The value of this research is to first understand your audience and what they need. By using the same words they search for in search engines within the content of your website, you increase your relevance, which increases your visibility in the search results. Reflecting the same words, concepts, and ideas as the searchers on your pages increases the likelihood that they will find you.
Words The first level of research is simply finding the words and phrases that your audience or customers use when searching for a solution or idea. In the early days of SEO, this was the biggest problem, as companies would create beautiful websites and add their corporate content. However, they would leave out the content that described their products and how those products solved problems. Instead, you would find generic corporatized phrases such as “enterprise application solutions” without any explanation of what the actual product or service was. If the words your customers used were not on the website, you would not be found.
My rule is to simply call things what they are.
Intent Learning the needs of industry provides a depth of intent. For example, if I am selling car insurance, I can compare the number of searches for teen driver insurance to classic car insurance. I can determine a likely market size and learn the specific nuances of each group. These are two different groups—teen drivers and classic car owners—each with different needs, expectations, and budgets. Learning how they describe their needs enables you to create better content that matches the intent of each type of search.
Problems/Solutions The next thing you learn from keywords is how their audience uses those works within context. People search when they need to find information, usually to make decisions. When people start using precise words and highly descriptive situations, you can learn the context of those searches and learn more about your audience. The more you relate your content to their needs, the more you enhance your rankings and conversions.
These additional words provide amazing insight into the thinking process, external factors, timing, location, and hundreds of other factors that make up the search phrase typed into a search engine. Learning the contextual words and how they affect or influence the search provides you with a unique insight into the mind of the searcher.
Buying Cycles When learning the words people use, you quickly find that there may be a buying cycle (or a decision cycle) based on the types of words that are used and the depth of explanations. Typically, early in the buying cycle there are many short‐tail keywords. Short‐tail keywords are one‐ to two‐word keywords or phrases that are very general. An example of this is a search for “cars.” As a single word, it defines a very broad category, yet it contains no clues as to the need, intent, or nature of the search. The searcher could be shopping for cars or looking for pictures of cars. You do not know, but these searches are typically at the beginning of a decision cycle and will be refined as the searcher realizes that the results do not provide the information they need. While short‐tail keywords tend to be the more popular, they are also more general and do not produce many conversions, if any.
However, when the searcher starts using long‐tail keywords, which are phrases of four, five, or more words, you can begin to see defined intent and contextual signals. Toward the end of the decision cycle, searchers are looking for more detail and have specific questions. These keyword phrases are full of descriptive factors and attributes, providing rich feedback on the needs of the searcher. Long‐tail searches are typically at the end of the decision cycle, so when searchers find exactly what they want, they tend to convert at a very high rate.
Trends Depending on the industry, people search for things that may have dramatic shifts throughout the year. In addition, the words used in the searches may change in different seasons. In a research project in the hiking industry, I found that “hiking survival” was a popular term all year. “Hiking destinations” were researched in the winter months. Hikers usually researched and purchased equipment in the early spring before their outdoor adventures. But it wasn’t always the hikers themselves. In October, November, and December, “hiking gifts” increased. What I found is that these searchers were usually friends or family members who want to get a gift for a hiker.
As you can see, you learn much more than a simple keyword.
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