What are the four main types of keywords?

Grouped by intent: informational (learn something), commercial (compare options), transactional (buy now) and navigational (find a specific site). A new site usually does best with informational and commercial terms.

How do I choose the best keyword for a page?

Pick the one whose results page you can realistically beat and whose searcher could need what you sell. Then check it fits a topic you already cover. Search volume is the last check, not the first.

Do keywords still matter now that AI answers questions?

The topics do; the exact phrasing matters less. Google says its systems understand synonyms, so write the best answer to the question rather than repeating a phrase.

Should a new site target high-volume keywords?

Rarely at first. High-volume head terms are usually held by sites with years of links. Longer, more specific questions are where a new site can rank first and build the authority to go broader later.

Choosing keywords you can win

A keyword with 20,000 searches a month is worthless to you if the first page is three encyclopaedias and two sites with ten years of links. The question is never how big the term is. It is whether the current first page contains a gap you can fill.

Read the results page before the metrics

Open the search and look at what is ranking. If every result is a large brand's pillar page, that term is a two-year project. If two of the ten are thin forum threads or outdated posts, that is an opening, whatever the difficulty score says.

Two real results pages, side by side

Query	What ranks in the top ten	Verdict for a new site
internal linking strategy	A 2020 Forbes article about building links from other sites at number one, two LinkedIn posts, a Reddit thread and a 2017 forum case study.	Winnable. Half the page doesn't answer the question, so a focused guide has a gap to fill.
topic clusters seo	Pillar guides from Semrush, HubSpot, Moz, Conductor and seoClarity, several updated within the past year.	A long project. Five large brands with thorough, current pages leave no obvious gap.

Google US desktop results, checked on 27 September 2026.

That first page is why this blog has a post on internal linking that moves your money pages.

Match the intent that's already winning

If the page is full of comparisons, a how-to guide will not break in, however good it is. The results page tells you the format the engine has decided the query wants. Argue with it and you lose.

Prefer terms with a buyer at the end

Intent	Example	For a new site
Commercial	best CRM for small agencies	Fewer searches, far more revenue per visit. The best early bet when the results page is weak.
Informational	how to fix a slow WordPress site	Cheap to rank and builds trust; slow to convert.
Transactional	buy standing desk uk	Usually owned by retailers. Target it with product pages, not posts.
Navigational	hubspot login	Someone else's brand. Skip it.

The four common intent types, and how a young site should treat each.

Navigational searches are people who could just as well have typed the address. Your own brand's navigational searches are demand you've already earned. Growth comes from the other three types, which is the idea behind "Search Google or type a URL" and your website.

Score candidates before you write

Check	Good sign	Bad sign
Results page	Thin, outdated or off-topic pages in the top ten	Ten large brands' pillar pages
Intent	The winning format is one you can make well	The page wants something you can't make, such as a tool or a store
Buyer at the end	The searcher could need what you sell	No path from the answer to your product
Cluster fit	It sits in a topic you already cover	It would be your only page on the subject
Volume	Any real demand, even 20 searches a month	Zero, or a head term you can't win for years

A quick way to rank keyword ideas for a young site. Volume comes last on purpose.

Do keywords still matter?

Yes, but as topics rather than exact strings. Google says its systems understand synonyms and general meaning, so you don't need to repeat a phrase word for word, and keywords in a domain name have hardly any effect. Pick the question, then write the best answer to it.

Cluster, don't scatter

Eight articles around one narrow topic beat eight articles about eight unrelated things. The cluster gives you internal links that make sense, and it gives engines a reason to treat you as a source on that subject rather than a site that mentioned it once. Topic clusters for a new site covers how to plan them.

If you track AI assistants too, the unit changes from keywords to prompts: see measuring citations across four assistants.

Reading the results page is the step people skip, because doing it properly for fifty candidates takes a day, and without it a young site spends months writing for terms it was never going to win. Our SEO article writer runs this research every month. It checks what currently ranks for each candidate before it plans anything, groups the winnable ones into clusters, and writes the articles in your voice.

Spend your publishing on keywords you can actually win

AutomatedSEO researches, writes and publishes 30 articles a month to your connected CMS.

Start your 3-day trial See pricing

3-day trial · Cancel any time