Understanding search intent is a great way to learn about your existing and prospective clients. It gives you invaluable insight into their needs, so you can appeal to them with website content that addresses those needs. In the previous article, we learned about keyword intent and how people search. In this article, let’s learn how to use keyword intent in your inspector website content strategy.
Whether a keyword is informational or not, for example, is determined by the type of content shown in the search results, the presence of certain search result features, or specific words in the search term itself. Let’s look at how you can read the search engine results pages (SERPs) to determine the intent attributed to different types of search terms.
Informational Intent
When people are looking for information, they often use question words, such as “how,” “what,” and “why,” in their search terms. For example, “What does an air filter do at my furnace?” and “Why should a downspout be diverted?” You can spot SERP features like knowledge panels, featured snippets, and the “People also ask” box in the SERPs when Google thinks that the searcher is looking for information.
Google’s search results for “become a home inspector” contains SERP features such as a video preview and a “People also ask” section.
These kinds of keywords might not immediately generate conversions for you, but they can indicate the types of answers your prospective clients are looking for. Top-of-the-funnel content that caters to informational searches is valuable because it allows you to develop authority in your industry by providing answers early on in the client’s journey (which could make your company the right choice for them by the end of their journey).
You can also use informational keywords to search for content your competitors have published. This may help you identify content gaps you can fill as an expert in your industry.
Navigational Intent
Search terms that show a person is looking for specific information about a brand, product, or location are known as navigational keywords. They are common for businesses, places, things, and people, and can provide a stream of organic traffic for well-known companies.
You can spot that Google has interpreted a search term as navigational when it shows main domain names or features like maps and local knowledge panels in the search results.
Here, Google might think that the user’s intent is to navigate to InterNACHI’s page of certified home inspectors.
Analyze the SERPs for your inspection company name to evaluate how easily potential clients performing a navigational search will find you. Do your own search for keywords, key phrases, headings, topics, services, or blog articles that potential clients performing a navigational search may use. Marking up your content with structured data can help search engines learn more about and contextualize your inspection business, leading to better search visibility for navigational keywords.
For local inspection businesses, in particular, ensuring that your citations are consistent can help customers physically navigate to your business.
Commercial Intent
When a searcher includes a product name (or type of product) in their search term, it’s likely that they’re considering a purchase, so a search like “big ben inspections” would be a good example of a keyword with commercial intent.
The SERP features displayed for that term may include reviews, InterNACHI’s lead generation, social media channels, Google Business Profile, and inspector website pages that show Google is serving content that aligns with the commercial and transactional ends of the customer journey.
Evaluate the landscape of the SERP for inspection services you provide (or those that you’re competing against):
Are there customer reviews on the inspector's website?
Is the information about the service straightforward and comprehensive?
Are there educational or promotional inspection videos?
Answers to these questions can help potential clients move from the commercial phase to the transactional phase.
Transactional Intent
People ready to take action, such as scheduling a home inspection, use transactional keywords.
These can include words or phrases like “hire” or “schedule” and signal the strongest intent to convert. Google’s search results may contain ads, service listings, videos, profiles, and customer reviews for such terms.
Usually, these searchers have already carried out their informational queries at the top of the funnel and, to an extent, know what they want.
At this stage, search engines want to serve timely results that help users complete their intended actions. So, ensure that your webpages that are ranking for transactional terms are well-written and conversion-focused (so that potential clients can easily complete their desired action)—after all, this is the point of the funnel that all your efforts have been leading up to. Your website should be designed to convert website visitors into scheduled clients.
Keywords with Multiple Possible Intents
Where there are multiple possible intents behind a search term, there are various opportunities to create different kinds of content to appeal to them.
Take the search term infrared home inspection, for instance—it can have both informational and transactional intent. One searcher might want to read about using an infrared camera on their house, while another might want to go straight to hiring a home inspector who uses infrared during their inspection. So, a long-form blog article about the advantage of using infrared during a home inspection might be just as fitting for your content plan as a services page that contains a description and fee for an Infrared Certified® inspection.
Sites like bigbeninspections.com are good examples of how non-transactional content in a blog can attract people at the top of the buying funnel. As an inspector website, bigbeninspections.com doesn’t solely focus on its inspection services. It also provides “Tips for Homebuyers” and home maintenance articles in its blog and social media posts.
Applying Keyword Intent to Your Strategy
Ask yourself if you’re attracting the right traffic with the content you’re creating. Delve into the detail of individual keywords and their respective intent to determine whether or not you’ve got a diverse spread of content that can cater to all types of searchers. Think about what the user is searching for at every phase of the customer journey and create holistic content so that you can capture the user at each stage. Avoid tunnel vision.
Outdo the competition with your various user-centric content pieces by conducting regular reviews of your website analytics. Search and visitor behaviors change all the time, so the way you adapt to them should, too.
Summary
Make sure you choose an inspector website design company that knows how to use keyword intent in your website content strategy.
This information is provided by Wix.com. We use Wix to build custom websites for InterNACHI® inspectors so they can easily manage their online businesses.
We just learned about keywords and creating the right website content to help convert visitors into scheduled clients. In our next article, we’ll learn about blogging for home inspector websites.
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