A Complete Guide to Search Keyword Intent
SEO Strategy with Intent: A Deep Dive into Search Keywords for SEO
Some years back it was only keywords and content, but now keyword intent is becoming more and more popular. It obviously matters if a keyword brings in traffic to your website but what matters more is the keyword intent or what users are looking for when they enter a search query into Google. And, the significance of keyword intent is just that- when a user visits a page on your website, the content should provide what the user is looking for or in other words, the page content should match the user query intent.
You might have heard it many times before but trust me, keyword intent may not be as simple as it sounds. And, understanding keyword intent is only half the process, using it to improve your SEO results and make an impact on business can be challenging.
Table of Contents
- SEO Strategy with Intent: A Deep Dive into Search Keywords for SEO
- Getting to Know Keyword Search Intent
- Types of Keyword Intent
- Why is Keyword Intent important?
- Conversion Rate and Keyword Intent
- LSI Keywords
- Summary
Keyword intent is crucial as it is the primary goal and objective of Keyword Intent behind a user’s search query. Understanding the keyword intent makes it easier for content creators and businesses to create and align the content based on the user’s need. This in turn enables your website to rank on the search engine results page.
Getting to Know Keyword Search Intent
So what keyword intent really is? Let’s say, for example, you are casually looking for articles on how to make a pizza. And, you search for ‘how to make a pizza’. This is purely informational keyword intent. The keyword ‘how to make a pizza’ indicates that you want to know more about how to make a pizza even if you really make it or not.
Similarly, when you want to really learn how to make a cheese tomato pizza and you search for a ‘cheese tomato pizza recipe’ that’s more specific than the earlier one. It also indicates that you are actually looking to see or buy a recipe and you are more likely to make a pizza this time.
Let’s see another example, you are hungry and want to order a pizza. You search for ‘Pizza Delivery services near me’ to order a pizza. In the first case, you only wanted to know how to make a pizza, in the second one, you are serious about finding a pizza recipe and in the last scenario, you are looking for pizza delivery services. These are all about the intent of the keywords. What we can see here is that even if you are looking for things related to pizza, these all have different intentions.
From a perspective of a website or business owner, you need to know the intent behind your user queries and keywords. Then, you can create content for the actual needs of your audience.
I mean when users are searching for Pizza Delivery services when they are hungry, your website with content around how to make a pizza should not be shown simply because it does not fulfill the search intent. Users searching for this query are hungry and would not have anything to do with Pizza recipes.
This is not it, from the perspective of search engines like Google, it’s important that the pages that appear on the search engine results page should match the intent of the user or in simple terms, ‘provide what they are looking for’.
So, this is precisely why keyword intent is important nowadays as we are leaning more toward the digital landscape. Let’s dive deep into the various aspects of Keyword intent and how you can use it effectively for your website’s SEO.
Types of Keyword Intent
There are different types of keyword intents and we as marketers or website owners or even business owners categorise them into different categories to make it easier to create content and offer services as well as products aligned to the intent.
Informational Intent
Informational intent is when users are searching for information or answers to specific questions. When people are searching for information they usually use terms like ‘how to’ and ‘what is’ or sometimes even Top 10 or something like that. Here’s a screenshot to showcase these:
Navigational Intent
It is also another common keyword intent type. This can be best explained by something we usually do. Sometimes when we try to access Facebook, instead of directly going to the website URL, we search for Facebook on Google Search and then go to the Facebook.com website. This is one example of the navigational intent keyword being used.
Commercial Intent
Commercial intent keywords are used by people looking to make a purchase decision but still looking for additional information before making that decision. Some examples of this keyword intent are ‘Best Laptops’ or ‘New HP Laptop Review’. These keywords are clearly used to research the purchase decision.
Transactional Intent
Transactional intent or buyer intent keywords are the keywords most businesses are looking for. Transactional intent keywords are used by people ready to make purchases. We can know if someone is looking to purchase a service or product if they are using terms like ‘buy’, ‘cost’ or ‘deal’.
Why is Keyword Intent important?
Keyword intent can be very useful for anyone involved in making digital content, using websites for their business and understanding digital users.
Targeting the right users
Targeting is the most important aspect of keyword intent. It allows you to create content based on the needs and intent of your target audience. You can only then satisfy user needs, increase engagements and ultimately grow your business.
Suppose you have a pizza delivery service restaurant. Imagine doing SEO and all traffic-generating campaigns for your website only to get irrelevant traffic. A million people are visiting your website every month but only 5 of the users actually want to order a pizza. The rest of all are simply looking for Pizza recipes, ingredients and such but not looking to buy a pizza.
If this is the case, most of your marketing efforts are wasted and your website traffic simply doesn’t add value to your business. But if you do the targeting right, you can target your customers. Keyword intent is what differentiates keywords and users.
SEO Optimisation
Using the right intent keywords allows search engines to better understand your content. Understanding your content makes it easier for you to rank on search engine results pages for the right keywords and attract relevant traffic to your website.
Enhanced User Experience
If your website content matches your user’s search intent, it is more likely to provide an enhanced user experience. This helps to reduce bounce rate and provide a more seamless experience while viewing your website content.
Conversion Rate and Keyword Intent
Conversion rate is directly related to keyword intent. If the keyword intent matches your product or services, people are more likely to make a purchase or take a conversion action.
For example, if you have a website to sell Dog Food in Sydney, the right keyword for transactional intent can be ‘dog food seller in Sydneyx’. Here the user is looking for dog food sellers in Sydney and you sell dog food in Sydney, it makes perfect sense. But if you get visitors from keywords like ‘pet food seller’ or ‘cat food seller in Sydney’ or even ‘dog food seller in Brisbane’, your conversions can be pretty low.
Let’s get into another scenario, if you are a purely informational website where you do not sell anything like Dog food but give out information about Dog food and related topics, you should target keywords with informational intent. These can be ‘What dog food is good for my Pug?’ or ‘What do I feed my 5 months old puppy?’.
And there are cases where you need both informational and transactional intent keywords. For blogs, you mostly rely on informational content while product or service pages are targeted for keywords with transactional intent like ‘buy a car’ or ‘purchase a software’.
The challenge is not to do well on one and ignore the other but to find a perfect balance between different keyword intent. Different keywords intent are meant for different stages of buyers journey. This way you can educate your visitors and turn them into paying customers as well.
LSI Keywords
You might be wondering where you get these ideas for keyword intent. One of those is LSI keywords. These LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords, are terms and phrases related to your main keyword. LSI keywords are sued by search engines to determine the context and relevance of content, which can positively impact SEO rankings.
Some of the areas that you can use to know your LSI keywords and other variations are as follows;
Google Searches
Trying to find out the related keywords and phrases for your website? Try Google searches. Conduct a Google search for your desired keyword and see in the related search results or people also ask sections. Google search autocomplete feature can also help you with these.
Keyword Research Tools
Another most used method to find out new Keyword ideas is SEO tools. Some of the tools you can use for keyword research are Google’s Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or SEMrush to discover LSI Keywords associated with your main keyword.
Summary
Gone are the days when creating content and stuffing keywords were enough to get you on the first page of Google. Now that the methods and approaches have changed it’s time to put more effort into understanding aspects like keyword intent.
Keyword intent is one of the most important parts of modern SEO. We’ve seen websites attracting thousands of visitors every month but they do not fulfill the intent. The users bounce back from the site after being bombarded with information they do not require and when they are unable to find what they are looking for. And, they do not convert or make a purchase or even consume the information. Hence, Keyword intent. Give users what they are looking for, and consider making content targeted for specific consumers.
All in all, you can use these keywords’ intent factors to identify users in different stages of the sales funnel and buyer journey to serve them with what they are looking for.
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