Stop Blowing Your Budget On Low-Intent Keywords

If you're not sure of keyword intent, you could easily be throwing money away and wasting your time over low-value keywords.

Finding high-intent keywords is crucial to your AdWords success.

Have you determined the value of keywords for your business? Have you identified the intent of the searchers? Are they ready to buy or are they just browsing? Are they looking for a solution to a problem?

If you haven't answered these questions you can't expect to be able to target the type of keywords that will actually drive traffic to your website. This article will look at why your keyword intent is so valuable to your SEO and content strategy.

‍1. User Intent Tells You What Users Are Looking For

‍When evaluating user intent for your business, it's important to look further than popular search terms or phrases and start looking at what people actually type into search engines to find your business. These types of keywords are often referred to as long-tail search terms, for example:

• Head term: spa pools
• Long-tail search term: 4-person spa for sale, spa pool filters online

Consider you are doing some research for a website that sells spa pools. After some keyword research you determine the term spa may be a good term because it has low competition and over 100,000 searches per month ‐ it sounds like a great opportunity.

However, people who search for spa could be looking for a number of things, from day spas and retreats, to second-hand spa pools or perhaps spa pool accessories. With such a broad search term, a very small fraction of searches might convert to a sale.

In contrast, a more targeted search term like spa pools for sale or, even better, buy a new spa pool Auckland might return a smaller search volume, but will deliver users who are actually looking to purchase a spa pool.

It also pays to be aware that certain phrases and acronyms within your industry may also be a common term for something else. Although in your research you may find there is a lot of traffic for that term, when you actually search it you may see the results are for something entirely different. A great example of this is in marketing for the term EDM.

In the industry this is a common acronym for Electronic Direct Mail ‐ or email marketing. However, when searching this term, most results are for Electronic Dance Music (see below). In these cases it pays to add a qualifying word or words to make sure you only get search volume for your actual intended definition

‍2. User Intent Helps You Create Better Landing Pages

‍Understanding keyword intent can help you craft better landing pages that work harder for you and deliver more conversions. The better your understanding of a user's wants the better you can deliver a landing page to satisfy these wants.

Thinking back to the spa pool example, you may easily craft one landing page for those wanting to purchase a brand new spa pool, using as many relevant keywords as possible on that single page. But by understanding and acting on user intent, you could craft more unique landing pages which highlight the different models, sizes and features of each spa pool on offer.

‍3. User Intent Generates Better Overall Content Strategies

‍The importance of relevant, quality copy cannot be overstated when it comes to a successful SEO strategy. But what matters above all is ensuring that content appeals to the specific needs of your audience - what is your target market looking for? What type of content can you craft by looking at the long-tail keywords they are searching for? Leverage what you know about user intent to better craft your content strategy and make it even more appealing to your audience.

‍Conclusion

‍The shift towards focusing on search intent to give context to your SEO, and improve traffic quality as well as quantity is a growing phenomenon. Understanding what their needs, wants and problems are and focusing on developing a search strategy that fulfills those needs can increase your leads, click-through rates, conversion rates and sales.