The Importance of User Intent in Digital Marketing

When people use search engines, everything they enter has an intention — they are seeking solutions to problems, information about services or else they want to buy something.

Google is an intelligent machine that can serve up whatever information or advice they are searching for, and it’s pretty darn good at delivering the best, most relevant answers first.

Therefore, if you want more people to discover your business online, and the products and services you offer, then you need to think more about user intent.

By developing a clear understanding of the needs and interests of your target audience, you can produce web pages, content, and ads that are all closely aligned with the desires of your ideal customer.

In this article, we’ll see how user intent and Google work together, and find out how you can leverage this knowledge for greater brand awareness.

User Intent in Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

There is a fine balance to managing user intent and SEM. While there is much to be gained from mastery, it’s also easy to waste a lot of money.

Let’s imagine you’re running a Google Ads campaign for a bookstore owner. You have the generic term ‘books’ as a keyword in the campaign.

While this is clearly relevant, it is so broad that among the many million daily searches for ‘books’, there is only a small portion of users who may genuinely be interested in buying books. Consequently, you’ll attract lots of clicks but ultimately gain relatively few conversions.

In this particular example, you would face another problem in the fact that Google has its own dedicated site that offers free books. Competing against the dominant force of search on their own search engine isn’t a great plan.

Consider why users are searching for certain topics. When you’re investing in SEM, you need to think about the different stages of the customer journey to make sure your marketing funnel corresponds to each phase of user intent.

User Intent in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

With SEO, marketers have more license to experiment, however, you must still be selective about the keywords you use. Your content must use the same search terms that people are using to search with.

If your keywords are only vaguely related, many of your visits will be from users looking for something else, and they’ll simply leave again, causing your bounce rate to soar.

When you take the time to conduct thorough keyword research with user intent in mind, you can identify high-value keywords that:

• Have a decent monthly search volume
• Aren’t already overused by your competitors
• Have a competitive cost-per-click rate

By creating great content and targeted ads around these keywords, you can align SEO and user intent to bring traffic to your site.

User Intent in Video Content

Video marketing has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the past few years and is set to dominate internet traffic by as much as 80% in the years ahead. While that’s an innovative shift, the same practices of SEO and keyword use still apply here.

Marketers can identify topics and keywords that people are searching for, and then create original video content that offers new solutions and information.

By inserting your keyword in the title, video description, and closed captions, you can boost the search performance of your video content and attract more views from people using those same search terms.

User Intent in InfoGraphics

Just as video content gets more engagement, so too do infographics. In fact, infographics are shared on social media three times as much as text articles.

But if it’s just an image, how can you leverage keywords and user intent?

• Filename – You’ve got to give Google as many clues as possible as to what your infographic is about. That means no lazy “pic1” filenames. Get specific. A format like “title-of-the-content.png” is better.
• Header tags – Place H1 tags above the infographic allows Google to read it.
• Meta – Include the keywords and related terms in your meta description. This will elicit a response in SERPs, encouraging more people to visit your site to check out the infographic.

What is Google’s View on User Intent?

Keyword research is the foundation of great content marketing. Unfortunately, Google Keyword Planner isn’t the secret portal to the inner workings of the search giant that we all wish it was.

You won’t learn a lot about user intent from Keyword Planner but as you do more keyword research, you will be able to make some pretty savvy deductions about how your target audience is searching for solutions online.

To demonstrate this, let’s imagine we have a marketing agency that has recently published an article titled “7 Ways to Improve Your SEO”, which you are sure is going to be a hit.

In it, you reference Quarterback Dak, using him as an analogy of how it’s possible to make dramatic improvements in performance.

Now, here’s where it gets messy. By name-dropping “Quarterback Dak” a few times, you effectively use his name as a keyword, which increases the chance that your blog on SEO will appear in searches for NFL football player Dak Prescott.

If football fans wind up on your blog post about SEO tips, they are going to leave — fast and frustrated. This is going to send your bounce rate up and your reputation with Google down, as the search engine will get the impression that your content is irrelevant or unhelpful to viewers.

Google is Good, But You Must Do Your Part

Google is a very sophisticated machine, but it still has some way to go when it comes to analyzing user intent. It is still evolving, and so we must be careful when it comes to selecting our keywords.

Using broad match type keywords can bring us a lot of traffic, but we must think about user intent. Can our content really help the people that land on our site from such keywords?

User intent is critical in modern marketing, and it takes time to find that perfect balance. By putting yourself in your ideal customer’s shoes, you can think about their problems, and think about how they are searching for solutions. Soon enough, this approach will help you connect with people that are genuinely interested in what your business has to offer.