How to unlock a successful keyword strategy using search intent
How do Life Science businesses stand out in an already crowded and competitive market? You might start by auditing the effectiveness of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for your website. Keywords and search intent is what drives optimisation in search results. And while it’s easier said than done to rank at the top of search engines, the ROI can be worth it if you have a good SEO strategy from the outset.
So, how much money are you LOSING by not setting up your SEO correctly from the beginning? SEO isn’t just about keywords. Slow loading or badly designed pages, chunky, misnamed images, confusing introductions, weak calls to action – all affect your ability to rank in search and attract and retain customers on your website.
Your website is your virtual store front. It needs to broadcast your offerings, answer questions, solve problems, and promote you as trusted name in your field.
Try it yourself. Take a look at the top life science companies in your area of expertise that appear on page 1 of search engines. It’s unlikely they got there without optimising their website. But it is likely they’re using the power of search intent (or user intent) to drive their content strategy.
They know their customer is looking for a solution to a problem and they’ve curated content and keywords to show their product or service solves that problem. Search engines can “see” the content is a good fit, so it serves those results at the top.
So, what exactly is search intent and what does it mean for your website?
Read on for a sneak peek from a copywriter’s perspective. The words used on your website can either attract or repel customers. Knowing the power of choosing the right words, for the right reasons, and using the right medium to deliver your message is crucial.
What is search intent?
Search intent is the goal a user has when asking a question online. They may want to find information on something, or they may be there to buy something. Search engine algorithms have learned the way people search for things, and then chooses the most relevant results for that query.
For example, if someone types “pathology” into google, the results display a number of options because the term is not specific. Is the searcher looking for a definition of pathology? Where to find their nearest pathology provider? Where to buy supplies for a pathology lab? Or to study pathology?
The snip below demonstrates this. It shows:
- The definition of pathology
- Relevant images
- Suggestions for other similar topics
- Map for pathology lab locations
- A side panel showing books on the topic of pathology
More qualifying words such as “Pathology labs” will show results specifically for local pathology service providers, both as a list and on a map.
Trying different qualifying words, e.g., “Pathology supplies” shows information about products and suppliers of pathology equipment. Notice the bold words the meta description – they are an exact match to the search term.And of course, typing a URL “www.ExamplePathologySupplies.com.au” will take the searcher to the exact webpage. What made them choose that website? Take a look again at the last search, and note the language used in the first two results. How does your title and meta description compare? This is the first thing people will see about your business in a search engine and potentially makes a big difference to the click-through rate. More on that later.
You can see how the results change based on the searchers’ intent to find something in particular. Now think about your own product or service. What would someone type into a search engine to find you? And what types of content would you have to answer that need?
The 4 types of search intent
To help you decide which types of keywords you should be using, there are four categories of search intent. A person may either want to find, compare, research, or buy something. It’s no coincidence that search intent matches the customer’s path to buy your product or service offering – otherwise known as your sales ‘funnel’
Find: “Informational” search. The broadest category and usually the customer’s first interaction with a search engine to find what they want. This correlates to the example above of typing “pathology” in the search bar. At this early stage, customers aren’t sure what solutions exist for them. They take note of what turns up the search results, choose according to their needs, or change their search term altogether if the results aren’t what they were looking for.
Compare: “Commercial” search. Now they understand what’s available, they start to narrow down the search and compare on brand, price, deliverables, location etc. This is like the “pathology supplies” example above.
Research: “Navigational” search. The customer has found the type of thing they’re looking for, so they’ll likely navigate directly to those websites as in the example above showing the full URL www.ExamplePathologySupplies.com.au.
Buy: “Transactional” search. The customer is ready to buy or engage with your service. This usually means they’ve gone through all the phases of finding, researching, comparing, and now they are ready to commit. To get to this point relies on many factors, including knowing your audience, and a strong call to action.
Audience informs intent
In marketing circles, your audience can also be known as a customer avatar, buyer persona, or target market. Whichever term you prefer, knowing what they need or expect from you gets you well on your way to providing valuable information using a well-thought-out keyword strategy that includes intent.
What words are customers typing into search engines to find your product or service? How specific are they being? What problem is it solving for them? After studying the 4 types of intent, does your website meet the needs of the customer in that moment?
Strong title and meta descriptions help to set you apart from the competition on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Make sure you’ve used that space wisely and strategically. If you’d like to know more about SERPs and SEO tips for beginners, I have a free downloadable with actionable tips for you.
Once you’ve taken the time to learn about your audience, the job of finding the right keywords with the right intent is so much easier for you.
Page or product specific keywords
It’s important for you to know that your keywords should be linked to a single product or page on your website. The same primary keyword shouldn’t be used for other pages, because search engines can get confused about which one they should be ranking in SERPs. (There is a way around this if you must use the same term, but it’s beyond the scope of this post. If you’d like to know more, do a search for ‘canonicals’).
Mapping one keyword (or keyphrase) to each page or product helps search engines to rank your pages in line with the search intent of the customer. This is why well optimised pages cut through the noise and help you rank, as does content specifically optimised for keywords that customers are searching for.
You may need to ask yourself: How do my keywords and pages stack up against the competition? Would they attract the audience you’re expecting? It pays to check if your pages and keywords are still relevant and performing on a regular basis. If not, you can tweak them to something more meaningful to boost customer engagement. Keywords aren’t set and forget. You need to keep an eye on changes within your industry, and indeed within search engines, and optimise accordingly.
**Caveat: Don’t go changing your pages and keywords all at once, it can cause your website to drop in rankings while the search engine re-crawls the new information. Add to that, you may mess with a page that’s already ranking well. Be very selective about which ones to optimise and which to leave alone. You may need to get some advice from your copywriter or website developer about this.
Your website beyond search intent
Search intent feeds the search results. While anything past that point isn’t known by ‘search intent’ anymore, if the customer is on your website every experience should be geared toward matching their needs.
Remember the 4 types of search intent? If your website is set up with good user experience (UX) in mind, a customer can follow the whole funnel seamlessly.
For example: strong actionable keywords in the title and meta description led them to your website. Their next intent is to find exactly what they searched for.
- Did clicking the link take them directly to the product/service/information they were looking for?
- If it doesn’t – why not? (This is bad UX – they’ll likely go elsewhere)
- Is the content adequate enough to solve their initial query?
- Is there an opportunity to ask questions (chatbot) or FAQ on the page?
- Do you have a strong and enticing call to action (CTA)?
- Is it easy to contact you?
- How easy is it to buy from you – which payment options are available?
While the initial intent brings them to your website, the overall intent is to have a seamless experience. Your website should deliver quality results no matter which product or page they land on.
Best medium for engagement
Based on input from the user, search engines can produce any number of solutions including, but not limited to:
- Featured snippets
- Knowledge panels
- Visual search (videos and images)
- Voice
- Local pack
- Paid ads
- Organic listings
This means that it would be super helpful if the medium you use to market your product or service matches the intent of the customer.
Would the customer expect to see, or be best served by, videos? Images? A link to a blog, article, downloadable, or other informational content? Or are they ready to buy?
A carefully targeted paragraph which explains an answer to a commonly asked question can become a featured snippet. The importance of this is that it’s listed in position ZERO – that is to say, ABOVE all the other listings.
**Another caveat: while getting a featured snippet puts you at the very top of the search results, it doesn’t guarantee more click-through to your website because the information provided in the snippet might satisfy user intent. However, it can increase your authority and trustworthiness, which are two of Google’s ranking factors in E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authority, and trust).
Ok. All that sounds great, Shari. Now how do I make it happen?
Do your customer research
The crux of optimising for search intent is knowing your customer. It’s true you may have more than one type of ideal customer. There’s no harm in setting up a few different avatars to directly market to them. I’ve listed a few things below that are usually considered in making up a customer avatar.
Demographics: This information will change based on, for example, if you’re targeting businesses or consumers.
Business: Avatar name, age bracket, gender, location, occupation, experience, company revenue, role in purchasing decisions, challenges, fears, motivators, goals, which publications do they read? Do they have social media – which channels?
Consumers: Avatar name, age, gender, relationship status, kids, location, occupation, income, challenges, fears, desires, lifestyle, online presence.
Using the SERPs:
A great place to start mapping a customer avatar is the search results themselves. Entering the keywords you’d like to rank for will give you the top results to study. Which websites are ranking above you for that term?
- What do their headlines, meta descriptions and title tags say?
- If you click their links, what’s on the page?
- How does it differ from yours? This could be page design or the copy.
- What are they offering? How different is their information from yours?
- Cheaper products? (optimise to show how product or service is superior)
- Does your competitor have easier navigation around the site?
- How clear is their messaging? Can a customer tell who they are, what they do, who they do it for, and why they do it better than anyone else?
Do an honest comparison to see where you can improve.
Use ‘people also ask’ and ‘related searches’:
These features can be a goldmine of information about your potential customers.
“People also ask” is a feature of search engines that appears on the first page of the search results either at or near the top. Being able to see similar questions gives you heads up to create new keywords or content that matches those queries, or improve content you already have that isn’t performing so well.
“Related searches” shows alternatives to the original query. It can be useful in showing words or phrases you may not have thought of but would possibly be a better fit in your keyword intent strategy.
Optimise headlines, titles, and meta descriptions
Headlines, titles, and meta descriptions can make or break a click through. They are the first thing people see about your business in the search results, so it’s important for telling the user what you offer at a glance. Granted, there’s limited space to make this happen (up to 60 characters for a title tag, 150 characters for a meta description). Technically speaking, you can go over those thresholds and make them as long as you want. Just be warned they will be truncated in the SERPs and show ellipses at the end of (unfinished) sentences like this:Now – they’ve done nothing inherently wrong here, but it does leave the customer hanging on both title and meta. What follows the words “Life Sciences” in the title? And what follows the word “organism” in the meta description? Is this the best description of what a customer would find on that page? If the user clicks through to find it’s not what they were after, they’ll go back to the SERPs to look for something more suitable. “Bouncing” back to the SERPs can hurt your SEO metrics.
To optimise your title tag, meta description and headlines, you really do need to know what information would best serve your audience in that moment. Then you can follow through by giving them exactly what they need on your website.
In comparison, this title and meta have been optimised for the space:See how the title is short, simple and effective, telling the customer exactly what it is? And the meta description explains it further with a succinct but factual explanation of what will be found on the website if you click through? The customer knows at a glance what they will find on the webpage, because the title and meta do a great job of explaining it.
Keyword choice: long tail, search volume & keyword difficulty.
According to a study by Backlinko, 91.8% of all searches use long tail keywords. We saw above that adding more words to our search terms gave us better search results. “Long-tail” keywords offer even more specificity. For example: the search term ‘test tubes’ might become ‘red-top test tubes’, or ‘pricing for red-top test tubes’, or even more specific, ‘pricing for red top test tubes Australia’.
The longer the search term gets, the more specific it becomes. If your company sells red top test tubes, you can be pretty certain that your audience will be searching for terms that include pricing or location so they can source locally.
The search volume for long tail keywords are lower than broad terms, but that’s because long tail keywords are more in tune with customer intent. There are less people using that term, but the ones who do are a more qualified customer.
I ran a search for ‘pricing for red top test tube’ in Moz keyword explorer and it returned this result:Now, other things need to be considered alongside these results, but it looks like a promising term to optimise for. Search difficulty of 24 means there’s pretty low competition for that search term. But 84% organic click-through rate (CTR) is great and means that of the small number of searches, this term has more chance of converting because it’s so specific to a customer’s needs.
All this is to say, don’t settle for search terms that you ‘think’ are best. Do some research and make sure the terms fit your organisation and your customer. Then, create product descriptions, service pages, or content with this in mind.
Model yourself to display E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust. Google has ‘Search Quality Rater Guidelines’ which demonstrate the types of content that are rewarded and why. While E-E-A-T isn’t a direct SEO ranking factor, if you tick all the E-E-A-T boxes, you will naturally rank higher because you’re serving up content that that is factual, informative, relevant, and trustworthy.
Here’s some quick examples of the content you can use to demonstrate E-E-A-T:
Experience: About page or company bio page, demonstrating real world, first hand experience within your field.
Expertise: Knowledgeable content (case studies, whitepapers), subject matter experts (outline the team’s credentials).
Authority: Reputation within your industry, testimonials, awards, backlinks.
Trust: All of the above plus quality and reliably sourced information, secure website (SSL, HTTPS); testimonials, reviews.
SEO is a long game. Making some changes in line with this blog post will go a long way to helping you rank – with some potential quick wins to boot. E-E-A-T is important throughout this process since the whole idea of search intent is to deliver the highest quality posts, pages, or products in search results.
Over to you
Has this made you re-think how your website stacks up? Did it raise any questions for you?
Remember, you can always get in touch with me if you need help.