As the capabilities of SEO have increasingly become more diverse and robust, marketers now have access to an extremely sophisticated set of tools for the engagement and conversion of online searchers. The latest is the meteoric rise of the focus on semantic search: which uses highly structured “schema” markup to align SEO with the actual intent behind individual searches.
Even with these advanced tools at your disposal, it’s more crucial than ever to remember:
- There is a real person behind every web search.
- That person is looking for an answer to a specific question.
- The more relevance and context you provide around your answer/solution, the greater the chance for conversion.
- By maximizing relevance and context, you also improve your overall profile and search engine rankings
Here are a few high-impact strategies to help optimize your effort to leverage the power of intent-based SEO:
Paint your offering into someone’s reality.
Particularly in the area of e-commerce, many marketers simply present a catalog type presentation of their product lines. Think about whether your product/service lends itself to being presented within the context of a wider perspective: i.e. jewelry items shown against a backdrop of complementary clothing items, furniture pieces shown within the context of a room design, etc.
Gain additional relevance through association.
The generation of interesting and relevant content is the central element of any SEO effort. However, relevant engagement via social media also works to build your brand position and reputation. Devise a plan to join and enhance conversations that relate directly to your company’s industry niche, product/service lines and overall business focus. This will help to enhance and elevate your company’s own online profile — both with prospects/customers and with search engines as well.
Build up your clickability cred.
Just as prospects and customers build an impression of your company from the relevance/value of your online content and activity, search engines are continually scrutinizing how well you are attracting, engaging and converting site visitors. In addition to overall clickthrough rates, Google rankings are now heavily influenced by the relevancy of the queries you generate. A particular example is whether your queries are producing “long clicks” that indicate a genuine level of interest and engagement on the part of the end-user — as opposed to “short clicks” where unfulfilled searchers are quickly hitting the back button to get return to the search results page.
Use intent-based SEO to create a snowball effect.
The more you focus on identifying the true intent of searchers, the more you can deepen engagement, strengthen your brand’s online profile, and drive conversions that result in new relationships and revenue. As you become more and more proficient in the art of intent-based SEO, its self-multiplying nature will optimize your brand’s profile in the eyes of search engines as well.