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Have you ever found that, despite putting hours of effort into your content and link building efforts, you still need help ranking for your targeted keywords? It may be time to revisit the topic of search intent.
Search intent is one of the most important aspects to consider whenever you are trying to optimize page content, perform effective link building, or do anything else related to SEO.
Let’s take a closer look at the role of search intent in SEO and how to use it for more effective link building strategies.
Related: 5 Simple SEO Methods That Produce More Traffic for Small Businesses
Types of search intent
Google has dominated the search market over the years because it is the best at providing its users with the content they are looking for. It is essential to ensure that the content you publish is not only related to the keywords you are targeting, but also offers a highly relevant solution to the problems searchers are facing. To give you a better idea of how this works in an SEO campaign, let’s look at the four main types of keyword intent:
Informational intent
One of the most commonly targeted types of keyword intent, informational search intent, covers keywords used by people trying to answer a question or find a particular piece of information.
Informational intent keywords are often keywords that begin with “how”, “why”, “what” etc. For example, the keyword “how to start a YouTube channel” will indicate that the user wants to learn about the process involved in starting a YouTube channel and possibly find some supporting advice on how to optimize it for success.
Navigation intent
Navigation search intent is used by people who want to go from Google to a specific page on a specific site. An example of a navigational intent keyword would be “Entrepreneur Login”, which shows that the searcher wants to access their Entrepreneur account.
Transactional intent
Transactional intent refers to keywords that show that a user intends to convert with a certain activity. An example of a transactional intent keyword might include “buy Acer laptop” or “Spotify Premium subscription.”
These can be highly competitive and performance for these types of keywords often requires organic and paid advertising.
Commercial intent
Commercial intent keywords fall somewhere between informational and transactional keywords. They are typically searched for by users who want to learn more about a particular product or service but aren’t 100% sure they want to commit to a purchase, as they might be with transactional intent keywords.
Commercial search terms are often used to find reviews or detailed information about a specific product or to compare different purchasing options within a particular category. Common keywords with commercial intent may include “iPhone vs Samsung” or “best Smart TVs.”
Related: 10 Powerful Link Building Tactics to Boost Your Website’s SEO
Using search intent in link building
Aligning your site’s content with keyword intent is pretty simple, but what about when it comes to planning and executing link building? Here are some scenarios where you can use search intent to strengthen your link building efforts.
Highly targeted awareness raising
Understanding the informational intent behind certain keywords can help you target your link building outreach more effectively. This can increase the chances that your submitted articles will be accepted by the intended referring site and that the content’s relevance to your site will create a more powerful backlink.
Let’s say, for example, you run an e-commerce site that specializes in eco-friendly products. If you’re looking for linking opportunities that are relevant to your target audience, you can search for informational intent keywords like “eco-friendly household products” or “sustainable living tips” and then create a content pitch around them.
With the basic presentation structure in place, you can search for potential referral blogs with an audience that will show the same search intent and pitch them a highly relevant content idea, such as “10 Easy Ways to Spice Up Your Lifestyle more sustainable.” Aligning your outreach with specific search intent will increase the chances of your pitch being accepted and make it easier to include a natural, relevant link to your campaign’s target page.
Related: 6 key tips to improve your content marketing strategy
Creating linkable resources
Keyword research can provide you with a great starting point for creating highly linkable content, such as written guides, infographics, and online tools, that can be tailored to your audience’s needs.
For example, if you offer digital marketing services through your website, you can search for keywords with informational or commercial intent such as “improving online traffic” or “digital marketing tools.”
From there, you can create highly linkable assets tailored to meet the intent of your keywords. These can include written content such as definitive guides, valuable infographics, or, if you’re feeling more ambitious, an interactive tool that helps solve a problem referenced in your target keywords.
Once you have a linkable asset that directly meets the intent of a keyword, it will become much easier to create a compelling presentation aimed at building quality links to your website and assuring webmasters on the referring page that your content will be useful to their users.
Creating links to your resources page
Resource pages can be a great source of backlinks if you frequently produce quality, authoritative content that provides specific information or solutions to specific problems. Researching keyword intent can help you create content tailored to certain resource pages and maximize your chances of getting a link from them.
For example, if you run a website dedicated to financial planning, you can gather a list of financial advice websites that feature resource pages. From there, you can search for informational intent keywords like “financial planning guide,” develop content relevant to this term, and reach out to the resource sites you have listed to offer your content as a valuable resource to link to. .
With content aligned to the search intent for a given resource page, you’ll encounter less resistance in your pitches and be able to accumulate links in a shorter space of time.