When you are planning your SEO campaigns, keywords are at the center of the process. Moving beyond keywords is to find out what more people might search online.

Search Engine Land columnist Marcus Miller has shared some useful strategies to interpret searcher intent for improving SEO rankings.

Miller says, “In many ways, search engine marketing via SEO or paid methods is strategically simple. If you are a plumber in a small town, and someone searches for “plumber” plus the name of the town, then there is a pretty good chance you provide what they need. Getting in front of people at the exact time they have a requirement is good marketing.

Unfortunately, commercial terms are highly competitive across paid and organic search. For most businesses, there are other opportunities for branding and targeting customers higher in the marketing funnel. We just have to develop a greater understanding of the intent behind search keywords.

The first step here is to understand the three categories of search queries:

Navigational search queries

Do you ever type “Google.com” or “Facebook.com” into your browser? Or do you just type “Google” or “Facebook” directly into the address bar? This is a navigational query, a search performed with the intent of going directly to a specific website, or even a page on a site”.

How to understand searcher intent and use it to boost SEO rankings

Search Engine Land

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