3 Ways SEO User Intent Can Drive Higher Lead Quality

You are generating organic traffic to your website, but not enough conversions. Learn how user intent can increase the quality of your prospects.
You are generating organic traffic to your website, but not enough conversions. Then your content may not be fulfilling the demands of your audience.
To drive conversions, you must understand what your prospects are browsing for and provide relevant, engaging content.

Anna Niles Charity, Senior Product Marketing Manager at CallRail, and Lance Bachmann, Founder and CEO of 1SEO, presented a Search Engine Journal webinar on April 14.
They discussed how to capitalise on user intent to generate more qualified and high-converting leads.

A summary of their presentation follows.
Effective and engaging content addresses the searcher’s intent; however, some businesses fall short in this regard.
User intent is the user’s primary objective when entering a search query.
For instance, if your air conditioner breaks down in the midst of summer, you would search for [24/7 HVAC repair] while your partner would search for [AC repair near me].
While the queries use different keywords, they have the same intent or ultimate objective, which is to repair an HVAC unit.

3 Ways SEO User Intent Can Drive Higher Lead Quality
3 Ways SEO User Intent Can Drive Higher Lead Quality

There are four common user intent categories: informational, commercial, navigational, and transactional.
But why is user intent significant?
Google’s number-one objective is to satisfy the user’s search intent.
The results that Google returns in response to a particular search query reflect the intended use of the keyword.

User intent requirements are a crucial component of an effective SEO and content strategy.
Here are some ways that businesses can use user intent to inform their marketing strategies:

1. Improve customer experience
It’s wonderful to rank for a query, but if users click on your content from the search results and don’t find immediate answers to their concerns, there’s a high likelihood that they’ll leave the page.
This is a missed opportunity to convert the visitor into a prospect or customer.
If Google observes that more users are leaving the page than are remaining to read and interact with the content, your rankings may begin to decline.
This is what occurred with one of Bachmann and his team’s clients, a full-service and urgent-care dental office.

In order to resolve this issue, they decided to cut through the filler in their website’s content and get to the most crucial answers.
They customised the messaging and content to answer queries and provide next steps for a particular type of user: those in need of emergency dental care.
The modifications resulted in excellent rankings, including the number one spot for “emergency dentist in Philadelphia.”
Not only did they achieve success in the search engine results pages, but it also generated a steady flow of highly qualified leads.

2. Utilise data to make informed, data-driven updates to content.
Creating new content is not the only method to satisfy the requirements of users.
It might be best to expand and improve your website’s content if a sizable portion of it is already gaining popularity, indexing by search engines, and ranking in the top 30 to 50 positions.
Google Search Console (GSC) is one of the data sources that can help you unearth insights on user intent and make informed decisions regarding your content.
• Determine which queries your site (or a particular page you want to rank for) is receiving impressions and clicks for.
• Determine whether your page adequately addresses the user’s requirements.

By segmenting your Google Search Console data based on questions, you will be able to determine which questions your users are searching for that may be relevant to your industry.
If you want to improve your ranking in the future, you should provide a clear and concise response to these queries.
Google Analytics can also tell you a great deal about whether or not your page is meeting the needs of its visitors.
Your page has a low duration on page and a high return rate, right?
This is yet another area that requires investigation.

You may be ranking for something, but when users arrive at your page, they promptly exit because the content does not contain what they expected.
This is a strong indication that you should update your content.
Bachmann and his team frequently confront this issue with multiple clients.
One client in the gambling niche saw the massive transition to mobile and online gambling as an opportunity to educate users who were attempting to justify online gambling as safer than visiting a physical casino.

Consequently, they compiled a vast amount of excellent statistics, sources, videos, and infographics into a single blog.
They achieved the number one position for queries such as “Is online gambling dangerous?”
The client was able to stay ahead of the curve and address numerous pertinent inquiries, which also helped to increase brand awareness.
This strategy was also successful for a second client in the HVAC industry.
Many companies attempting to rank for terms related to common HVAC issues tend to rely excessively on the call-to-action “Call us today” rather than educating users about what may be occurring.

Contrary to convention, they compiled a blog post that discussed multiple types of scents for various problems in an attempt to address everyone’s concerns.
Since its inception, the blog post has garnered nearly 100,000 visitors, attracting a specific form of user intent.
The highlight?
It ranks at the top of Page 1 with a featured excerpt and converts at over 3%, which is quite exceptional for a blog post for a local business.

3. Increase site visitation and conversion rates.
Users are skimmers; they visit your website to find an answer or fulfil a need.
It is essential to be aware of how consumers perceive, interact with, and behave on your website.
Because of this, you must optimise your webpages to provide the best experience for actual users, not just search engines.
You can evaluate the efficacy of your website by monitoring your Core Web Vitals metrics.
Utilising proper page structure and layout is another method to maintain user engagement and increase the likelihood of conversion.

By organising and condensing your page, you not only make it simple to comprehend for users but also for algorithms crawling your site.
Using subheadings correctly and generating a smooth flow of information will ultimately improve the page’s performance and rank.