Unlocking Keyword Commercial Intent for Better SEO Results: A Comprehensive Guide
The search volume of a keyword doesn’t matter.
Yes, you read that correctly.
It doesn’t matter how often or how much people search the internet for a keyword.
At least, it doesn’t matter if you want to pay customers instead of visitors. As Backlinko says in their article, “How to Determine a Keyword’s Commercial Intent,” many “SEO experts agree that – when it comes to choosing keywords — commercial intent is actually MORE important than search volume.”
If you want visitors who are also buyers, you need to find the keywords that paying customers use in their searches. You need to know which keywords have the highest commercial intent to do that.
Fortunately, we are here to help you do just that. We’re going to explain what “commercial intent” means. We will also explain the different categories of commercial intent keywords. Let us teach you how to analyze keywords’ commercial intent and find keywords with high commercial intent.
Keyword Commercial Intent: A Definition
If you want to sell something, you have commercial intent. Regarding keyword ideas, if a keyword has commercial intent, it is being used to search for something purchasable.
Commercial intent often but not always carries some urgency with it. Paying customers don’t generally use commercial intent keywords unless they intend to buy soon.
Let’s look at some examples to clarify it a little. What are the different kinds of commercial intent keywords?
Four categories of commercial intent keywords
- Buy Now: “Buy now” keywords often include words such as: “discount,” “coupon,” “buy,” or “shipping.” These should be your top priority regarding commercial intent keywords because they are used by customers who want to buy something right now. You want those customers to find you and to find you fast.
- Product: Product keywords are used to search for a specific product, brand, or service, often with words like “best,” “review,” “comparison,” or “affordable” attached to them. These should be your second priority. Customers use them to do some market research and find the best option for them. If you have what they’re looking for, you want them to be able to find you before their research energy runs out.
- Informational: Informational keywords are less helpful because they have much lower commercial intent value. They include phrases like “how to,” “the best way to,” and “I need to.” You can use them to increase traffic if nothing else, but customers who use these are trying to find information, not products.
- Tire Kicker: Tire kicker keywords are to be avoided at all costs. These are from searches that want something for free. So, they will include words such as “free,” “torrent,” and “download.” You don’t want the traffic that these words will bring you.
As we can see, ideally, you want to focus your energy on the first two: “Buy Now” and “Product” keywords. These will bring in paying customer traffic, not just informational or wandering traffic. How can you discern which keywords fall into these two categories?
Don’t Forget to Google Search.
If you search for your keyword on Google, you can get a good first impression of how valuable your keyword is and how well it is currently performing. The number of ads that show up at the top of the results will indicate how much competition and value there is for your keyword. The more ads, the more competition, which means there are a lot of potential paying customers for that keyword.
Once you’ve seen the front page of Google and have an idea of what’s out there for your keyword, you can learn more specific information using other Google tools.
Google Adwords is Your Friend
The most comprehensive way to figure out your keywords’ commercial intent is to use Adwords’ Keyword Planner tool. Through this, you can find a given keyword’s “Suggested Bid” (also known as Average CPC or Cost-Per-Click) and “Competition,” which will help you judge which keyword is more valuable and what the most currently valuable keywords on that topic are.
Suggested Bid and Competition
Follow the steps below to access these features using Adwords.
- Go to Google Adwords and their Keyword Planner tool.
- Click on “Search for new keywords using a phrase, website, or category.”
- Enter your keyword(s) and click “Get Ideas.”
- Look at the “suggested bid” column for your keyword, and check out how it compares to relevant keywords below yours.
- Look at the “competition” column for your keyword, and check out how it compares to relevant keywords below yours.
The higher the suggested bid, the more content providers are competing over those keywords, and thus the more valuable they probably are. If the listed keywords below yours have much higher suggested bids, you might want to use those. Or, at least emphasize those keywords more than your original keyword.
If you’re using informational keywords, you want “Low” competition so that you can get the most traffic from those keywords. “High” competition keywords are probably going to be the most valuable in terms of paying customers, so if you want keywords that fall into the “Buy Now” or “Product” categories, use those.
Using informational keywords isn’t a bad thing: they can certainly help you gain traffic and increase awareness among your potential customer base and target market. However, commercial intent is the factor of keywords that you want to focus on if you need customers looking to buy your products or services. Use the steps listed above to analyze the commercial intent of your possible keywords. Doing so, you’ll be able to curate content that will grow your business rather than merely get traffic hits.
Let the Professionals Help
If you have too much to do and need someone to help you with your online presence, don’t fret. There are professional content creators who can help.
Romain Berg is an experienced company that can assist with content creation and keyword research. Romain Berg’s professional team can help you grow your customer base and increase your exposure and revenue, so fill out our contact form today to get started.
