What is "searcher intent" and how to match it

The biggest mistake that keeps bloggers away from getting search traffic is writing articles about things that no one is searching for. As soon as newbie bloggers learn about the keyword research and how to identify the total search traffic potential of a certain topic, they start making their second biggest mistake: targeting the wrong keyword.

You need to target the right searcher intent. Way too often newbie bloggers would try to optimise their article for the keyword with the highest search volume, ignoring the fact that their article doesn't really match the intent of the people who are searching for that keyword.

Google is pretty smart at figuring out what people want when they search for something. And if your page doesn't give them that, it won't rank at the top. So, if you have a great article idea, but there's not much search demand for that topic, don't try to trick Google and optimze it for something it is not - a broad topic with high search demand. You should pick the most relevant search query, even if the search volume seems low. At least this way you get a good chance of actually ranking for that keyword and getting some highly-relevant search traffic.

Here's a small exercise, that will help you to re-confirm that you're targeting the right keyword. Take the draft of your article and send it to a few friends or co-workers, asking them what it is about. The words that they will use to describe your article will help you understand what kind of search queries it deserves to rank for in Google. But what if you don't have an article yet? What if you just discovered a cool keyword and you want to write an article on that topic and make sure it would pefrectly match the searcher intent? In this case, the best thing you could do is put yourself in the shoes of people, who would search for that keyword in Google and ask yourself a few simple questions:

• What are people looking for when they search for that keyword?
• What goal do they have in mind?
• What is their motivation?
• What kind of search result would perfectly satisfy them?

In other words, think of the "searcher intent" behind that keyword.

If you're unsure about the right searcher intent for some query, the best thing you can do is put it into Google and see what comes up. Google has invested years of work and billions of dollars into figuring out what people mean when they type something into the search bar. And they are actually quite good at it. For "how to tie a tie" they suggest a short video clip, because their data and use behavior signals showed that this is what the vast majority of searchers want.

For "violas" Google gives a mix of search results: some about the musical instrument and some about the flower. This means that the searcher intent for that keyword is actually two-fold. And there's nothing you could do about it.

Put yourself in the shoes of searchers and using logic to understand what would satisfy them. Make sure you always check the search results for the keyword that you decide to target. If the pages that rank there are entirely different from what you were going to say, you probably misunderstood the searcher intent behind that keyword.

How to optimize your article for a given keyword

You have a great keyword in mind, and you're absolutely sure that you're going to match the searcher intent with the article that you're about to write. That is nearly 80% of all optimization work.

Google has enough technology and enough ranking signals to be able to find the most relevant page for a certain search query without relying on how many times that keyword was used on a page. 75% of all pages that ranked in Google top 10 don't have even a single mention of the search query that they rank for anywhere on the page.

Your article is likely to have enough synonims and relevant words and phrases for Google to be able to understand what it is about. So does that mean you should ignore any kind of keyword optimization and write as you please? Not really. The rule of thumb is to use your target keyword, or at least the most important words of your keyword, in the following places:

• URL
• title
• headline
• contеnt.

Because you are already using all the right words. I'd say that further refining your URL, title, headline and content will probably move the needle by another 10%. This percentage is quite arbitrary, there's no science behind it, but you get the idea.

And I'm sure you want to learn about the final 10%. There's a great article by Cyrus Shepard, where he explains rather advanced things, like:

• TF-IDF (Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency)
• Semantic distance & Term Relationships
• Co-occurrence and Phrase-Based Indexing
• Entity Salience, etc.

There's also a great article by Dr. Pete, that shines a bit of light on how Google reads and understands your search queries, in order to find the most relevant search result.

To win in the search results today you need to be an authority and expert on the topics on which you are writing. Focus on creating great in-depth authority content, rather than filling it with hundreds of keywords. And if your article is objectively better than what already ranks in Google top 10, you should be there soon.

How to squeeze maximum search traffic out of your article

What we've just covered is how to optimize your article for a single keyword. But as you already know, it is rare that a page would rank in Google for a single keyword only. You cannot rank #1 for "how to tie a tie" and not rank anywhere in top 10 for something like "how to tie a tie tutorial".

Take any search query and there would be hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other ways to put it. And Google tends to rank pretty much the same pages for all these relevant search queries. And here's the best part. Your page might be ranking poorly for that main keyword. But still get decent search traffic from all these variations.

1. Study the keywords that you already rank for and make sure that you mention them in our article. You're not going to stuff your article with every keyword variation that you want to rank for. You're going to think of a natural way to rewrite your article, mentioning these things. Look for keywords that could be turned into a few additional paragraphs in your article.
2. Study the keywords that competing pages rank for, but our page doesn't. Start with the keywords that pages above you rank for, but your page doesn't. These things easily deserve a few paragraphs in your article that will add value to anyone.
3. Study other popular searches, relevant to your main search query. You can also Google Keyword Planner tool, which will suggest quite a few interesting keywords to consider. The goal here is to study the things that people are searching for, related to your main topic and try to expand your article based on that knowledge.

This is how you should be writing your articles in the first place. Study what people are searching for and create an outline for your article, based on these searches. This will help your future article to rank for all these searches and get maximum search traffic from Google.

How perform an SEO audit of your published content

If you're looking for a quick win, the best thing you can do is audit the content that you already have on your blog. And here's why.

• First of all, your published articles may already have some backlinks, which signals to Google that they are cool and deserve to rank. While the new article has to be promoted in order to get some websites to link to it.
• Secondly, your competitors most likely don't bother updating their content. So if the top-ranking articles for your target keyword seem outdated, you can often outrank them by making your article up-to-date and re-publishing it as if it was brand new. Google will usually reward fresh content with higher rankings. I see this happen quite often.
• Finally, your past articles might be simply targeting the wrong keyword, and therefore not bringing you any traffic. Figuring out the right searcher intent and re-optimzing your article for the right keyword can do wonders to your search traffic.

So here's how you audit your existing content. Go through every published article that you have on your blog and assign it to one of the three following groups.

• Group #1: "Update" These are the articles, that already bring you some nice traffic from search. I'm pretty sure each and every one of them could be improved somehow, using the tactics, that you've just learned. Even your best-performing articles can be updated and improved. Take a moment to think about it. Most bloggers never bother improving their top-performing articles, and that's a huge mistake. Because the guys who rank below you are most likely working hard to outrank you.
• Group #2: "Merge" It doesn't make much sense to have multiple articles on the same topic. It's always better to have one great in-depth article other than five mediocre ones. Especially, if those duplicate articles have some backlinks. You can use 301 redirects to point these backlinks to your main article on that topic and help it rank better.
• Group #3: "Delete" This group is optional. Some people believe that getting rid of your underperforming content makes Google love your website more. I cannot prove or disprove that statement, but if I were in charge of Google, I'd definitely use something along these lines as a ranking signal.