“Whether paid or organic, when it comes to search marketing, keywords are king.” Jacob Baadsgaard. Keyword research is still important because search is based on keywords. The thing to do is to anticipate the intent in the keywords. Long tail keywords help to narrow this down. (An intent – a need or want – whether it be for a product, service, solution, or simply more information.) Keyword research is usually the first step you undertake when planning how to bring in customers to your website – because the terms they’re searching for will determine the kind of content you will create and the way you will optimize it. Whether you’re trying to pick SEM keywords, SEO keywords or both, the key to successful search marketing is picking keywords with the right intent. No matter how much search volume a keyword might have, if those searches aren’t relevant to your business, they aren’t worth your time and/or money. Here are some examples of keywords and their intent:
rganic visibility would be what most businesses will aim for from almost all of these searcher intents. You can use a grouping of keywords from each of these categories as a seed list and expand upon them using your favorite keyword tool eg. SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool That will give you a better idea of the search volume, click volume, cost per click, difficulty, trends, SERP features, and other variables, which you can use to estimate how many opportunities you have to interact with the customer (and what that will cost you) as they move along their purchase journey. The hypothesis was that the farther away a person is from buying something, the more abstract their queries, and the more likely they are to use “why” questions. As they get closer to their goal, they use more concrete, contextual terms with verbs (action words) like “shop” or “buy.” (based on A study by Northwestern University) Users searching with a browsing intent are 20% more likely to click on a result that stresses abstract words like “best,” while those searching with a buying intent are 180% more likely to click on a result that emphasizes concrete words like “shop.” Aligning keywords such as these, matching them to the mindset of your prospects allow for more relevant brand messaging, targeted ad or landing page copy, and improve personalized user experiences that drive more conversions. Google is laser-focused on whether your content matches the intent of the searcher; so no matter how “smartly” you insert keywords in your titles, subheadings, meta descriptions, or copy, they will detect it. Because of their focus on giving good user experience, they are moving into being more than a search engine and into an answer engine. This is quite evident from how the SERPs show up with snippets - a single answer box (the click-less version of “I’m Feeling Lucky”) along with options such as “People also ask” and “Related search” to further gauge – and meet – searcher intent. It means that Google is looking to:
To better fit such criteria, you can use insights from keyword research to structure your content to appear for evolving search features such as instant answers. You then need to make sure that you can truly provide the best answer. Ask yourself:
For different sets of keywords you could analyze Google SERPs to help you make the right crucial decisions on whether to use SEO or PPC to target the right intent. In SEO, to achieve high rankings through keyword targeting is a long, drawn-out, complex process, extremely competitive and prone to errors along the way. More importantly is to stay relevant and trying to understand searcher intent and context, and providing best-match content.
The variables and factors that influence intent matching differ from those that you take into account while doing keyword research. Intent matching takes the guessing game out of keyword targeting. To really get better at search marketing, you need much more than technical SEO, high quality content, and links. Just like what Google aims to achieve, you need to optimize or redesign your website for better user experience at every point in the customer journey, and encourage them to take the right actions that eventually result in conversions. (information excerpts sourced from Rohan Ayyar Reg.Mktg Manager at SEMRush.) |
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