How to gauge intent when doing keyword research
Why is it important to gauge intent when doing keyword research?
How should you prepare for keyword research?
What is the process of understanding intent when doing keyword research?
What are the best practices for aligning intent with keyword research?
It may seem quite obvious, but aligning your keyword research strategy with user intent is the foundation of a robust SEO content strategy. Keywords, on their own, don’t hold that much value unless they’re paired with user intent. But why is this, and importantly, how do you put this into action when developing your content strategy?
In this article, we’ll introduce the relationship between keywords and user intent, cover the process of aligning intent with keywords, and share some valuable tips and tricks along the way.
Why is it important to gauge intent when doing keyword research?
As we’ve mentioned, understanding the intent behind the keywords you want to target is an integral part of an effective SEO content strategy. But why is this? With any content you create for any website, you want to attract the right audience and people. Specifically, those who will align with the goals of what you’re trying to achieve with your content. This includes things like wanting to make a purchase, comparing services/products, finding out how to do something, and so on. If you don’t focus on the intent behind the keywords you want to target, you risk creating content for the sake of content. This means you won’t engage with your target audience, hit those KPIs, or deliver on ROI.
Let’s take this example to show what this might look like in action. You’re an e-commerce company that wants to build content around the product you wish to sell. This content targets an audience wanting to purchase this particular product. Therefore, you want to target keywords that have transactional user intent.
How should you prepare for keyword research?
Before you start creating content, preparing your keyword research strategy with user intent in mind is important. To do this, you want to get your keyword research tools ready. There’s a wealth of these out there, with some of the most popular including SEMrush’s Keyword Magic Tool and Ahrefs’s Keywords Explorer.
Your keyword research tool should be your starting point. A couple of these tools have intent filters built in. However, we suggest taking these recommendations with a pinch of salt, as they don’t always match up with actual user intent upon manual review. You very much need to take a broad strokes approach, which we’ll cover further in the next section.
What is the process of understanding intent when doing keyword research?
So, we’ve just covered step one in the process of aligning intent and keyword research: using SEO tools to research keyword opportunities. What comes next?
Manually review SERPs
The next step is probably the most important step in the whole process. This is to review these keywords and their user intent manually. The best way to do this is to search for a keyword and look at the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). What types of content come up? Is it product pages, blog content, or something else? Are any other types of content, like videos, infographics or images, ranking too? Whatever is ranking indicates the intent behind the query and should be used to inform the type of content you make to target that keyword. For instance, create blog content if blog posts are coming up in SERPs.
It’s also valuable to check SERPs and see who ranks for target keywords. If your direct competitors are ranking for keywords related to your product/service offering, it’s a good indicator that you should also target these keywords. This is because there will be a strong overlap between your target audiences.
Keep in mind, however, that if the intent behind any of these keywords varies from what you offer, don’t incorporate them into your keyword strategy.
Check related keywords and questions
Another approach is to check related keywords. People Also Ask snippets and People Also Search For sections in SERPs are helpful for providing context around certain queries. Alsoasked.com is another tool for digging into related context around queries.
This allows you to better gauge keyword intent as you can see the other types of searches people make concerning your target keyword. This means you can be more assured about the type of intent at play with the particular keyword you’re looking into.
Here’s an example to illustrate what this looks like in action. If our target keyword is ‘flattering black dresses’, the People Also Search For section may contain related keywords like ‘classy black dress’ and ‘smart black dress’. This reinforces that this keyword has transactional intent as people are searching for various types of dresses to buy instead of asking questions.
Check related keywords and questions
If your marketing team also engages in PPC, we recommend looking at paid keyword data. Paid keyword data is useful in understanding which keywords already perform well for your brand. High levels of engagement with certain ads indicate that they have the right intent and resonate with the existing audience, so it makes sense to target the associated keywords organically, too.
Review existing performance
Finally, take a look at existing organic performance. As part of your keyword research, you will come across keywords for which you already rank but perhaps have the potential to rank better by more accurately targeting intent with your content. In addition, there may be key pages on your site that drive a lot of organic traffic but do not drive as many conversions as you might expect.
You can carry out this step by checking pages using a mix of Google Analytics and Google Search Console. With Google Search Console, you can check which keywords a page already ranks and drives traffic for. In Google Analytics, you can then look at key metrics for a page, such as engagement and conversion rates. If these metrics aren’t that great, it may indicate that the intent or content type for these pages is not aligned with user expectations, and it’s time for a content review and refresh.
What are the best practices for aligning intent with keyword research?
We’ve covered ‘whats’, ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of intent and keyword research. Now, let’s look at the best practices. Here are the best tips and tricks you should keep in mind when aligning user intent with keyword research.
- Don’t create content for the sake of it just to target a keyword! Your content won’t perform well if the intent isn’t right and you will just end up using valuable resources.
- At the end of the day, relevancy is more valuable than search volume. It’s better to target ten super-relevant, lower-volume keywords than 100 keywords that are too broad or misaligned with your target audience’s intent and interests.
- Engage directly with customers to gain further insights into user intent and search behaviour. This is where your support and sales teams can help. Direct feedback from the source can help explain things like sudden spikes in traffic or search volume, offering a unique opportunity to create content that addresses specific customer needs and aligns closely with their intent. This approach also means you can create content based on feedback rather than assumptions.
Conclusion
Gauging intent during keyword research is crucial for creating content that resonates with your audience and their needs. This goes beyond just looking at the search volume. It involves using the right tools, manual checks, and often going directly to the customers themselves. Understanding user intent behind target keywords means that you can create content that increases website traffic and improves engagement and conversion rates. User intent and an effective keyword strategy are integral to successful SEO content and ultimately move the needle.
