Keyword Research: What Is It?

I wrote this post in Spanish in 2021 and adapted it to English in 2026.

In this short tutorial I'll explain the basics of keyword research. We'll start by defining what it is, then I'll show you what it's for, before walking you through how to do it.

Keyword Research Basics #

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of searching for, identifying and capturing the keywords you'll later use to create the content of an online project.

What is keyword research for?

The main job of keyword research is capturing keywords. Although the name literally says "research", the truth is the process doesn't end with a spreadsheet stuffed with keywords.

It has phases, levels of depth and, above all, logic. In other words, more than "researching keywords", what you really want when you do keyword research is to "capture keywords".

Of all the keywords that exist for a given topic, only the ones you want to go after will end up in your website's content. Identifying and capturing those keywords is the main job of keyword research.

When do you do keyword research?

At the very beginning. Keyword research is the foundation for building any online project that wants to rank in search engines.

Because it matters that much, it should be done even before you buy the domain.

It lays the groundwork for the URL architecture, content clusters, the HTML heading structure of your posts, link anchors (internal and external) and a sea of ranking factors that will affect your website's performance.

How are keywords classified in keyword research?

Keyword research goes beyond grabbing keywords by the bucketload. Its purpose is to organize the content and structure the project for future growth, so you need to classify the keywords after the first round of searching.

To start, you'll sort keywords into three big groups that make up three levels of depth in the keyword research process.

Seed keyword

The seed keyword is the main topic your website covers. It's the main keyword you're trying to rank for.

Combining this seed keyword with other words gives you the initial "pool" of keywords, from which you can start picking (with whatever filters apply and are needed) to build the keyword tree that will be the base of the project.

An example of a seed keyword could be "coffee makers".

Main keywords

These are the keywords that will make up your website's main categories. In other words, they're keywords directly related to the seed keyword, but not semantically related to each other.

At the same time, each main keyword will have its own pool of terms that are directly, semantically related to it.

This makes more sense with the example.

Seed keyword: coffee makers

Main keywords: coffee maker brands, coffee maker pods, types of coffee makers.

Derived keywords

As you may have guessed (if you're reading this post closely), derived keywords are all the keywords directly, semantically related to a main keyword.

Let me put this in context with the coffee maker example I've been using:

Seed keyword: coffee makers

Main keywords: coffee maker brands, coffee maker pods, types of coffee makers.

Picking "types of coffee makers" as the main keyword, its derived keywords are:

Derived keywords (types of coffee makers): drip coffee makers, manual coffee makers, electric coffee makers.

Long-tail keywords

These are the most specific keywords. They usually have a fairly low monthly search volume and very little competition.

They're not always low competition, though: in some industries, even with 10 searches a month, the competition is brutal.

Long-tail keywords are usually a combination of 5 or more words, so the search tends to be specific.

Following the coffee maker example:

Seed keyword: coffee makers

Main keywords: coffee maker brands, coffee maker pods, types of coffee makers.

Picking "types of coffee makers" as the main keyword, its derived keywords are:

Derived keywords (types of coffee makers): drip coffee makers, manual coffee makers, electric coffee makers.

Picking "drip coffee makers" as the derived keyword, its long-tail keywords would be:

Long-tail keywords (drip coffee makers): small single-cup drip coffee makers, best value drip coffee maker, how to clean a drip coffee maker.

What are the types of keywords?

Besides their classification, keywords have "types" or "kinds" that depend on what Google understands the user expects to see when they run a given search.

These keyword "types" are usually identified during keyword research, so keywords with different intents don't sneak in or get mixed together.

I'll show you the three big types keywords are usually grouped into during keyword research.

Informational keywords

These are keywords whose main intent is getting information about a specific topic.

The user wants to know something, so they search hoping to get the information that finally satisfies their need to know.

Wondering what informational keywords have in common?

• High search volume.
• Low sales conversion and/or low CPC in advertising.
• You need tons of traffic to make them worth going after.
• High time on page (the user stays and reads).
• Low CTR in some niches (Google often takes a rich snippet from your site and shows it in the search results, the user's need to know gets satisfied, and they never click your result).

Continuing with the coffee maker example I've been using throughout this post, we'd have:

how to clean a drip coffee maker

It's an informational keyword where what the user wants is information about cleaning a machine they probably already own, so they're not very interested in buying a new one.

These keywords are ideal for any website's blog. They pull in tons of traffic and, as a result, improve the authority and rankings of the whole site.

Transactional keywords

These keywords usually have an action as their main intent. That action can be downloading, requesting or buying something in particular.

The user running these searches usually already has all the information they need before taking the action they plan to take once they find the content that satisfies their intent to download, request or buy.

Transactional keywords have these traits:

• Moderate-to-low search volume (a few will have hundreds of thousands of searches, but most will have fewer than a thousand searches a month, at least in my experience as a niche-site SEO).
• High sales conversion and high CPC in advertising.
• Fierce competition (it's rare to find a "unicorn niche" where the main keywords are transactional; almost all of them are very competitive).
• They're profitable even with few visits a month.
• Time on page is low (the user comes in, takes the action and leaves).

Let me carry on with the coffee maker example to put all this in context:

best value drip coffee maker

It's a transactional keyword where the user is trying to find an offer that convinces them it's the best option for the budget they're willing to spend, and ends up buying their new coffee maker.

These are the keywords an ecommerce store, affiliate site or any website that wants to sell something should go after.

Navigational keywords

Navigational keywords are keywords whose goal is finding a website. These keywords refer to a particular domain and are very common in CTC (call to click) AdSense niches.

They have a very particular structure that's easy to spot, because users running these searches often include not just the domain name but also the TLD, subdomain and other details.

An example of this kind of keyword could be:

www youtube

A user searching for this keyword expects to land on YouTube's official website and nothing else.

What is "search intent" and how does it affect keyword research?

At this point in the post, you can probably already guess what search intent is about.

Why do I think so?

Because in the sections above I've been telling you what the user expects to find when they run one search or another.

In other words, their search intent is directly related to the type of keyword they use to search Google for what they want to find: an offer, information, a website, and so on.

What does search intent have to do with keyword research?

Let's just say EVERYTHING.

The reason?

In a few sentences: good keyword research doesn't just find keywords. It also segments the selected keywords to try (as far as possible) to separate search intents and keep each one in its own lane.

That is: only pick keywords that are semantically related and satisfy the same search intent to go in the same post.

Back to the coffee maker example: if you want to build a niche site that sells through Amazon affiliate links, your keywords need a mixed search intent (comparison-style informational plus transactional) in order to sell.

Back to the coffee maker example, here's a simple post structure:

H1: drip coffee makers
H2: comparison of the best drip coffee makers
H3: coffee maker 1
.
.
.
H3: coffee maker 5

This simple structure is enough for a post of about 600 to 900 words. It's pretty basic, and in the competitive coffee maker niche it won't get you anywhere, but it's a great example to copy in less competitive niches.

Things to highlight:

• You can include a "comparison table" H2. That's up to each person's taste and means, but it's not essential.
• All the keywords share the same semantic relationship: "drip coffee makers".
• The search intent is mixed between "information for buying a coffee maker" (the "comparison" and "best" keywords) and "buying a coffee maker", but they share the same base intent: BUYING.
• The keyword "how to clean a drip coffee maker" wasn't included, because it's an informational keyword searched by someone who already owns a drip coffee maker.

Let's dig a little deeper into that last point: the fact that the keyword "how to clean a drip coffee maker" wasn't used.

Like I said, searches for that keyword come from users who already own a drip coffee maker.

It would be naive to think "better include it in the post in case they'd rather buy a new coffee maker than clean the one they have". That makes no sense: if that were the case, the user wouldn't even bother searching how to clean the one they already own.

So where can that informational keyword go?

In the blog section of the hypothetical Amazon affiliate niche site we're building.

You can give it a whole post with images showing the cleaning step by step: a quality post that Google wants to index and show on the first page of its results.

To what end?

To pull traffic to your site and show (in Google's eyes) that you're an expert on coffee makers.

Can you monetize an informational post with affiliate links?

The answer is the same as everything in SEO: IT DEPENDS.

In this particular case, of course you can monetize the post with affiliate links. Just include a shopping list of the supplies you used in the tutorial on how to clean a drip coffee maker.

They'll be cleaning products and the commissions will be complete crap (pennies), but it's extra money on top of the benefit of pulling in traffic related to your website's main topic, which in this case is selling coffee makers.

Another way to monetize the blog (all the posts that satisfy informational search intents) is to add ads.

Google AdSense makes it very easy: just turn on auto ads and exclude the URLs where you're selling through affiliate links.