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Identify Search Intent To Fuel The Growth Of Your Business

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The foundation of an effective marketing plan is to map out your keyword strategy.

Identify Search Intent To Fuel The Growth Of Your Business

This has taken on a new meaning with the latest development of Google’s search engines in terms of how they assess and rank your website.

Search intent is the major element behind the development of your inbound marketing strategy.

Choosing a specific keyword and repeating it in your content is no longer required to optimize your pages.

Search engines read your entire site to assess the value it provides as a response to a specific search query.

Group keywords together that have the same search intent. This will give your pages the optimization needed through latent semantic indexing.

Most noteworthy, this method of assessment has been in practice since the Hummingbird update in 2013.

Google has continually improved the level of sophistication in determining the intent of search queries and assessing which websites provide the best solutions.

List Your Keywords, Key Phrases and Top Search Terms

Starting your strategy is as simple as writing down a list of keywords that are being used to describe your offerings.

Collect the data necessary to provide accurate comparisons when you are finished.

A keyword tool necessary to complete this part of keyword research. Free keyword tools are available online such as Ubersuggest.

You will find the best and most useful software on sites like SEMrush and Ahrefs.

The keyword tools on these sites provide additional metrics such as:

  • the number of organic clicks
  • top performing pages of your competitors
  • the keywords your competitors are ranking for in the SERP’s

Complete a Technical Assessment to Filter Your Top Choices

The standard set of values you will need to make comparisons are the monthly volume of traffic, keyword difficulty and cost per click.

You want high commercial valued key phrases with a high volume of traffic and low keyword difficulty.

Three things to consider regarding the stated value of traffic for any keyword are the:

  • organic clicks from the traffic of that keyword
  • percentage of clicks that are generally awarded to each position
  • fact that your website will rank for similar phrases with the same search intent.

Identify search intent

You should identify search intent in the first phase of your keyword research because it defines the motivating factors behind users who are performing the query.

Perform the search yourself to see how the results page is displayed. This is the first clue to identifying search intent.

You want to take note of the layout of the page in order to assess the type of content that is effectively ranking at the top of the page.

The potential displays on the first page of results include the:

  • featured snippet
  • video carousels
  • shopping carousels
  • advertisements
  • local listings

Organic results typically follow these other types.

Strategically Target By Type of Results

If the top first page has a video carousel, it would be wise to create and rank a video to compete for that specific search term.

If there is a featured snippet, you will need to match and create a better response as a solution to the search query.

The way you create your content depends on the way the results are being displayed as a response to the keyword search.

The number of organic clicks plays a crucial role in the effectiveness the search term has on your website.

Further investigation of a first-page result may lead you to realize that although a search term may have a high volume of traffic, there may be a large percentage of “clickless” traffic that exists.

If a featured snippet can adequately answer a search query and there is no reason for a user to click on to find more information, that particular term will be useless for getting traffic to your website.

Let’s take the example search “How many kids did Brad and Angelina adopt?”

That search may get 100k searches but the organic clicks may only be around 4k.

94% of people will not get past position zero on that particular search because the answer found in the snippet satisfies their search intent.

Provide Solutions to Search Demand

Once you have an effective grouping of keywords, build content that satisfies the search intent.

To get a better insight on what content your page should include, search forums to identify the problems people are experiencing.

Write down the questions asked and include every question in your article to increase the value it provides to visitors.

Evergreen content is highly recommended to provide your site with a steady long term stream of traffic.

Evergreen content has no expiration date and will continually contribute to the value your website provides.

Your best content will teach your readers how to learn a specific skill or about a specific event, subject, or strategy.

Examples of evergreen content include:

  • case studies
  • interviews
  • round up articles
  • how to guides
  • best of lists
  • checklists
  • top strategies
  • historical highlights

Write about anything relevant to your audience that will not become dated in the foreseeable future.

Evergreen articles improve the onsite search engine optimization of your website.

When you have long-form content it takes readers longer amounts of time to read through the article.

In fact, it may take a visitor a few attempts at digesting the entire piece of content if it is long enough.

Encouraging return visits and increasing the length of time visitors are spending on your website are direct ranking factors.

Return visitors and increased time-on-site will improve the competitive position of your website.

Focus on Content That Doesn’t Expire

It will contribute building traffic to your site as time goes by and it moves up in the rankings.

Your evergreen article acquiring new backlinks through increased sharing improves your offsite search engine optimization.

If your article is truly answering search intent and providing value there is a strong likelihood that people will share their findings.

This in turn creates more traffic through the links they share with others.

Targeted keyword research enables the curation of content that is able to effectively answer search intent.

Using evergreen articles is one form of structuring the content of your site to include multiple keywords and phrases.

Publish what will adequately respond to demand and outperform competing pages that rank for similar search terms.

Incorporate these two pillars of success to develop a website that ranks highly in the search engine result pages.

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Christian Carere

SEO Consultant at Digital Ducats
Christian Carere is an SEO consultant based out of Toronto. He is the founder of Digital Ducats Inc. which specializes in search engine optimization services to improve the quality and quantity of traffic.
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Comments

  2. Very well said, Christian!
    Search intent is the core of writing any content according to me, the search intent gets you the write traffic necessary for your site and gives you the right direction to write relevant content.

    Reply

  3. This step by step process is followed by many good marketers and digital marketing agencies. As very rightly said the search intent is very critical before writing any content. Some really good insights and the evergreen content topics are excellent.

    Reply

  5. I’m not sure if I necessarily agree. People keep talking about how Google has completely changed its ranking from the old days but I think this is overblown. For instance, if you type in personal trainer Toronto in a search then the first business that shows up will have /personaltrainertoronto in their URL. Also, I see people with tons of PBN links that are at the top of the results. They still have a lot of changes to make for it to be a more fair system.

    Reply

  10. the article is quite interesting and has great stuff as well. I think content is the king if you are having great content on your website then it will automatically rank. the recent update of Google says that to rank fast on google SERP. You need to focus on great content
    Quant would love you to read ..How to select SEO KeywordsMy Profile

    Reply

  11. Ultimately, I understand keyword research plays a vital role in catering our content to the user’s search intent. Keywords are the key that conveys what audiences are looking for. We should not just take the keywords as we get it from keyword research tools. We should also make use of Google related searches, auto type search queries into account for the fruitful content creation. Thanks for the heads-up!

    Reply

  12. Christian,

    You have nailed the topic in detail. In the SEO industry, always there is a debate: we should write for the search engines or the users. Absolutely, one should understand that even search engines will refine the sources that are appropriate to the search queries (made by users). So, it is ultimate to write for the user’s search intent. It’s sure that the search engines will reward it in terms of rankings if it really serves the users with what they need. Thanks for your deep insights about identifying search intent.
    Sathish Arumugam would love you to read ..Grammarly Free Vs Grammarly Premium – It’s Really Worth Buying!My Profile

    Reply

  14. Great post thanks for posting such valuable information with us. This will definitely help a lot of people improve their website’s search presence. Nice work keep posting such information with us all.

    Reply

  15. I completely agree with the author on the importance of search intent in building the content. The latest algorithm rolled by name “Broad Core Algorithm” clearly speaks on building quality & relevant content for fast ranking.

    Reply

  17. Hi Christian,

    Thanks for sharing informative blog post. I totally agree with that proper keyword research are the foundation of any business. Many say content is the king however they fail to realize that content with proper keyword research would not attract right audience. This blog post clarifies many doubts i have about the identifying the search intent.

    Thanks once again for this blog post.

    Reply

        • Hi Bryan,

          They have the most accurate information, but they most likely don’t provide that to anyone. And they have made that more obvious by telling us that only advertisers spending 10s of $1000s a month are being shown supposedly full results.

          Also, it is never accurate. You cannot tell whether one person searched for a phrase 15 times of 15 different people searched for it once. The odds of making a sale to 15 people versus that 1 person are better.

          I know this because I did ppc, mostly AdWords, for 5.5 years. And crazy searches no two people would ever make could show high counts. (Nothing under 10 searches a month shows.)

          Many people type a search in, click one result, and then instead of backing up, just click search again — especially if whatever they’re using leaves that search sitting in the search box.

          It is easier for them to click “search” than to click “back”. Or maybe Google even counts going back as another search.

          Either way, it was obvious that only one person was repeatedly making that search as no other person would come up with exactly that long string of non-sensical words.
          Gail Gardner would love you to read ..SEO-Optimized Infographics: A Blogger’s Best FriendMy Profile

          Reply

  19. this article is quite helpful and it focuses majorly on the content part and I personally feel that content is the kingpin and it shouldn’t be expire quite easily.

    the content should be different from others. only then google will take your content into consideration.

    Reply

  23. Nowdays population is rapidly increases day by day. So jobs options is very low. Therefore only one option is remaining to settle in life that is business.
    We can start any business that is depending on your Intereste.
    I’m strongly recommend a business don’t follow for jobs.
    It’s my opinion 😎
    Shiv Salunke would love you to read ..Flipkart Sale – Big Billion DaysMy Profile

    Reply

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