Search Intent: What People Are Searching For?

“What people are searching for” informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional keywords to know about the product information and to buy the product.

The purpose of me writing this post to give you guys some idea on how to do choose the right keywords. As I am writing this post, I want to give you the strategy which you can implement in your campaigns. If someone finds this post too long, then please excuse me because I cannot summarize in lesser words…Okay, let me start with my approach which has worked for me to date.When I select the keywords, I keep 4 things in my mind. 1) What people are searching related to my (or client’s) product or service2) What am I selling?3) What is the query type?4) Daily Budget & Bid

What People are Searching For?

a) Informational:

The searcher is looking for information. For example Life Insurance or How to buy life insurance.

b) Navigational:

The searcher is looking for a specific website or specific thing on a website. For example Sunlife Insurance or Sunlife Term Insurance 

c) Transactional:

The searcher is looking to make a purchase. For example: buy life insurance online 

d) Commercial Investigation:

The searcher is in the market for a specific product or service but has yet to make a final decision on which solution is right for them. For example best life insurance quotes or cheap life insurance quotes When I am doing my keyword research, I will start segmenting my keywords based on the above categories.As I am segmenting those keywords, I will also answer these 2 questions.

What am I selling?

For me, the keywords which answer these questions is a good keyword. And one which doesn’t answer these questions is not a good keyword (depending on my daily budget)… Let’s say, I am an insurance broker. What am I selling? I am selling insurance policies in Toronto.What people are searching for: 

a) Life insurance:

Is the intent clear for buying or requesting a quote? No not a good keyword 

b) How to buy life insurance:

Is the intent clear for buying or requesting a quote? Not really… However, this person may think of buying, provided his objections are handled well. I see a lot of marketers promoting request for a quote to such queries. Avoid it. Rather, send him to information or content page which answers his question followed by a call to action… Later you can retarget or remarket to him if he doesn’t click on CTA. This is a good approach if you have a high daily spend. Hope this helps! 

c) Best insurance quotes:

Is the intent clear? Yes.. I am selling insurance à this is a good keyword…I hope this gives you an idea of keyword research & selection… Let me talk about the last section: Daily Budget & Bid: If you’re having a budget of $10-$20 per day then creating too many ad groups is not going to help you. So, it is important to focus on the best scenario which will help you achieve your goals efficiently. For example:If I am generating leads for insurance, and my budget is $20 per day then I would never keyword such as life insurance. Rather, I would target more long-tail keyword eg:- “Life Insurance Broker in Toronto”(I know few of the readers would go and search for CPC of this long-tail keyword. Please don’t punish me, because I only giving you a strategy to think…LOL!!!). This brings me to an important point while selecting the keywords I see a lot of people focusing on the search volume & CPC… These are important things but at the lower budget, you must focus on the relevance more. In certain cases, you may find certain keywords are super relevant and the CPC is high…So what, you must definitely use those keywords & bid low for those keywords. In one of my client’s accounts, we were profitable conversions at a lower position. 

My strategy:

If you are on very tight daily ad spend then avoid informational queries & focus on transactional & commercial investigation keywords If the business is popular and if I see people are searching for them, then I would allocate 5-10% of the ad spend to a brand campaign (again this depends on the search volume also) Lastly, you will also get a lot of negative ideas that you must start adding to the negative keyword list. For example life insurance company logo or Sunlife logo… The logo is 100% negative For most advanced marketers, if you know all this then it will be a quick review. If you are struggling with keyword selection, then I am sure this shift your focus on… If you have any questions, then please feel free to comment below. I will answer all of them… as and when I get time from projects… (remember, I write all my posts. I don’t ask my employees to write.

Cheers,Jagadeesh Chundru