What is user intent and why has it become so important in optimizing your website?
There is a huge difference between standard keyword research and establishing user intent in the praxis of SEO. An excellent article from http://provenrankings.com provides this insight.
“Keyword research has long been heralded as a pillar of a proper SEO strategy. In fact, without proper keyword research, inbound marketingefforts can be misguided, budgets misspent, and strategies designed on a poor foundation. While any SEO professional worth their title knows how to conduct keyword research, many marketers tackling SEO still fail to consider a core component of keyword research: user intent.”
The article goes on to explain the importance of user intent for SEO.
“If you think about it, at the heart of every search on Google, there’s some kind of intention. A user wants answers, resources, information, reviews of a product, and much more. Content that is crafted to meet this expectation will connect with the user immediately. Content that makes only a passing reference to what the user is looking for, on the other hand, is much less likely to connect.Understanding and measuring user intent is not just a way to increase conversions, trust, or clickthroughs; it’s also a consideration you need to make to get better at SEO and provide more value to your visitors. As is often the case with things like this, in the long run, it also helps to establish your brand as a trustworthy and reliable source of content your audience can rely on.” (http://provenrankings.com/why-your-keyword-strategy-is-incomplete-without-user-intent/)
In other words, understanding the intent of users or potential clients and visitors to your site is essential.
So how do you go about finding user intent and including this in your SEO marketing strategy?
A starting point is to look at your own analytics and the words that visitors use to reach your site. Using any keyword analytics tool you can find out which keywords are most often being used to connect with your website. This gives you insight insight into what users are looking for and what their intention is in visiting your site. This in turn can lead to refinement of your content to be more in line with what yout visitors are looking for – a vital insight that can mean an increase in ranking and visitors to your site.
Another aspect to consider is the importance of long-tail keywords. More on this important topic in our next post.
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