Study the search intent

Let’s say that you have the following keywords on your list:

Now you need to understand which should be best targeted with informational blog articles and which should be product or category pages.

For some keywords, this is obvious. You wouldn’t create a product page for “how to brew cold brew coffee” because searchers are clearly looking for a tutorial.

But what about a keyword like “arabica coffee”? Do searchers want information, or do they want to buy some? In SEO, we call this studying the search intent.

Google, presumably, has some ways of identifying what exactly searchers want to see for any given search query. And whatever page satisfies the search intent best tends to float to the top of the search results. So the way you determine the search intent behind some keywords is by looking at the top-ranking pages. 

Let’s look at the SERP for “arabica coffee”: 

Here we have both: informational pages and online shops. In SEO, we call this a fractured search intent. It means that you may be able to rank for this keyword with any of the two page types.

But pinpointing the right search intent doesn’t end with identifying the right page type for a particular query. Ideally, you want to factor in the following variables:

1. Type – For example, blog post, product page, category page, landing page, online tool, etc.
2. Format – For example, guide, listicle, news, review, comparison, etc.
3. Angle – That’s your unique spin on a given topic. 

Here’s a nice example of a dominant content angle. In the search results for “how to make latte,” someone has focused on making a perfect one, while someone else has decided to share how it can be done without an espresso machine.

But what if you tried the following angle for your own article: “How to Make a Latte Like Gordon Ramsay.” Maybe some people would consider this to be better than “perfect” and click on your page?

As you can tell, the reason why you need to analyze the search intent of a keyword is to not necessarily follow it to a T. 

If you have a strong opinion about the search intent of a given search query but none of the top-ranking pages seem to follow it, give your intuition a chance. Even if your page is different from what’s already there, Google may give it a chance and show it to some of the searchers. And if they happen to like it, your page will secure its spot on the SERP.

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Part 5

How to prioritize keywords

Prioritizing your list of keywords and deciding where you should invest your efforts first is probably the least straightforward and extremely “individual” part of the keyword research process.

There are just too many things to consider:

• What is the estimated traffic potential of this keyword?
• What’s the ranking difficulty? Who are you competing against?
• What will it take to create a perfect page? Or maybe you already have one, and it needs to be improved?
• What’s the business value of this keyword? What would you get from ranking for it?

That last point is a particularly important one. While search volume, traffic potential, ranking difficulty, and search intent are all important considerations, you also need to factor in what ranking for this keyword will be worth to your business.