What fascinates me about SEO is the study of keywords and how people describe their intent. Having a background in journalism, sales, and marketing, I was amazed to see this kind of information available. I have run surveys, focus groups, opinion polls, and user testing, which all provided good information, but they each have their failings. Believe it or not, people are not completely honest. They can be swayed by the pollster and others in the group, and some would rather keep their real opinions to themselves.
As Seth Stephens‐Davidowitz (2017) writes in his book, Everybody Lies, “A major reason that Google searches are so valuable is not that there are so many of them; it is that people are so honest in them. People lie to friends, lovers, doctors, surveys, and themselves…. The power in Google data is that people tell the giant search engine things they might not tell anyone else.”
Keywords provide a unique insight to the searcher’s mind that other research methods aren’t able to capture. Search keywords are in‐the‐moment steam of consciousness. Searches for urgent problem‐solving solutions will provide much more insight as you see motivating factors, urgency, priorities, and time frames.
A great example of this is dog obedience training. Typically, people will search for dog obedience training as a keyword, but these are people who have a plan and are researching options. Comparatively, consider the urgency when people search for “how to stop my dog from jumping on people” or “stop my dog from barking at night” and other behavior problems. These types of searches expose real issues and problems where people are not only looking for solutions, but they are experiencing the pain point that will motivate them to act!
This is the beauty of keywords.
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