Identifying Your Target Keywords With Searcher Intent

By Brad Girtz, 24th June 2018

If you are running a business online you probably have a list of keywords somewhere you are trying to rank for. The problem is that many businesses get their keyword list but struggle to choose the best keywords to target. This is completely understandable. Unless you are a digital marketer, keyword lists will probably look pretty foreign to you. So how do you sort through hundreds of keywords to pick the winners?

The key to finding the killer keywords is to understand the searchers intent. Take the below keywords:

Aberdeen Football Club

Football Tricks

Buy Green Footballs

These are all keywords around the term football but they all have different searcher intent.

Navigational

The term Aberdeen Football Club is navigational, the searcher is clearly trying to navigate to the team’s website. This is important traffic for the brand being searched for, but it may not be valuable for others. By understanding that the searcher is clearly trying to get to a specific site you can predict whether that search is worth trying to rank for.

Information Seeking

The term Football Tricks is someone either looking to watch or learn new football skills. This traffic can be targeted by blogs. Businesses may also use these types of searches to increase brand awareness but it is unlikely to drive sales immediately. Informational searches also often have low site engagement. If someone lands on your website and finds the information they were looking for on the landing page, they are likely to leave. They got what they came for so why should they stay?

Transactional

This is where a searcher has stated their intention of buying something. In the above keyword list, Buy Green Footballs is a perfect example. The searcher wants to buy and they have specified their desired product. Often transactional searches are the most competitive because it is clear the searcher wants to buy and is looking to make a transaction soon.

Understanding & Classifying Searcher Intent

Now that we have established the different types of searcher intent, we can start to classify keywords. If you are looking for which keywords you should target, start by going through your keyword list and assign a searcher intent to each keyword. If you are unsure as to the intent, run a Google search for the keyword and see what types of results are shown. You can often infer intent based on results.

Once everything has been labelled, you need to understand the type of intent you should be targeting. If you sell footballs, transactional intent should be your main target but you may also want to target informational searches to build your brand awareness. For instance, if you have video of someone doing amazing tricks with your gear, you could convert an informational search into a transaction. Finding the right intent to target is all about understanding the content someone is searching for and finding ways to deliver that content that can also sell your product or service.

Target Content Based On Keywords

Now that you understand which intent you’d like to target, you just need to pair content that matches the searchers intent with the keywords that drive that search. Choose one or maybe 2 keywords per page of your site and target the content on that page specifically to the intent behind the search.

This will improve your time on site, increase traffic and increase conversions if you have them on your site.

To get more help targeting keywords and intent on your site, contact Plug & Play today. Our digital marketing agency team can give you more information and help you improve your digital marketing efforts.

 

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