Blog / Creating a Powerful Keyword Strategy Through User Intent
January 22, 2021 | SEO Team
In its early days, Google relied primarily on backlinks and text data to establish rankings. However, Google has evolved dramatically since then. Nowadays, Google has become a very sophisticated search engine with a plethora of algorithms designed to promote results and content aimed to meet users’ needs.
To some extent, SEO is a numbers game, and people primarily focus on the following:
Understandably, clients want to rank high and see their organic traffic increase. To achieve said objective, they first need to create a robust SEO keyword strategy. When choosing keywords, many tend to opt for those with the highest search volumes.
What many people miss during the keyword research process is the fact that search intent is now more important than search volume.
In a nutshell, user intent (also known as search intent) refers to the user’s primary goal when typing a query into a search engine. Some of the most common search intent types include transactional, commercial, informational, navigational, and commercial.
Here’s something not many know: satisfying search intent is one of Google’s primary goals. This is something we at SEO Phoenix know for sure. That said, when looking for the right keywords, we take search intent into account to ensure increased traffic and secure your position on page one.
A report published by Google titled “How Search Intent is Redefining the Marketing Funnel” revealed that while backlinks and other conventional Google ranking signals still matter, you can’t expect your page to rank if you don’t satisfy search content.
At SEO Phoenix, we know how important it is to have a thorough understanding of the keywords that apply to your brand, their search volumes, and the user intent. This allows us to evaluate the competition better and get more granular with our keyword strategy.
There are various ways to take keyword research a notch higher while matching content to consumer intent.
Using a tool like Google Trends can make it easy to find seasonal trends that can be valuable when creating content. Also, knowing when specific terms will spike can help brands create a proactive keyword strategy. Case in point: knowing people will start searching for “Easter eggs” by early February can help brands create bespoke content during those crucial conversion periods.
Investigating a competitor’s keywords leaves SEO marketers with a long list of possible terms. Ideally, information overload is managed by prioritizing high-volume keywords that competitors are ranking or not ranking for.
This strategy can help your brand uncover opportunities to compete for keywords your competitors have been successful with. It also reveals whatever opportunities your competitors are missing out on.
Tools like Google Keyword Planner can be useful for those who want to target locations. It can also be effective at narrowing down keyword research by state, county, or township. Geographic content can significantly shift how brands communicate with their target audience.
For instance, research might uncover that New Yorkers prefer to call large trucks “tractor-trailer” while Texans call them “big rigs.”
According to Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines, the most prevalent goals for queries include find a “website,” “know” information, “do” a specific task, and to “visit-in-person.”
Below are the five major intent categories:
There is more to creating a powerful keyword strategy than meets the eye. If you don’t know how to go about it or where to begin, get in touch with us. We would be more than happy to do all the heavy lifting for you!
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