Target Thy Customer by Choosing the Right Keyword Search Intent
Understanding Keywords, Their Application, and Their Strategy
An Introduction to Keyword Search Intent
Why It Matters for Digital Marketing Strategies
In digital marketing, especially in areas like PPC and SEO, one of the worst things that you can do is misunderstand the keyword search intent of your target customer. Working a potential customer through the sales funnel, which are the stages they go through when considering buying your products or services, goes deeper than just selling them on benefits and discounts alone. In other words, your keyword strategy and the type of content you present to your audience needs to be aligned with their intention based on where they are along their “customer journey”.
The customer journey simply refers to the different places they will stop along their way to making a decision as to whether or not they will buy from you. These stops can include marketing campaigns like Google Ads and SEO to create awareness of your brand. They can include Social Media and Peer Review Platforms to gather feedback about the quality of your products and services, your reputation as a business, and what it is like to work with your company. It can even take into account nurturing strategies like Google Remarketing and Email Marketing to continue developing the relationship to finally convince them to make a decision in your favor. The list goes on. Many businesses misunderstand that the first interaction is all they need. When in reality, today’s consumer can take up to 5 to 7 touch points before that person converts into a customer.
With keyword search intent in mind, you can leverage a game-changing element in your strategy that can completely alter your ROI trajectory from your marketing campaigns. Targeting the right intent that provides the right content at the right time can move your audience through the process successfully. Mapping out the different stages that a potential buyer goes through on their way to becoming a customer can reduce wasted digital marketing cost too. Once you have mapped out this customer journey, you can begin identifying which keywords are the most relevant at each stage.
Understanding Keyword Basics
What They Are, and Why They Matter
Keywords are simply words and phrases that you can use to promote your business, the products or services you sell, and how you describe the benefit and value of what you offer to your potential customers. A keyword can be a single word like “Plumber” or “Dentist”. Or a keyword can be a phrase, often referred to as a keyphrase, and may be something like “trendy restaurants in Austin” or “tree removal services near me”. Keywords are an integral part of your digital marketing strategy, because it controls who you reach once they click on your ad or website link online.
Including the right keywords in your digital marketing strategies makes it much easier for the right customers to find you. You may be asking yourself, so do I just write down a list of the products and services I offer as a keyword or keyphrase and build a list? The answer is no. While you can make your own list, there are several problems that can arise from this approach. Here are a few top reasons why:
Zero Search Volume Keywords
These are keywords that often produce little to no traffic at all. While some may argue they are worthwhile to target in places like PPC because they are low cost and low risk, these are keywords that you certainly do not want to target in places like SEO. SEO takes time to build rankings and costs money regardless of whether people are searching and clicking on your website. You do not want to make an investment in both money and time only to wind up with a few clicks, if any, at the end of 6 to 12 months.
Irrelevant Traffic
Many keywords can possess multiple meanings. And if you choose keywords that are too generic, or too broad, it will lead to a lot of irrelevant traffic to your website. This not only can contribute to high bounce rates, which can have a negative impact on SEO, but in places like PPC it can be a costly mistake as well. Since you are paying for advertising, spending that money on people who are not interested in your products or services is not a sustainable or wise strategy if leads, sales, and ROI are your priority.
Missed Keyword Opportunities
Humans are not robots, which means we are not programmed to think the same way. How you may search for something online will be different from one person to the next. If you rely solely on your own interpretation of what you do as a business to build your keyword list, then you will miss out on a majority of your target audience. The good news is that you do not have to conduct surveys or ask every customer how they coin the phrase for your product or service. This is where online keyword research tools come in handy!
How to Find the Right Digital Marketing Keywords
In Short: How To Choose a Keyword
When it comes to digital marketing, choosing the right keywords is essential for success. However, with so many keyword options available, how can you know which keywords are right for your digital marketing efforts?
Here at Allegiant Digital Marketing, we have spent decades developing processes and experimenting with different technologies to create the right formula. Through in-depth consultation and collaboration with our partners, where we identify their goals, perform keyword and competitive research, and a variety of other services, we help our partners determine the best approach.
But we are not stingy either, so here are at least a few tools that you can explore that can help you out.
Keyword Ideation and Research Resources
There are a multitude of sources that you can use to find the right keywords for your digital marketing strategies. Some are free while others may require a premium (paid) subscription. However, we have several that we are particularly fond of that are great for initial keyword research. Each offering insight into what people are searching for about any product, service, or topic you may be interested in promoting.
How to Use Keyword Search Intent on Your Website
SEO Keyword Intent Strategy and Keyword Placement
Using SEO keyword intent strategies to guide your keyword placement and content writing can be a powerful feature incorporated into your website. Think of your website as a sales funnel itself. When people land on your home page, what should your homepage include? What style of content and keywords should be used there? What pathways do you create to the next page that your user should navigate to that will bring them one step closer to converting? These are often questions that are overlooked during the website design and development process that can lead to a nice looking website that never converts website visitors into leads or sales.
Using SEO keyword intent strategies to guide your keyword placement and content writing can be a powerful feature incorporated into your website. Think of your website as a sales funnel itself. When people land on your home page, what should your homepage include? What style of content and keywords should be used there? What pathways do you create to the next page that your user should navigate to that will bring them one step closer to converting? These are often questions that are overlooked during the website design and development process that can lead to a nice looking website that never converts website visitors into leads or sales.
Website planning is equally important to keyword research and placement. Your website must not only look the part, but also serve a purpose to your audience. Based on their intent and what they are looking for, where they land on your website and how you guide them through the conversion process must be implemented in your website architecture, layout, and navigation. With each piece of content consumed by your audience giving them the suggested action that needs to follow. And because your audience will arrive at various parts of your website at different stages of their journey, each page of your site has to cater to that intent and provide an intuitive way to usher that visitor to the next step.
Google has been very heavily focused on user experience (UX) since inception. This is how they have become the 800 lb gorilla of the search engine world and why nearly every search that happens online takes place on Google. This is especially important in the world of SEO and content marketing on your website. If a user arrives at a web page on your website, leaves, and continues searching for the same thing that brought them to your website in the first place, Google will consider that a negative experience. Because they were unable to find an answer to what they were searching for and decided to keep exploring Google’s Search Results Page (SERP) for other websites to find what they need. This is another reason why targeting the right keywords and SEO keyword intent matters so much. And why your content that supports these keywords must also be relevant, quality, and actionable.
Keyword Search Intent and Tips for Digital Marketing Keywords
For Pay-Per-Click Ads, Social Media, and Email Campaigns
Keywords are not just relevant to SEO and content development – they are also an important part of PPC, Social Media Advertising, and Email Marketing. To create an effective relationship with your audience, you need to communicate with them in a way that is engaging, informative, and personalized. That it is also done in a S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) format that solves whatever problem that your product or service can solve for them. Doing this with the right keyword intent and content strategies can turn your digital marketing campaigns into your most profitable source of advertising for your business.
SEO Keywords for Social Media Posts
When optimizing your social media posts, there are a few key things to remember. Firstly, Remember that when people search for something on social media, they often have different intentions than when searching on a search engine like Google. For example, someone might be looking for product reviews on Twitter while looking for peer feedback on Facebook. So keep this in mind when you’re choosing which keywords to target. Secondarily, make sure to include relevant keywords in your posts. This will help your posts appear in search engine results when people are searching for those keywords. Finally, be sure to use hashtags judiciously. Hashtags can be a great way to increase the reach of your posts, but using too many of them can hurt your chances of being found in search results.
SEO Keywords for Email Campaigns
There are many benefits to using SEO keywords in email campaigns:
- They can help to improve the open rate of your emails. If your email includes relevant keywords that are being searched for by your target audience, it is more likely to be opened and read.
- Using SEO keywords can help improve your email campaign’s click-through rate. If your email contains a call-to-action relevant to the keywords, recipients are more likely to click on it.
- Using SEO keywords can help improve your email campaign’s overall ROI.
By ensuring that your email is relevant and targeted to your audience, you are more likely to see a positive return on investment.
Always Be Refining Your Digital Marketing SEO keyword strategy
And How to Do It
If there’s one thing constant in digital marketing, it’s change—including the Google algorithm. Suppose you’re not constantly testing and refining your digital marketing SEO keyword strategy. In that case, you’re missing out on valuable opportunities to improve your website’s visibility and ranking in search engine results pages. What works today might not work tomorrow, so it’s important to stay on top of the latest changes and ensure that your keyword strategy is always up-to-date. Fortunately, there are a few simple ways to test and refine your SEO keyword strategy on an ongoing basis.
Refine Your Keywords
As you continue to test and track your keywords, you’ll inevitably find some that work better than others. You should focus on incorporating these keywords into your digital marketing strategy. Remember to keep testing new keywords to stay ahead of the curve and continue achieving your digital marketing goals.
Research New Keywords
Once you better understand your goals and target audience, it’s time to start researching new keywords to help you achieve them. You can use several different tools for keyword research, including Google AdWords Keyword Planner and Moz Keyword Explorer. Be sure to research short-tail and long-tail keywords so that you can target various searches.
Update Your Content for New SEO Rules
As we said, change is a major part of the digital marketing frontier. Likewise, the rules of the game often change completely, and that includes SEO rules. As a result, you’ll need to keep your content updated to avoid falling behind in the rankings. In particular, ensure you’re always up-to-date on Google’s latest algorithm changes. These can have a major impact on your traffic and visibility.
Follow these rules, and you should be able to ensure your long-term SEO success. Even as rules change and develop, you must remain adaptable enough to change with them. With the right keyword search intent and enough effort, you can ensure that your SEO always remains strong.
