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Faith Hannon
All right, friends, so today I want to chat with you about a keyword research factor that you're going to be tempted to cheat on but don't. Okay? And we're going to talk through what this keyword research factor is, why you absolutely should not cheat on it, and what you should do instead. Because I don't want to leave you hanging. All right? So listen in, be prepared to take notes, and I'm excited to share this with y'all. Alright, let's get into it. Hey there, fellow entrepreneur. Welcome to simple SEO and marketing. Do you want to grow your business with sustainable traffic sources? Have you heard about the power of search engine optimization? And you want to take advantage of it to get more traffic, more eyeballs on your business. But when it comes down to it, does SEO feel complicated and hard to implement? Are you tired of wondering what in the heck to do with your website to get more traffic and more leads knocking on your door? What if I could tell you that there was a simple, proven system for using SEO, blogging and copywriting to get leads from your website and not just any leads. High converting lead. Hey, I'm Faith Hannon, wife, mama, copywriter, SEO strategist, and barrel racer. And for the last eight years, I've been figuring out what works and what doesn't work in the world. Online marketing to get organic traffic. And now I'm here to share all the things I'm learning in the trenches of SEO, copywriting and content marketing. How does 300%, 500% or even 12,000% more traffic in a year sound? What could your business do with that kind of traffic increase? How many more people could you help? So listen in and prepare to take note. I'm about to drop simple, actionable SEO, marketing and copywriting tips, all with a heavy dose of Jesus loving encouragement. Let's get you more traffic and more leads so you can help more people with your God given gifts. All right, y'all. So if you are new here, then you probably don't realize that keyword research is absolutely foundational to a solid SEO strategy. Why? Well, I guess even if you're not new here, this is a good reminder. But why is keyword research so foundational? Well, because if you don't do keyword research or you don't do it the right way, or both, then what you're essentially doing is you're trying to create content and market to maybe the right people, maybe the wrong people. And if you have the wrong keywords that you're basing your marketing around, and you're basing your SEO strategy around, if you have the wrong keywords, it's essentially like putting up a billboard of advertising your content, the wrong city, in the wrong part of the city, in a different language than the people speak. Like, you're not going to get any growth from that work. And so keyword research, in my opinion, is absolutely foundational to your SEO strategy. Yes. But also your overall marketing strategy. Because if you don't know the words that people are using, then you can't really meet them where they're at, to put your product in front of them in a way that they go, oh, yes, this is what I need. Okay, so keyword research, obviously, muy importante. All right. But how to do it is such a fun thing. I think, anyway, you might not think it's fun, but if you stick around, if you do what I tell you, it can be fun. But the thing that I find is that when a lot of us are doing keyword research, we get to looking at the numbers, and sometimes we get distracted and look at numbers the wrong way. Let me explain. So when you're doing keyword research, especially using my favorite keyword research tool, ubersuggest, it's very tempting to look at the volume, the search volume, or the size, as I often call it, which is essentially how many times per month that keyword or keyword phrase or long tail keyword phrase, they're all used interchangeably how many times per month that phrase is searched. Okay. And we like to get the idea in our head that, like, okay, we see this, see this word, we see a good volume, we're like, yes, I'm going to go for that. Now, obviously, there's lots of problems with that being your only criteria, because if you are not a big enough fish to go for that keyword, you don't have a strong enough domain authority, you're not going to get found for that keyword. All of these things, and I teach all of these factors inside of my coaching and framework, simple SEO framework, group coaching, and course, I teach you all of these things. But today I want to talk about the one thing that a lot of us try to cheat when we're doing keyword research. And that thing is searcher intent. Now, what is searcher intent? Faith? Well, searcher intent is what the searcher intends to find when they type in that keyword. I know, it's rocket science, right? But the fact of the matter is, sometimes we can get so caught up in a keyword and the volume that we fail to think through. Wait a second. What does the person actually want to find or hope to find when they are typing in that keyword? And the mistake a lot of us may make, and I have totally made this myself, is we'll have a keyword phrase. I'm like, yeah, I can go for that. I have the street cred. I have the domain authority. Like, yes, I want to get found for that keyword. Put me in coach. And we create content around that keyword phrase, we optimize for it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then we have these problems, okay? We have these three problems when we ignore searcher intent. All right? Number one problem, number one issue is you might get clicks, but you're going to have a high bounce rate because what you're creating is not in line with what somebody is searching. So they're going to click over to your site and be like, deuces, bro. That's not what I want to find out. Okay? The number two problem is then they're not going to convert, right? As business owners, most of us have a product that we want to sell, a service that we want to market, something like that, that we are optimizing our SEO, creating SEO friendly content to market that content, right? Not everybody on this podcast, slash, most of my clients are not just bloggers trying to get ad money through Metavine or Journey or whatever, right? And so when you're creating content, you need to be thinking through the conversion process of that. Like when somebody click on my page or my blog for XYZ keyword phrase, are they a likely candidate to convert? Are they a likely candidate to convert to my email list or to convert directly to a paid product, okay? And when we're going for the wrong keyword phrase because we're ignoring searcher intent, those people that click on over, they're not going to convert, okay? And the number three problemo is you're wasting your time. And we all know that time is precious, right? So we. When you ignore search or intent, you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot with those three things. You're going to have clicks, but they're not going to do you any good because you're going to have a high bounce rate. They won't convert, and you're wasting your time. So what to do instead? What to do instead? Okay, when you're doing keyword research, these are the things that I want you to really, really think through, okay? The ws. The W is I want you to. I want you to think through the dubs okay, the number one dub. Why would somebody be searching for that phrase? Okay, now I'll use shoes as an example. Let's talk about. Let's pretend where somebody is searching for orthotic shoes, okay? And you create custom orthotic shoes. Okay? So let's pretend somebody is just searching for. You want to sell orthotic shoes, and you're looking at keyword phrases. Somebody suggests that you just go for shoes, and you're like, oh, that's cool. And you look up shoes. You're like, oh, that's too big a thing. That's too large of a keyword. I can't go for that. Let's go for something more specific. And so you go for comfortable shoes, and you're like, yes, I'm going to create content for that. Well, but why is somebody searching for comfortable shoes? Are they searching for comfortable shoes because they want something to wear around the house? Are they searching for comfortable shoes because they want to buy their grandma some comfy shoes? Are they searching for comfortable shoes because they need slippers to keep their feet warm as they sit under their desk? Like, why are they searching for that? Are they actually searching for orthotics? Do they actually know that they have a problem with their foot that could be solved with your custom orthotic shoes? Probably not through that. Okay, and then if you're just creating information, right, to educate your people and eventually draw them into your funnels, I want you to ask, what are they hoping to learn? That's a second W. What are they hoping to learn when they type that keyword phrase in orthotic shoes? Are they hoping to learn what are orthotic shoes? Why are orthotic shoes beneficial? What is the best company to order orthotic shoes? Can I get orthotic insoles instead of an orthotic shoe? Like, think through what are they hoping to learn? Now, bonus tip here. If you really think through these W's, okay, You're gonna end up coming up with some more content ideas. Okay? So in my orthotic shoe example, maybe instead of creating one giant piece of content around orthotic shoes and that keyword phrase, maybe it's a better strategy for you to create five pieces of content all around all of those possible phrases that they would be hoping to learn. Okay? So then you're going to show up five times for five very specific searches that will also benefit you in the third W, which is where? Where is your searcher? What is their intent? Where are they in their buying journey? Okay, because let's Be honest. We all have a journey, a process that we go through when we're purchasing products. Now, some people, their threshold for Impulse buys is $10, right? Like, if it's over $10, they're gonna think it, think about a little bit more. Some people, their threshold for Impulse buys is $150 or $250 or $1,000, right? Like, everybody has a different, different threshold there. And your ideal client will fall somewhere, you know, on a spectrum. But where is your person in their buying journey? Okay, most people, I would guess to say, are going to put a little bit of thought and a little bit of time into buying a, you know, several hundred dollar product or a thousand dollar product or orthotic shoes, right? Like, they're going to want to educate themselves along this journey. So orthotic shoes might be at the top of the buying journey, but what are the best orthotic shoes for athletes is going to be lower and further down their buying journey, like lower in the funnel, closer to the purchase time. Okay? So think through those things. All right, now, quick recap. When you're doing your keyword research, instead of just looking at the size of the keyword and your ability to rank for that, I want you to really pay attention to the searcher intent. Okay? And I want you to ask yourself the three W's. Why would somebody be searching for that keyword phrase? What are they hoping to learn and where are they in their buying journey? And use those to inform your keyword research and to inform your content strategy. Now, if you are like, yes, Faith, teach me the ways of your people. Then hop on into this simple SEO framework course and group coaching program where I lay out all of the things that you need to do to do keyword research successfully. You learn how to set your website up, the back end of your website up for SEO success in half a day, and then how to maintain your traffic generating machine in two hours a week or less so that you can start generating leads consistently. All right, y'all, thank you so much for being here. I love y'all and I'm excited to just chat with you each and every week. And I don't take it for granted that y'all choose to spend some time with me each week. So be blessed and go out there and think through the searcher intent of your keyword research this week. Alright, bye y'all. Thank you so much for listening in today. Hopefully this episode gave you some really tangible tips for better SEO and marketing. To get more leads and more sales from your website if it did, can I ask you a quick favor? Would you please share this episode with a friend and then just take 10 seconds and go leave a written review on Apple Podcasts. That is the very best way to help more Jesus loving entrepreneurs their businesses so that they can help more people with their gifts and make an even bigger impact for the Kingdom of God. And guess what? We now have a Facebook community where we can learn, hang out and laugh. Go join the Facebook group now. It's linked in the show notes and all the other things, courses, coaching and copywriting can be found at my website faith hannon.com until next time. God Bless and I'll talk to you soon.
Host: Faith Hanan
Release Date: November 19, 2024
Duration: Approximately 20 minutes
In Episode 202 of Simple SEO & Marketing, Faith Hanan delves into a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of keyword research in SEO: searcher intent. She emphasizes the temptation many face to "cheat" this factor and the pitfalls that accompany such shortcuts.
Faith underscores the fundamental role of keyword research in both SEO and overall marketing strategies. She likens poor keyword selection to placing a billboard in the wrong city or language, rendering it ineffective.
Faith [02:15]: "Keyword research is absolutely foundational to your SEO strategy... because if you don't know the words that people are using, then you can't really meet them where they're at."
A prevalent mistake Faith identifies is focusing solely on the search volume of keywords. While high-volume keywords might seem attractive, they often lead to low conversion rates if not aligned with the business's domain authority or the target audience's intent.
Faith [05:30]: "If you are not a big enough fish to go for that keyword, you don't have the strong enough domain authority, you're not going to get found for that keyword."
Faith introduces searcher intent as the pivotal element that should guide keyword research. Ignoring this can result in three major issues:
Faith [08:45]: "Searcher intent is what the searcher intends to find when they type in that keyword... sometimes we can get so caught up in a keyword and the volume that we fail to think through."
Faith outlines a structured approach to keyword research centered around three critical questions:
Using the example of "orthotic shoes", Faith illustrates how broad keywords can misalign with user intent.
Faith [12:20]: "Are they searching for comfortable shoes because they want something to wear around the house? Are they searching for orthotics?"
Determining what information the searcher seeks helps in creating targeted content that addresses specific needs.
Faith [15:00]: "When somebody clicks on my page for 'orthotic shoes,' are they a likely candidate to convert to my email list or directly to a paid product?"
Understanding where the searcher is in their purchasing process allows for content that meets them at the right stage, from awareness to decision-making.
Faith [17:30]: "Orthotic shoes might be at the top of the buying journey, but 'best orthotic shoes for athletes' is lower and further down their buying journey."
Faith advocates for creating multiple, specific pieces of content rather than a single broad one. This strategy ensures visibility across various search intents and stages of the buying journey.
Faith [19:10]: "Maybe it's a better strategy for you to create five pieces of content all around all of those possible phrases that they would be hoping to learn."
Faith summarizes the episode by reinforcing the importance of integrating searcher intent into keyword research. She encourages listeners to apply the three W's to refine their SEO and content strategies effectively.
Faith [21:00]: "Ask yourself the three W's: Why would somebody be searching for that keyword phrase? What are they hoping to learn? And where are they in their buying journey?"
In her closing remarks, Faith invites entrepreneurs to further their learning through her Simple SEO Framework course and group coaching programs. She emphasizes the value of understanding searcher intent to drive sustainable traffic and high-converting leads.
Faith [22:50]: "Think through the searcher intent of your keyword research this week."
Faith Hanan’s Website: FaithHanan.com
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