3 Ways to Use Search Intent to Boost Search Engine Optimization

Your business offers products and services that you know people need. You’ve narrowed down your target audience, and have even created a presence for yourself online through a website and social media. So why is your traffic still slow?

It is most likely because you need to pair your branding with search engine optimization, more commonly known as SEO, which is targeting organic traffic growth through utilizing strategies that will make your site rise on the search engine results pages. According to Brightedge Research, over half of traffic is organic through SEO. So yes, your target audience does need the products/services you offer, but you might not be easy enough for them to find.

Users have different intentions when searching for their needs online, which is known as search intent. There are four most common types of search intent, according to backlinko: informational, commercial, navigational, and transactional. Keep in mind the main intent that your audience will be searching for in order to reach your page. This is important to keep in mind as you begin an SEO plan because this intent is what you will use to research keywords, which we will touch on later.

Additionally, search intent can also be used to optimize your branding. Choosing specific and appealing colors, creating a brand voice, and knowing your values are important to creating your brand, but to strategize you must think on the other end of your target: your audience. To discover what search intent matches your branding, ask yourself: what type of offerings does my business provide? Your answer will fall under informational, commercial, navigational, and transactional.

Before we get into our three helpful tips, make sure your website and social media pages are specified to target your audience’s needs from what you know about them. You can read our other article here if you need to learn more about your audience and create a strategy to reach them.

1. After learning what search intent your audience has as they look for you, use keywords throughout your website that are related to both that search intent and your business. First, this requires knowing the search intent that fits both your business’s offerings and your consumer’s needs, then researching that search intent. Here is another helpful article to start researching your search intent more. After your research, make a list of keywords that your audience would most likely use when searching with that specific intent. However, these are different keywords than product keywords. With intent, think about words that answer or encompass “Best, how to, ways to” or words like “what/where/why/how/when/who , near me, tutorial, guide, sale”. Once you come up with this list, you have an array to choose from and utilize throughout different areas on your website, like web page titles, subtitles, content, and metatags.
2. Research keywords that are related to the product or service that your business offers by inserting them into a search engine, and then observe the results page you see. Examine the first five pages (that are not ads) for keywords they use that fall under your search intent. Look at the keywords they implement besides just the search intent, as well as the topics they cover, their branding strategy, the accessibility of their site, and what differentiates their business. Additionally, most SERPs include an automated list of questions that users commonly ask when using the keyword you’ve searched, called “People Also Asked…”. This, along with the other automated search results that appear when you’re typing in the search bar, are great places to check out what else your audience may be looking for.
3. Place search intent keywords in places on your website that might not be as obvious to look for. Besides just writing these words into your page titles and content, go beyond the visible and implement them into the building blocks of your site. Examples of these are the file names of images you upload to your site, ALT tags, page headers, the URL of the file or page name, or the DIV tag. This will boost the amount of times a keyword is used far more than users see, so it doesn’t feel as forced but you’re still putting in the work.

Repeating the keywords that your audience is looking for is key. And if the words they’re searching for are the key, then search intent is the tool to use to uncover that key. These search intent keywords can be implemented into your branding as part of your brand voice. That way, your brand reflects the search intent your audience needs. Stay tuned for an upcoming blog on how to optimize your branding to fit your search intent.

This process mostly consists of research, but that’s because once you’ve found the right words to use, your audience will have an easier time looking for you and your traffic will grow.

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