SEO Copywriting Hacks That Will Help You Address User Intent

Whether you are trying to take your business online or simply want to start your own website, nothing will work if the content on your page doesn’t comply with user intent.

You must be confused right now, aren’t you? It is quite evident given the fact that every other person who has some knowledge about promoting web content would tell you to focus on the SEO of the page.

Well, SEO or search engine optimization (in case, you don’t know) is certainly important for the online content as they help you rank higher in the search results, ensuring better visibility.

However, if your content does not appeal to the people, the visitors will start leaving your page as soon as they get there, increasing the bounce rate.

This may sound a bit challenging, but in order to get organic traffic to your website, you need to prepare content that is not only optimized for search engines but also addresses what the user is looking for.

It is believed by many that SEO-friendly content does not appeal to the audience. That’s a misconception. The search engines like Google create those algorithms with the sole purpose of improving the user experience. There would not have been any need for SEO if the search engines never cared about the user intent.

As an owner of the website, your content strategy should be developing content that complies with the SEO requirements while addressing user intent. Here’s how you can do it.

How to create search engine optimized content for the audience?

If you have been involved in any form of service, you must know that quality outranks quantity. If you keep producing substandard things, sooner or later people are going to stop coming to you, even if you produce it in tons.

It’s the same thing with web content. If you publish a massive number of blogs in your website every day, by just copying things from other sources or by stuffing keyword into low-quality content, this will not help you or your audience at any level.

According to renowned SEO expert Neil Patel, even if your content has useful information, it will still require three additional elements to improve the organic traffic:

1. The content needs to be optimized for several keywords, which have a huge number of searches.
2. A considerable number of backlinks should be there.
3. A topic or idea that intrigues people every time it is discussed.

There are a lot of instances where people have experienced increased organic traffic just by incorporating these elements into their content. However, those elements only improve your search engine ranking.

Search user’s intent:

You cannot just use random keywords and expect better results. Keyword rFesearch is still very crucial. In fact, for the best kind of results, you need to understand the intention of the user behind every significant keyword search they make.

The keywords searched by the users can be classified into two segments based on their intent: informational keywords and commercial keywords.

• Informational keywords:

You may be aware of the fact that most people these days use the help of internet to learn a particular piece of information as it’s more convenient. That is when a person uses an informational keyword.

These keywords usually start with “how-to”. For instance “how to get my driving license” or “how to make a sandwich”. As you may have noticed, people love to access various content (article, blog, video, tutorials) using this type of keyword search.

You need to develop the informative and useful content around the informational keywords to drive more traffic to your website. However, this will not guarantee lead conversion since the users who look for such keywords are only interested in accessing free information; not buying anything.

What you can do is use such content to nurture the audiences who have come to your website for the information only. You can engage them through such informative content and slowly build your brand.

• Commercial keywords:

The commercial keywords display the user’s intent of buying a product or service. According to Neil Patel, this type of keywords usually describes the desperation of the user. People usually search for such keywords when they are looking for a solution.

In most cases, the person who is searching for a commercial keyword is likely to end up buying a product or make some moves (like sign up) which will ultimately convert them into customers. When someone types such commercial keywords on the search bar, it indicates that the person is likely to take some action.

There is an easy way to identify a commercial keyword. Usually, such keywords come with the words like review, buy, compare, order, free shipping, best, etc. For instance “best smartphone under $150” or “iPhone X reviews”.

Remember, the objective of your keyword based content should be informing the people about the various aspect of the product. So use a subtle approach to convince the user to buy your product or service, without making it obvious.

Understanding buyer persona:

You must be aware of the fact that your website does not serve all. It serves only a certain demographic. So you need to understand what your ideal audience look for. In content marketing, the ideal audience is termed as “buyer persona”. You can engage your audience in any of the three stages of a buyer persona.

• Awareness: This is the stage where your buyer persona looks for information. In most cases, the user tries to acknowledge a certain problem. You can engage them by talking about the same problem without trying to sell anything.

• Consideration: In consideration stage, the user usually looks for a solution to the problem he is experiencing. For instance, if your business is focused on healthcare devices, you can write about the simple ways to monitor one’s health, to engage the customer who is worried that he may have Malaria, after reading about the symptoms of Malaria in another blog of yours.

• Decision: In this stage, you can write promotion content expressing how your product or service can help them solve a particular problem. If a person has high blood sugar, he may like to keep track of this blood sugar level almost every day. Tell him, how your device can help them monitor their health.

In each of the cases, the use of proper keyword is essential. Perhaps, acknowledging the most commonly used keywords in your particular industry can help you give enough idea about the content. However, you need to be smart about the use of keywords in the content.

There are several areas where you need to use the primary keyword to make your content appear in the front of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Here are some of the areas in the content where you should definitely use the keyword.

• The title
• The first 100 words of the content
• Meta description
• The first headline in the content

• In between the content (maintaining 2.5-3% keyword density)
• Alt text of the image

Also, Google nowadays is focusing more on the long-tail keywords which are practically the entire search query like “which is the best smartphone under $150”. So you need to incorporate those alternate keywords as well in between the content.

Some other ways to engage more visitors:

Apart from addressing the particular stages of buyer persona and acknowledging the commonly used keywords in the industry, there are several other ways to drive more traffic while successfully covering user intent.

•  Humor:

A lot of SEO copywriters maintain a serious tone while composing the content for the website since the theme of the website demands such tone. However, most of the successful websites carry a humorous tone, which makes them more appealing to the audience.

You may not be able to drive a massive amount of traffic to your website even after composing informative content if that sounds dull. Using subtle humor can make the content more interesting and fun to read.

Have you ever read the “BuzzFeed” articles? They use a lot of clickbait, but the titles of their articles do make the readers click on the link. If you are able to make it to their favorites, they are more likely to buy the product/service you sell.

• Case study:

According to Neil Patel, a case study is one of the most effective types of content that help a website drive more traffic. In case of business-to-business (B2B) buyers, case studies and research-based content are more impactful than any other form of content.

Also, a recent study shows that if you start writing more useful and detailed case studies, the primary long tail keywords will start appearing in Google’s top 10 for relevant keywords. Case studies allow you to describe your product/services with convincing information in the form of research studies, interviews and experiments.

•  Storytelling:

Storytelling is one of the finest ways to engage more number of audiences. People love good stories. You can tell your brand story in a very interesting way through an article, video, blog posts etc. to attract more visitors.

Brand storytelling has been tried and tested by a number of brands to push their number of readers. People get inspired when you share your success stories. You can use that to your advantage to address the target audience and make them feel that they can also achieve success the same way.

As mentioned earlier, people come first. You can optimize your content in thousand different ways, but it still may not succeed if it fails to poke the interest of the users. So while you focus on optimizing your content as per the search engine requirements, it is also crucial to evaluate the user’s intent and prepare the content in such way that it makes an impact on the person who is reading it.

Author Bio: Nathan William works for MyAssignmenthelp.com, an assignment help provider that guides numerous applicants prepare CDR for Engineers Australia. Apart from his job at his current organization, Jack runs his own blogging website.