As the battle for consumers’ attention is getting intense, it has become critical for businesses to have amazing content and tools that can collectively guide their prospects and customers toward the right decision. In order to make your online marketing campaigns more profitable and result-oriented, try to comprehend the idea of search intent and align content and SEO strategies to meet expectations.
As a business owner or marketer, It is hardly possible for you to design effective marketing strategies without understanding search intent. It is no longer advisable to just generate and incorporate an extensive list of keywords into your content and pay Google to get you at the top. To generate an increased ROI, plan around search intent or what your audience is really looking for.
There are three major types of search intent: navigational, informational, and transactional. Track down the keywords that could help you understand the needs of your customers. If a search is of transactional nature, search engines will understand that the user is about to purchase and will show more ads within the SERPs. Searches that have informational or navigational intent will be entertained with fewer ads. You can attract and convert more visitors once you build SEO and content marketing campaigns around search intent.
Deliver value at each stage of the buyer’s journey
It is clear now that pushing sales messaging on customers is not as effective as engaging them through valuable and meaningful interactions. Successful brands are redesigning their strategies and focusing on delivering value to their customers. This means you have to invest in content and use SEO as an essential and proactive part of your digital marketing campaigns. At each stage of the buyer’s journey, it is key to align and implement content and SEO strategies together to deliver maximum value and improve conversion.
Related: Why SEO Is Actually All About Content Marketing
Grow brand awareness
A searcher looking for information is at the top of the funnel where you need to deliver educational content and generate awareness of your brand. At this point, your prospects are not in a position to make well-informed decisions. This is where you should provide informational content and establish your brand as a trusted authority. Educational and valuable content can make people buy immediately from a brand. To make this happen, use ebooks white papers, how-to guides, and long-form content.
The next step is to optimize informational content around queries, questions prospects ask during this stage, to rank in the search results. This is where SEO and content get together to help you create visible and relevant interactions.
The Google Answer Box is one of the most attractive search results these days for both businesses and prospects. It contains content that Google thinks answer the query. If a search intent perfectly matches your content, you can expect to be in that box. The answer box will not only put your content at the top but also put your brand in the limelight.
Nurture and build brand affinity
When prospects move past the awareness stage, they start seeking content to analyze different options or solutions. It is the most crucial part of the buyer’s journey where prospects develop a natural liking for one solution over another. The keywords you need to focus on this stage are considerably different from those of awareness stage. Queries showing navigational intent indicate that a prospect has moved mid-funnel and is looking to buy a specific solution. At this point, you can offer content in forms of case studies, data sheets, and buyer’s guide to push your prospects to the bottom of the funnel.
Related: 7 Smart Ways to Combine Content Marketing with SEO for More Qualified Search Traffic
Close the sale
Prospects at the bottom of the funnel are ready to buy and your objective should be to close the sale. Branded keywords are of supreme significance when it comes to crafting content and SEO strategy for customers ready to make a purchase decision. The bottom-funnel content should empower and encourage your prospects to make the decision and be your customers.
SEO and content go hand in hand and once you align them, they guide your prospects all the way through the funnel toward becoming a customer. You can also maximize traffic and conversion opportunities by aligning your paid advertising, search optimization, and content strategies.
In order to meet the audience’s demand for quick and relevant solutions, you need to focus on understanding search intent and align SEO and content efforts to deliver the right information in front of the right audience, and, of course, at the right time without spending money on paid advertising.