Intent Is Driving Effective SEO Optimization at the Leading Content Marketing Agency in Kansas City
Intent. You know what it means. You intended to go to the gym yesterday. You didn’t intend to watch cute animal TikToks without interruption for over two hours. Intent is a plan – a purpose – and it’s a powerful ingredient for your blogs that many businesses, including your competitors, are now taking advantage of.
Here are the basics: When a user opens their Internet browser to search for something, like an answer to a question or for a product or service, they have an intent or purpose that they hope the search engine will help them satisfy.
There are four intent “types” that describe users’ purposes for searching:
- Informative intent: The user wants to know something, and their goal is to get help from a webpage that contains informative content.
- Commercial intent: The user is now considering a product or service, but they need more information to help convince them that they’re headed in the right direction.
- Transactional intent: The user is ready to purchase, and they want to work with a business that can meet their needs.
- Navigational intent: The user is searching for a specific business, so they can visit the website. This intent is typically satisfied by optimizing your Google Business Profile and presence on Google Maps, but it also includes basic keywords that are also included in other forms of intent.
These insights, while seemingly simple, are extremely helpful in understanding consumer behavior. It can help businesses tailor their blogs to ensure they have a wide range of web content that meets the various intentions of users.
Why? First, because it’s common sense to meet your potential customers – from those just browsing, to those who are ready to put cash on the table – exactly where they’re at. Secondly, from a SEO optimization perspective, search engines like Google reward websites that provide the experience that users are looking for.
A Double Dose of Business Growth
Businesses who successfully employ user intent get two powerful forms of leverage in one. Superior content marketing that operates at all levels of the marketing funnel is a time-honored method for connecting with consumers. But when that’s paired with powerful algorithms that rank websites based on strong marketing principles, you’re leveraging the help of the world’s top digital marketing tool.
Your Competition Will Get There First, If You Don’t
As we speak, agencies with the best content creation in KC are honing their blog writing skills to ensure they match high-quality content with user intent. If you decide to work with a content marketing agency in Kansas City, their SEO and content team will ensure that this is a part of their process. Otherwise, the competition will take advantage of this first and get all that sweet user traffic that should be going your way.
Understanding Informative, Commercial, and Transactional Content Intent
Informative, commercial, and transactional intent require a deeper understanding to employ them effectively for strong content writing and SEO optimization. Your business will need to thoroughly align your blogs with what users intend. This way, you’ll be able to effectively connect with your audience and get search engines to rank you highly for doing so.
SEO Optimization for Informative Intent
- What’s On the User’s Mind?
When a user is seeking more information, it’s because they’re curious about a
particular subject and want to know more.For example, a user might want to better understand their home’s foundation because they want to know if their new home is structurally secure. They might search for something like “home foundation problems.”
- What Approach Should You Take?
Let’s start with what not to do. If your business only has content that reads something like this: “We can fix your home foundation problems today!” or “Here are the best ways to fix home foundation problems!” you’re in the ballpark, sure, but you’re not truly targeting user intent. The user in our example is curious about home foundation problems, but isn’t yet thinking about fixing them. They simply want to learn without feeling pressured to lean one way or another, let alone purchase a service.Instead, you should provide the information the user is looking for. Consider a blog that is a thorough exploration of common home foundation problems. Be strictly informative.
- How It’s Done:
Fortunately, tools like Semrush and Moz indicate intent by keyword, meaning you
can perform research to discover and implement keywords that are associated
with users who intend to find information. Then, you can use these keywords in an informative piece of writing. Call it, “Everything You Need to Know About Common Home Foundation Problems,” for example.Don’t use salesy copy or calls to action directly related to your business. Don’t say, “You should investigate these common home foundation problems now with the right technicians!” It may feel uncomfortable to write marketing content that doesn’t center your business. Instead, take heart that users are looking for information you’re offering. Write confidently and provide your expertise to establish your credibility and authority on the subject. You’ll be rewarded for this with increased web traffic, and as a result, higher rankings in search engine results pages.
However, avoiding more direct sales tactics doesn’t mean you can’t rep your business. Perhaps you write a sentence like, “These are the common foundation problems that Kansas City-area technicians encounter on a daily basis.” Then, you link the phrase “Kansas City-area technicians” to your website. You’re providing information, while also passing along a link as a resource that leads the user directly to you. This is one of many things that teams that offer the best content creation in Kansas City are doing to maximize business growth.
SEO Optimization for Commercial Intent
- What’s On the User’s Mind?
A user’s intent is considered commercial when they’re trying to understand what to do – and whom to turn to – for a product or service they need. Let’s return to our user who was served informative web content about common home foundation problems.A few weeks after reading about foundation problems, they notice water in their basement and a crack in the wall. They remember that this was one of the common problems they’d read about earlier. This user finds themselves returning to the internet to search for “water in basement home foundation.” They don’t just want to know what’s going on, but what to do about it.
- What Approach Should You Take?
Think of commercial intent as a mid-funnel marketing strategy. Your user isn’t committed to taking action, yet. However, they do want to know what actions they can take and where they should turn to take them.Your blog topic might be, “What to Do About Water in Your Basement and Cracks in Your Concrete” or “Five Signs You Need a Foundation Repair Technician.” These blogs should include your expertise about why water and cracks are important indicators of a foundation problem and what homeowners should do about it.
- How It’s Done:
To write blogs with commercial intent on a variety of topics, use your keyword
research and analytics tool, such as Semrush or Moz, to discover commercial intent-tagged keywords that are relevant to your industry. To use our example, try “foundation repair” (notice the difference between this keyword and home foundation problems – the use of “repair” suggests that the user understands that repairs are needed). Integrate those keywords effectively into well-structured, thorough blog posts that rely on your expertise in the field.Unlike informative intent-driven blog content, include some sales copy and calls to action that connect the information you’re providing with your business. If you’re writing, “Five Signs You Need a Technician,” mention your business as a leading foundation repair company that can help if you recognize any of these signs. Link to your website’s home page, your contact page, and more. Your reader is beginning to recognize that there’s something they can do about their foundation problems – and you just might have the solution.
SEO Optimization for Transactional Intent
- What’s On the User’s Mind?
Likely the most familiar of the three types of intent we’re exploring, a user who is searching with transactional intent is ready to buy. They’ve done their research, they’ve learned what they need to know, and they’re ready to make a phone call, fill out a form, download materials, or whatever your business’ desired action is. Most of the convincing has already been done. Returning to our home foundation example, after reading “Five Signs You Need a Technician,” a user with transactional intent has identified two of these signs and knows they need to connect with an expert. - What Approach Should You Take?
To ensure that you’re there when a user is ready to take action, write content that lets the user know that you have the services available that they require. This content should also explicitly direct this user to your contact information, a link to a scheduler widget, or the tool connects the user with the action you want them to take.Consider titles for your blog that include urgent phrases about the desired action, such as “Schedule now,” “Call today,” or “Access our webinar.” In the case of a home foundation business, a strong transactional blog title might be, “Notice Water in the Basement or Cracks in Your Foundation? Schedule Your Free Consultation Today.”
- How It’s Done:
You or your content marketing agency in Kansas City have already researched keywords that match potential customers’ informative and commercial intent, and you’ve provided key information to help grow their knowledge. You’ve also helped them understand how to know whether they need your services. Now, you really get to do what any business with the best content creation in Kansas City loves to do: sell!Once you’ve researched keywords tagged for transactional intent, use them in your content, and ensure you’re including calls to action and links to your contact pages in each section of your blog. Notice the difference between a keyword with transactional intent versus the others we’ve used as examples thus far:
- “Best foundation repair Kansas City”
- “Foundation repair”
- “Home foundation problems”
Can you tell them apart? While “home foundation problems” is something you might search to learn something, “foundation repair” suggests you’ve learned enough to understand that you should do something about your home’s foundation. However, when a user searches with transactional intent, they’re ready to call the best business to make the repairs they know they need to make – and you should be right there, ready to answer the phone.
How Do Content Marketing Agencies in Kansas City and Beyond Know Content Intent Matters?
Every so often, Google releases its Search Quality Rater Guidelines to explain how it rates and ranks web pages. Google’s purpose is to ensure that users get the very best content on the internet when they’re searching. Why? Because, if they don’t, users would find some other search engine.
These guidelines explain how to do what’s best for users. Fortunately, none of it is a mystery. It’s what a leading content marketing agency in Kansas City would consider excellent marketing practices. Google explains the concept with the acronym EEAT (experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness).
Essentially, Google wants users to have the experience they’re looking for (their intent) when they land on your website. As we mentioned above, a user who is looking for information and finds thorough, useful resources written by an informed subject-area expert is going to have a good experience. That good experience helps establish your website’s – and brand’s – credibility. Anyone who knows marketing will tell you that this is a dynamic first step in leading the consumer toward a conversion.
However, many businesses don’t consider E-E-A-T because they are too caught up with a rudimentary idea of SEO: that keywords are everything. They’re more likely to stuff their content with keywords than consider intent and effective writing, hoping that Google will recognize that they’ve used the ones users are searching for.
Although robust keyword usage does matter when you’re aiming for the best content creation in Kansas City, truly superior SEO optimization is all about the seamless inclusion of the right keywords in well-written, well-researched, actually useful content. This is what connects with users – and, the good news is, Google supports these efforts by giving the lion’s share of visibility to businesses that diligently do this work.
Discover more SEO optimization tactics to position your business in front of the right users at just the right time.
Peter Mishler, senior digital copywriter at iFocus Marketing, is dedicated to using language to help clients find their audiences. He is the author of two books: a Kathryn A. Morton Prize-winning collection of poetry, from Sarabande Books (2018) and a book of reflections for public school teachers from Andrews McMeel Publishing (2021). His poetry has appeared in many national publications, including The Paris Review, and he is a contributing editor for Literary Hub. New to marketing, Peter taught English for 15 years.
