Identifying and then satisfying search intent is crucial because there’s no point in optimizing an article that your user doesn’t want to read. Optimizing content takes time and effort, so focus your efforts where they have the potential for maximum effect.
You can quickly identify search intent by examining the first page of your target keyword’s search results. Just type in your search query into the search bar and start analyzing the nature of queries.
For example, when you type in “SEO tools” in Google search, you’ll see something like the SERP below.
Once you scroll past the ads, you’ll find that the search intent for this query is pretty simple. Judging from the Google search results, we can tell that people are looking for a list of recommended SEO tools. And so there’d be no point reviewing a single SEO tool or writing a case study on how one SEO tool helped your blog.
When you’re optimizing an article, you may have to do this a couple of times for the target keyword and related variations.
Instead of doing this manually for every relevant keyword, identify search intent quickly and at scale by doing this:
- Head to Surfer Keyword Research Tool
- Enter your target keyword and country
- Hit Create
For example, when you enter “best SEO tool,” you’ll get the most appropriate phrasing of the keyword along with its search intent based on the top-ranking search results. In the image below, Surfer
Keyword Research Tool has identified your query’s search intent as a customer investigation.
Hovering over the label shows “Cluster dominated by comparison of different products and/or services, listings, catalogs, directories relevant to the cluster”. This is exactly what we identified in our manual search.
Keyword Research Tool also suggests many related topics to strengthen website authority that you can filter based on search intent, relevant keywords, and search volume. In our example, we were shown 108 different topic ideas with search volumes and keyword difficulty data.
When you’re optimizing content, you want to prioritize your focus to first act on the pages that bring you the most traffic or conversions. If you’re in the content planning and production stage, use the Monthly Search Volume (MSV) metric in the image above to help you plan your SEO content optimization efforts.
You can also download Surfer’s Chrome extension for free or use the Surfer Keyword Research tool by following these steps.
- Enter your keywords into Keyword Research and select the country of choice
- Click Create Keyword Research
For example, if we plug in “best seo tools” and a few similar keywords into the Keyword Research tool, we’re shown their monthly search volume followed by related keywords.
If you’re optimizing an existing piece, identify your most visited pages using a tool like Google Analytics so you can target them first.
Once you’ve satisfied search intent, it’s now time to make sure you cover all the relevant keyword clusters.
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