frequency of key phrases, it is necessary to look for a function that describes the distribution of frequencies.

What are LF, MF and HF requests? How to determine which query is high, medium and low frequency? This article is devoted to these and other issues.
Concepts
There are two terms - “frequency” and “frequency”, which should not be confused.

Frequency is the frequency of a process over a certain period of time, measured in units. Frequency is a characteristic of the occurrence of a given request among a certain set, measured as a percentage. In the case of search queries, query frequency is the number of times a key phrase is used in a search engine, and frequency is a percentage determined by the ratio of the use of a word to the text on the page in question. In this article we will talk about the concept request rates.

Requests are of the following types

HF (high frequency queries) – the most keyword or phrase on a particular topic.
LF (low-frequency queries) – a keyword with a low query frequency.
MF (mid-frequency requests) is a keyword whose request frequency is between LF and HF.

Determining HF, LF and MF requests

As we wrote earlier, there are services that allow you to view the statistics of certain requests. These, of course, include Yandex Wordstat, and for English words the KeywordDiscovery service.

Let's say you need to find queries for a website about air ducts. We enter the word “air ducts” into Wordstat and see that the number of views is 113,260 times. For our site, this request is high-frequency, since it reflects the essence of the site’s subject matter and, in comparison with other requests on our topic, has the highest view rates.

In our case, the lowest-frequency query is “sale of air ducts” with a view count of 163. What queries will then be mid-frequency?

In theory, MF is the average frequency value between HF and LF requests. But sometimes it can be difficult to decide in what viewing interval mid-frequency queries should be assessed. Many webmasters “don’t worry” about this and use it “by eye”. It is difficult to determine exactly which request belongs to one type or another. Even the mathematical formulas presented on some sites cannot unambiguously answer this question, since their compilation is based more on assumptions.

What queries should you use to promote your site?

Your budget will answer this question.

HF requests have a clear advantage over other requests - the number of visitors per day. The disadvantage of HF is high competition, so getting into the TOP for them means spending a lot of money. Not all webmasters can afford HF. But even if you manage to promote your site through them, the achieved result will not be long-lasting.

Advantages of mid and low frequency requests

high-quality target audience;
achieving results in a short period of time (3 months);
low competition;
small investment.

Disadvantages of promotion for low frequency queries

Sincerely, Andrey Yuriychuk