3.4 High-Intent Keywords

Photo by Tiffany Davidson; Golden Eagle near Sequim, Washington

Keywords have an inherent potential value. to discover that potential value, we have to consider the intent behind the search.

While you’re in the keyword research phase of any SEO project, it’s important to be mindful of the intent behind the keywords you’re choosing.

Once you know the goals you want to meet with your website and the ways you plan to monetize it (which should be clear prior to SEO), you can examine the intent behind certain keywords and make sure you’re including some high-intent keywords in your SEO strategy.

What are high-intent keywords?

High-intent keywords are also called commercial intent keywords, and are keywords with inherent value implied.

When someone searches for a high-intent keyword, they are usually ready to make a purchase.

This purchase might be physical or digital in nature. For example, “best hiking boots for women” is a high-intent keyword for a physical product, while “squarespace seo course” is a high-intent keyword for a digital product. High-intent keywords also apply to services, both physical and digital. For example, “massage therapist olympia washington” is a high-intent keyword for a physical service, while “copywriter for creatives” is a high-intent keyword for a digital service.

What do all of these high-intent / commercial value keywords have in common? The person searching for them is ready to spend money!

This is the most basic way to understand the meaning of a high-intent keyword: is the person searching for it ready to make a purchase?

I want to make money, so shouldn’t I focus only on high-intent keywords?

When I explain high-intent commercial keywords to people, they tend to assume that they should only focus on those types of keywords because, after all, they want their website to make money.

Makes sense, right? It does… but there’s more to it.

Rather than only targeting an audience who is ready to buy, a good SEO strategy will also cater to those who are in the earlier stages of gathering information.

This is precisely why, in some of the earlier lesson videos, you’ve heard me mention keywords that we don’t necessarily want to focus on targeting site-wide, but that we might want to create blog posts around later.

One example I used was “monterey wedding venues.” As a wedding photographer in Monterey, this doesn’t seem like a high-intent keyword for your business—it technically isn’t, since you’re not a venue owner— but it can play a significant role in your overall strategy.

Here’s how:

If you craft a good blog post around the keyword “monterey wedding venues” and people who are beginning research into planning their Monterey wedding come across your post, this is going to begin a relationship.

The more informative posts you have that could potentially benefit your target audience on a wider scale, the more likely they will grow to trust YOU, so that when the time comes to look for a photographer for the wedding, you are their obvious choice, simply because you’ve been providing helpful information.

They might not be your target audience just yet, but are the very people who could become your target audience, who will indeed be typing in those high-intent keywords in the future.

This is why it’s important to create informative content, content that connects you to your potential future customer, and positions you right in front of them when they are ready for your products or services.

Depending on the monetization strategy of your site, informative content can also pay off directly.

Informative content to boost traffic

Not only can informative content position you in front of your potential future customers, but if your website monetization strategy relies on traffic count, informative content becomes imperative to your bottom line.

So if you create quality content around related keywords that aren’t necessarily high-intent or commercial value, this still contributes to your overall site goals.

For example, one of my niche websites relies primarily on ads and affiliate links as monetization methods. The more traffic I get, the more income I see from ads and affiliate programs. So I target those searching for information, inspiration and transaction.

If I had to categorize all search keywords that get typed into Google, I would use those as categories:

informational: the user is looking for information
inspirational: the user is looking for inspiration
transactional: the user is looking to make a purchase

Test this yourself sometime by paying attention to the keywords you type into Google. Which category do they fall under?

In the next lesson, we’ll be using this knowledge to create blog post topics and develop a content marketing strategy for our site to help grow its google presence. Important stuff! (So put the kettle on!)

Next Lesson >

Tiffany Davidson Squarespace SEO Expert Course

Welcome to Squarespace SEO Expert! In this course I'm going to teach you the exact process I use to rank Squarespace websites on Google Page 1, using no paid advertising, only organic SEO techniques. If at any point you have questions, please use the comment feature at the bottom of the particular lesson you have a question about. I'm happy to help!